GOING GREEN
Green side of Oklahoma City revival catches notice
Another anniversary hits this December when a quarter century will have passed since Oklahoma City decisively changed its course with the passage of the original Metropolitan Area Projects.
But even before that vote, residents and civic leaders were showing an interest in changing the image of what had long been seen as a dry, boring cow town.
The Myriad Gardens, when it opened in 1988, was a small lake, a scattering of young trees and, of course, the ambitious Crystal Bridge Botanical Tube. Residents then voted a permanent sales tax for the Oklahoma City Zoo, which included an ongoing investment in its own gardens.
MAPS added the Bricktown Canal, extensively landscaped with trees planted a story below where a street once stood. Landscaping was a factor with most of the original MAPS projects, and was again a consideration with MAPS for Kids and MAPS 3. The Project 180 makeover of downtown streets and public spaces, meanwhile, added hundreds of trees throughout
downtown. Meanwhile, over at the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority, board member Jim Tolbert has spent the past dozen years or more challenging developers to put more thinking into the landscaping and trees they plan as part of their projects.
Are trees important to Oklahoma City? Just consider the power, glory and grace of the Survivor Tree and trees planted to remember each victim of the 1995 bombing. Yeah, we care about trees.
In this new millennium, Oklahoma City has seen an increasing flow of visitors and delegations of civic leaders touring and asking about the ongoing rebirth where the city council declared its downtown dead in 1988.
But not until last fall did anyone travel to Oklahoma City to learn about its efforts to incorporate landscaping in its design, development and planning. Could they have gotten lost on their way to Tulsa? Or even Edmond? No.
Credit the Kirkpatrick Foundation for hosting the first National Urban Ecosystems Forum, which brought nationally recognized experts in ecology, landscape architecture, development and planning. They toured destinations like the Myriad Gardens that were deemed to be catalytic development sites. They learned how the city is using stormwater management to link green open spaces and pathways across the city while also encouraging recreation and migration routes for animals.
They saw projects that restored habitats throughout downtown (how many folks know about the wetlands created along the Oklahoma River as part of the original MAPS?). They learned about a citywide trails system linking together parks, streams, rivers and lakes.
And it all connects to ongoing ecosystem construction in the heart of the city, where construction is underway on the 70-acre Scissortail Park.
The visit and study were overseen by Elizabeth Okeke-Von Batten, former director of the American Architectural Foundation Center for Design and the City. Batten noted the focus on buildings, but added a lot of cities struggle to find a way to finance the sort of ecosystem transformation underway in Oklahoma City.
“First and foremost, we felt Oklahoma City was a leader in the area of public-private collaboration, the finance model to fund these projects, not just in developing downtown but also the greening of downtown,” Batten said. “That was the reason we brought the forum to Oklahoma City.”
Oklahoma City still has a way to go in improving its ecosystem. But Batten said the attendees, from Seattle to New York, all walked away with a better understanding of the transformation of Oklahoma City — that it is not simply concrete, bricks and steel.
A lot of nature went into that mix as well. And people are starting to notice.