Pei on the prairie : urban renewal in Oklahoma City, 1960-1990

Abstract

Downtown Oklahoma City was drastically remade beginning in the 1960s as part of the broader national program of urban renewal. Yet, very little research has explored this transformation, nor has there been a deep exploration of how urban renewal projects were implemented in America's small-and-medium-sized cities. There exists plenty of scholarship on the urban renewal movement in America's largest cities, in particular, New York, Boston, and Chicago... In addition to these broader works on the topic of urban renewal in America (and internationally), this thesis also builds upon historical works focused on Oklahoma City's history... Oklahoma City's urban renewal program of the 1960s and 70s was ultimately a failure - due in part because of its top-down nature, and in part due to the project's dependency on federal funds, which dried up when urban renewal fell out of favor nationally in the mid-1970s. This failure would ultimately open up a path for a more successful redevelopment program by the start of the twenty-first century. Additionally, OKC's urban renewal story mirrors similar themes of renewal work done in larger cities with regards to top-down decision making, and a lack of regard for local residents who would be affected, particularly people of color. This research was conducted as a textual analysis of primary source documents in narrative form... The primary source documents show that Oklahoma City officially established their urban renewal authority in 1961 after several years of advocacy from the city's business community, and that by 1964 specific plans were being presented that would have the city's official approval by 1965. The most talked about plan was for the central business district, with project work being designed by internationally famous architect I.M. Pei, along with plans for a new medical center south of the state capitol, and a housing zone to be redeveloped farther to the east of the capitol and downtown. Work began by 1966, and the Pei Plan itself would see its first projects completed in the early 1970s, though some of the most crucial elements, namely a downtown shopping center and downtown apartment towers, would never be built, leaving the "Pei Plan" incomplete and the central business district full of empty lots that had been bulldozed in preparation for work that would not occur, and leaving that part of the city largely vacant outside of the nine-to-five week-day working hours. Furthermore, the urban renewal work done in the city's historically African American "Eastside" district would help speed up the area's decline, which had already begun due to the end of segregation. The research confirmed the initial thesis that OKC's renewal programs followed similar patterns to what occurred in high-profile cities. Furthermore, it also confirmed that the Pei Plan was at best only half-completed, and that having its core lynchpin project, the downtown shopping center, not built ultimately resulted in the plan being a failure. The poor state of Oklahoma City's downtown by the 1990s would lead the city government to create the MAPS program, which is locally funded and has more citizen input, and has largely been seen as a success. The significance of this research is that it provides a greater understanding of how Oklahoma City ended up being able to create a successful redevelopment plan starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present, by establishing just how the city got to such a poor state in the first place. What's more, we see that what led to that condition was an attempt to renew, not to destroy. This research allows us to compare and contrast the 1960s urban renewal program with the modern MAPS program, the creators of which were able to learn from the mistakes of the earlier endeavor. There are several areas for future research that this thesis has opened up. First, a more detailed exploration of OKC's Eastside neighborhoods, both related to urban renewal, and in a broader narrative sense. In particular, Chapter 4 of the thesis, which focuses on renewal work in the city's Eastside could be expanded to include interviews with those whose homes were either relocated or renovated through federal funds, and how they and their families, friends, and neighbors felt about the renewal projects both at the time and now. Second, the preparation for this work shows that there is no complete historical narrative of Oklahoma City, only different texts exploring vignettes in the city's larger story... Thirdly, most literature on urban renewal in the United States is focused on the nation's largest cities, primarily those in the eastern half of the country. To have a complete picture of how urban renewal affected America, research needs to be conducted on what this movement did in small and mid-sized cities similar to OKC, and compare what happened there with what happened in the nation's larger cities.