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The Savannah Plan and the history of urban form
Lecture 24 from Doug Allen's History of Urban Form course describes Savannah's unique plan of wards, squares, blocks, and lots, originally developed for a small British outpost not far from Spanish territory, but replicated to enlarge the historic city. Allen shows how the dimensions and arrangement of streets and lots...
Tulsa 2024 Olympics effort makes the <em>New York Times</em>
A story about Tulsan Neil Mavis's ambition to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to Tulsa made the front page of the Monday, July 1, 2013, New York Times. Mavis was the Libertarian nominee for the 2nd Congressional District in 2000 and was the only independent candidate in the 2002 1st...
Bill Leighty on historic preservation
Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission chairman Bill Leighty has an excellent op-ed in the latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly about the importance of historical preservation to Tulsa's future. I'm tempted to quote the whole thing. The heart of the article is an account of a recent Preservation Leadership Training...
Kansas is committed to historic preservation
Wichita has a downtown grocery store. I came across it while out for a walk in the eastern part of downtown, near the recently opened Intrust Arena. (Some people go to the Y or the hotel exercise room. I walk through downtowns and historic neighborhoods.) The store would be easy...
My week in jail and a visit to the Aztec Theater for "San Antonio Rose Live"
Because this is a long entry, you'll need to click the "Continue reading" link to see the whole thing. Clicking any of the photos will take you to a bigger version and my full set of San Antonio streetscape photos. If you're interested in hotels, restaurants, historic preservation, and entertainment...
Paul Harvey: Other tributes, glimpses of his Christian faith
A reminiscence from Pastor Ray Pritchard: Legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey died today at the age of 90. Besides virtually creating his own medium that combined reporting with news commentary, he also knew how to tell a story. He gave the tease, paused, told a bit more, paused, let the...
"TU has lost a sense of belonging to Tulsa"
Dan Weber, a senior at the University of Tulsa, has a column in the school's student newspaper, The Collegian, about the impact of TU's campus expansion and its efforts to attract more residential students on its relationship with the city from which it takes its name: [The class of 2009...
The old Tulsa ballpark
An e-mail from Tulsa baseball history expert Wayne McCombs led me to this Digital Ballparks feature on Oiler Park, home of Tulsa minor league baseball from 1934 to 1976. It's a sequence of historic photographs accompanied by text setting out the history and highlights of the park and the players...
Wi-fi while traveling
A collection of links to the free wi-fi establishments I've visited while traveling, to be updated from time to time: Community Bakery, Little Rock, Arkansas Stardust Video and Coffee, Orlando, Florida Austin Coffee and Film, Orlando, Florida Boba Cafe and Deli, City Market, Savannah, Georgia Mosaics on Main, Belleville, Illinois...
Redoubtable Thomas
Of all the lovely presents I received this Christmas, one of my favorites is a gift from my in-laws: The book My Grandfather's Son, the memoirs of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas is one of my favorite Supreme Court justices, not only because of his respect for the Constitution...
Plaza sweet
To go back to an entry from last Tuesday, if Tulsa's Civic Center Plaza is a bad example of a public space -- in fact is one of many examples of failed plazas that can be found across the country, even in major pedestrian-friendly cities like Boston -- what makes...
The Greenwood Gap Theory: The remaking and unmaking of the Black Wall Street of America
This is the originally submitted version of my column in the June 13, 2007, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available at the Internet Archive. The image below accompanied the article. It is from a 1951 aerial photo, labeled to indicate streets and landmarks and to show...
Wanted: A Promenade
This is the originally submitted version of a story that was published on September 27, 2006, in the September 28 - October 4, 2006, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The story is not available in the Internet Archive but was previously online at http://archives.urbantulsa.com/article.asp?id=3657. Posted on BatesLine on March 23,...
Condemning TU
This week's UTW column is about the University of Tulsa's aggressive expansion policies, facilitated by the City of Tulsa's abuse of eminent domain on TU's behalf. Not only is it an immoral use of state coercion, it's a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution and bad urban design. I point to...
Condemning TU: University of Tulsa benefits from city's abuse of eminent domain
An edited version of this piece was published in the August 9, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The edited, published version of the piece is online in the Internet Archive. Posted on the web April 28, 2013. Condemning TU By Michael D. Bates Usually it's the daily paper's editorial...
Hollywood scandal: The nation's newspapers respond
It's fascinating to comb through the raw server logs for my website. awstats does a pretty good job of summarizing who's visiting, where visitors are coming from, and what they're looking at, but the detail in the raw log allows me to put it all together. For example, it allows...
The secret shame
Earlier in the week someone told me that yet another downtown Tulsa building is slated for demolition and replacement with -- you guessed it -- surface parking. What really got to me: There are people interested in trying to buy and save the building, but they don't want their interest...
I hate mini-bars
In my last day or two at FlightSafety, I was going through my old engineering notebooks and remembering some of the projects I worked on. Occasionally some non-engineering thoughts were recorded on the page. During a business trip to Montreal in the summer of 2001 I came up with an...
Sim you later
Today is a major milestone in my professional life. After 19 years in one industry, 12 at the same company, I'm starting in a new business and a new position. I've made it a policy not to talk about my work on my blog, so while I won't be telling...
Blind hatred?
A reader writes, taking exception to the way I've characterized the two recently-formed young professionals groups in Tulsa: You often right [sic] w/ blind hatred about the Chamber, etc. Recently you commented on the "real" young professionals group and the Chamber's yp group. being somewhat familiar w/ these groups, I...
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