Image from “Pearl District Design Plan.”

The Pearl District – a near-downtown neighborhood with a lot of history and a lot of lingering challenges here in Tulsa – is working hard to reinvent itself.  Convenient to downtown, highways, and entertainment districts, the neighborhood has struggled for years to reestablish itself as a mixed-use, pedestrian friendly place to live and work.  Organizers see it as a vital addition to downtown revitalization projects, providing some continuity and a landing place for people who don’t want to live downtown per se, but who frequent the ongoing developments there. 

Take a look at the satellite image of the district currently, and the planned use map provided by the Pearl District Association.  The “6^th Street Infill Plan” is available here from the City of Tulsa, but the PDA and the City have gone even further, with a design plan including a canal feature.  There is a pilot project for a form-based code (a personal favorite idea) - creating a look and feel without dividing usage zones like current zoning requires.  They’re stretching, but people thought that turning a disused warehouse district with a drainage ditch into an entertainment area in Oklahoma City was a stretch too... 

I’ve posted about the Better Block project in Oak Cliff  a couple of times – this looks to be Tulsa’s experiment with the idea. Tulsa’s Young Professionals “Tulsa Urbanists” work crew has a take on the Better Block planned: “Polishing the Pearl” – coming up in April.

From distressed neighborhood to vibrant place to play and live – improving property values, generating sales taxes, and reusing valuable space…  This is the heart of economic and community development.  It's going to take some time, but this is going to be fun to watch.

Back in September I posted about the Better Block Project in Oak Cliff - the Dallas neighborhood that is shaking up the status quo with a focus on redeveloping a "cool" community in a formerly dilapidated neighborhood.  Since then, BetterBlock.org has come online as a stand-alone home for the project, and the "how-to" pointers are still easily accessible. Better still - the blog on the front page updates news from Better Block projects and experiments around the country.

It's catching on - Houston, New York, Boston projects are all coming up, according to the news feed - and it represents a real potential for demonstrating citizen-sourced redevelopment plans for our cities. Place matters, and these guys are helping to show the way.

Moderate-progressive think tank “Third Way” has an interesting proposal:  provide taxpayers with an itemized receipt for the taxes they pay.  Here is an example, based on the breakdown for the “median income” taxpayer in the US (earning $34,140 per year):

The authors note that the Social Security Administration already produces something like this for individual taxpayers each year – so it is both feasible, and readily attainable.  This strikes me as good, transparent public policy.  Pushing aside the partisan rhetoric that would inevitably accompany this kind of “full disclosure,” (imagine the wrangling over what makes the list, and the wording!) it brings perspective to our national spending priorities. 

The authors point out the pervasive and persistent belief that the US spends excessively on foreign aid – more than Social Security or Medicare, when in fact it appears in 11^th place on the example receipt.  Interestingly, in their example it also appears directly above “Education Funding for Low Income K-12 Students.”  It isn’t a stretch to see how this kind of information could lead to better discussions about how we spend our money, and the relative importance we’ve placed on one set of programs and services versus another.

The idea brief is here.

One additional thought:  I would love to see this implemented at a state level as well.

I’m a proud TCU alum and avid Horned Frogs fan - I even used to work in City Hall for the City of Ft. Worth.  While I spent a lot of time boosting Ft. Worth (and, I’ll admit, occasionally disparaging Dallas), good things can and do happen there, too.  

For Example: an innovative and inspiring project (movement?) taking place on the other end of the Metroplex in a neighborhood called Oak Cliff – specifically, North Oak Cliff.   A few years ago, Oak Cliff was consistently mentioned in a list of places to avoid in Dallas.  You drove through – if absolutely necessary – but didn’t stop…and really, driving through wasn’t all that advisable, or so we were told.

Oak Cliff is an old neighborhood just south of downtown Dallas.  Full of  pre-WWII and mid-century homes, its location is also quite convenient to…well…all sorts of things, but perhaps most significantly the central business district.  With relatively low housing costs, and short commute times, close-in neighborhoods all over the country have experienced renaissances at various times, usually driven by young professionals and older hipsters looking for a urban feel in someplace besides New York.  Oak Cliff, too, is in the midst of its own renaissance – bootstrapped by some dedicated relative new-comers and some long-time residents who are carving out a name for their community based on tenacity, energy, and creativity.

You just have to check out the “Better Block Project” for yourselves.  The first project created a pop-up demonstration of what is possible: street-scaping, outdoor cafes, public art…the things that make PLACE matter.  They’re getting national coverage as a result (and deservedly so).  They intend to go again with a second project:  this time, a whole plaza, and the idea continues to draw ever-widening attention.  Dallas is even looking into making some of these improvements permanent.

Here’s the “After” and “Before” of the first Better Block Project demonstration on 7^th Street in Oak Cliff:

Image from CooltownStudios blog:  http://www.cooltownstudios.com/2010/04/27/crowdsourced-street-to-become-permanent

The project’s founders are central to Go Oak Cliff – a local community development not-for-profit, where they have included a page on How to Build a Better Block – taking the framework that made the first project a success and breaking it down into a brief “how-to” for the rest of us.

This is Economic and Community development 101:  involving the community in finding new ideas (in this case, a return to some old ideas!) about how to make a place vibrant and attractive again…thinking differently about the assets and resources available, and getting something done instead of waiting on “them” to come around and fix the problems.  It is art, culture, community development, urban planning, business development, and FUN rolled into one. And – proof positive – it works.  Vacant properties were used to become art galleries in the demonstration project with the blessings of their current owners.  Afterwards, “…immediately following our original better block, these vacant spaces were leased.”

Well done, Oak Cliffers.  Well done.

Industry Week has a blurb about a new partnership between Ford and TechShop.

TechShop is a membership-based workshop (originally in the San Francisco area) which provides access to specialized (read: Highly expensive) tools to inventors and do-it-yourself-ers like CNC machines, lathes, and precision plasma cutters.  TechShop is opening a facility in the Detroit area focused on automotive industry innovation.  The Big Blue Oval is signing on as a sponsor of a new location in Michigan– with the obvious benefit that it will have access (and cache) with inventors pushing the “bleeding edge” of development.  Ford has shown a recent ability to adapt and innovate, and this partnership seems to follow the storyline that the company is open to new ideas, and to taking input from external sources.

While TechShop is itself an interesting example of a business finding an un-filled niche, this is also a really interesting use of “crowdsourcing,” and holds great potential for growing local businesses in an area suffering from near-catastrophic decline.