Cities: April 2016 Archives

Reclaiming "Redneck" Urbanism: What Urban Planners Can Learn From Trailer Parks

"Trailer parks remain one of the last forms of housing in US cities provided by the market explicitly for low-income residents. Better still, they offer a working example of traditional urban design elements and private governance. Any discussion of trailer parks should start with the fact that most forms of low-income housing have been criminalized in nearly every major US city. "

The Storefront Index | City Observatory

"In an effort to begin to quantify this key aspect of neighborhood vitality, we've developed a new statistical indicator--the Storefront Index (click to see the full report)--that measures the number and concentration of customer-facing businesses in the nation's large metropolitan areas. We've computed the Storefront Index by mapping the locations of hundreds of thousands of everyday businesses: grocery and hardware stores, beauty salons, bookstores, bars and restaurants, movie theatres and entertainment venues, and then identifying significant clusters of these businesses--places where each storefront business is no more than 100 meters from the next storefront.

"The result is a series of maps, available for the nation's 51 largest metropolitan areas, that show the location, size, and intensity of neighborhood business clusters down to the street level."

Tulsa's not included, but metro Oklahoma City (including Edmond, Norman, etc.) is. The storefronts captured are not necessarily pedestrian-oriented. In fact, most in metro OKC are in post-war, auto-oriented shopping centers.