Let the debate begin!

Grit happens.

Even in the most gentrified urban centers; Seattle, Vancouver, Minneapolis; the stock broker's Lexus is often parked next to fifteen year old basic transportation and the young skate boarding web site designer clad in tattered jeans sits at the same mom and pop lunch counter with the Armani suit wearing bank president. Panhandlers that frequent the areas around a bus stations and transients lined up at the church kitchen door for a brown bag breakfast are also just part of the downtown landscape; always have been, always will be.

OKC Government in past years has shown a tendency to sometimes confuse grit with blight and attempted to solve the perceived problem through demolition. The most recent case being the NE corner of Sheridan and Walker. The now grassy lot on that corner was formerly occupied by a brick building whose second floor was very low priced single room occupancy rental (aka a flop-house) with various commercial uses on the ground floor including the Peacock Cafe which has moved a couple of blocks South to Reno Avenue, a small grocery store that moved North over to Main Street. So applying a wrecking ball to blight, grit, call it what you will is like hitting _ _ _ t with a mallet. Perhaps that phase in OKC has now run its course.

Downtown Oklahoma City in the late 50's and early 60's was a mature urban center that included major banks, Class A office buildings, upscale department stores, variety stores with soda fountains, movie theaters and restaurants on Main Street; low end shopping, small bars, tattoo parlors and pawn shops on Reno Avenue. Wholesale hardware suppliers and light manufacturing filled the buildings of what is now Bricktown. It was a vibrant mixed use urban community with small apartment buildings, single and multi-family residential neighborhoods mixed with service and commercial businesses surrounding the central high rise core. Downtown streets were filled with pedestrians representing every socioeconomic level.

The downtown Oklahoma City of the 2050's will definitely have a much different appearance than the one it is replacing, but will very likely have a similar feel; a little worn and a little gritty.

I wonder if the low-wealth residential opportunities will even be around by the 2050s in downtown. With expensive or at least middle-class priced housing exploding through downtown and its surroundings, how long before the poor are pushed out? Where will they go?

Grit is a hard concept, because it will always look like blight. It will look trashy. We don't want to see the way less fortunate people live. It looks ugly. I'm having a hard time distinguishing myself. Because to me, an abandoned lot with occasional transients living inside or a mostly abandoned building that might have a matress inside for rent... it's blight. It makes the landscape ugly. It reminds us that the world isn't all peaches and roses. So it just isn't pleasant to look at it.

But I don't necessarily think that means it shouldn't exist.

I definitely am having a hard time grappling with what I really think about this question, so I'll come back to it later...

Well for those of us who are aware that the world isn't all peaches and roses, there really is a lot of character in grit. Urban character, that is. Shane I think you have grit mixed up with blight. The two are really differant, and I'll show you how.



This is grit. This is a street that's obviously very old, and has endured a lot. But the buildings are colorful, and they have a lot of personality to them. Grit is typical just really old structures that aren't in the best of shape, so to speak. Bricktown used to be grit, and much of the inner north side is grit.

However, blight is much, much worse, and blight can never be fixed. The areas of old metal warehouses south of downtown are blight (but there are some very nice brick warehouses south of downtown that would make excellant lofts). The run-down shotgun structures in the south side are blight.

The key differance is structural character, quality, and neighborhood activity. Grit has all of those aforementioned qualities.

I would like your street scene a lot better if there were sidewalks full of people Spartan. I also don't think the urban character you are calling "grit" is only found in old buildings. In the end it's all about good design and not all old design is good design just because it's old. I think most good design attracts people to hang out. Maybe it's the hanging out that creates the grit. We have some really nice places to hang out in and around downtown OKC and the inner ring of burbs. On the old side I would classify The Paseo as one of the grittiest places around here. The area now called The Arts District has some grit going for it. Old buildings mixed with new, mixed with readapted ones like the OKCMOA, film nights when an astounding variety of people show up, the Thai place down the street from OKCMOA . . . Some gritty buildings, gritty businesses, new shinny ones, young people, old people, cool people, nerds, you name it . . . there are a lot of ingredients in grit. It's hard to put your finger on it, but you sure as heck know it when you walk into it. Bricktown ain't got s_ _ _ for grit. Maybe it will get some as time goes by, but not now IMO. I actually think all of those metal buildings east of Bricktown have lots of potential . . . future grit. The skate park on the river has some nice grit starting up down there. . . . kids showing their stuff, others watching . . . Nice topic.

You ever go by there late at night just before the cops show the kids the gates? There's that really neat factory that makes whatever it makes, but I've always thought it was a cool urban back drop. It's not a very dismal, ugly factory... but it's tall, vertical, interesting.

The warehouses east of B'town have potential to be a really neat urban district, but what if those are all torn down, and then some very nice, high-quality structures are built in their place (completely unlike The Hill) and give it a decade or two. Bam, great urban scenes...

I could go either way with that metal stuff. A good architect and a client with deep pockets coud do some fabulous things there using some of the existing buildings, but someone like Sooner Investment would build a real pile of crap out of the same thing.

http://okmetropolis.9.forumer.com/index.ph...&st=0&#entry773

I forgot to mention that parts of Bricktown actually are kind of gritty.

So... the difference between grit and blight is whether or not people live there? Whether things are going on? Whether it's "cool" or not? We can build new grit? Grit, from some accounts- diversity (of economy, culture, architecture, etc)- seems to just fit my definition of the word "urban."

Do you all seriously think that a real downtown is good for this state? Keep in mind how overwhelming public support of downtown has been detrimental to its development lately.

That's a good point, but everyone loves a flavorful district.