*[Tulsa] Guy comments that he never takes the bus because he isn't poor. I tell him his attitude is emblematic of a third-rate city and needs rethinking.
--From the
Bulleted Summary of the KC Siege.
And, nearly a year later, CNN carries a
story on how Tulsa and Oklahoma City were rated second-to-last and last in a survey by NGO Common Current of "
Major U.S. City Preparedness for an Oil Crisis."
And now the researchers and the transit authority and the citizens are shocked that "urban professionals" are entering mass transit vehicles of their own free will. I wonder if buses in Oklahoma even have air conditioning yet.
In the article, OK City Manager Jim Couch points out that his hometown has 627 square miles. That's more than twice the land mass of New York City. Wikipedia puts the population of OKC at 1.2 million (bigger than I thought) and NYC at 8.2 million. What's wrong with this picture?
Unless we develop better ways to power these overprivileged sprawl cities, they're going to become the ghost towns of the 21st century. One plus may be that their low population densities will help them be reclaimed by nature, while the New Yorks and San Franciscos of the country continue to thrive.
These cities can't say they didn't see it coming, and they did nothing to equip themselves for the reality they were doomed to face.
Labels: transit, transportation, urban planning, urban studies
