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Iowa has bad weather in all four seasons. We have less tornadoes than Oklahoma, but still have a lot of them. We have less heat in the summer, but it's still hot as hell. We have nastier winters too.
I would give Des Moines the nod, because I think it has better architecture, more neighborhood feel, a generally more progressive outlook, and has a similar level of economic boom, but Iowa weather is really tough.
Arguing the merits of weather among cities in the Plains area is kind of a moot point. They're all going to have intense 4 season climates with pretty much every kind of weather related phenomena possible. OKC has tougher summers, Des Moines has tougher winters, but neither city has a pleasant climate.
Also, OKC is a bit bigger. Tulsa is a better comparison for Des Moines if you're doing cities in Oklahoma. Honestly, Tulsa and Des Moines are extremely similar.
Does Des Moines get a significant amount of triple-digit temperature days in the summer? 100*F+ days in OKC when you factor in the humidity is not fun. In the winter, do you get ice storms or mostly snow? The worst aspect of OKC winters is the fact that precipitation usually comes in the form of freezing rain which can do a lot of damage. In regards to tornadoes, you don't hear about Des Moines getting pummeled by large EF4 or EF5 tornadoes every few years like OKC gets. However, Des Moines is still in tornado alley I believe. What about drought? Oklahoma City has had it good the past five years or so but going up to 60-90 rain-free during the summer isn't that unusual. When this happens, pretty much all of the plants go into dormancy by the end of August/early September. I remember one summer where the trees had turned brown and lost their leaves by Labor Day. Temperatures were around 110 for the first third of the month of September. It wasn't until the last week of the month that the rains finally came.
I agree with you that the plains in general has some of the harshest climates in the country, but I would rank the Southern Plains as having the worst.
I've been to both cities and I preferred OKC. OKC has pretty terrain, particularly on the north side with green rolling hills. OKC has numerous charming little restaurant districts and some pretty neighborhoods. OKC has Nichols Hills which was prettier on the whole I thought than the upscale parts of Des Moines.
Downtown OKC and Downtown Des Moines might be pretty close actually but I found downtown OKC to be more interesting. Des Moines is nice but it's mostly big buildings and parking garages. They have attempted to create a street scene in a couple of spots but it wasn't anything great. My favorite part of Des Moines s was Ingersoll Avenue, which was being renovated to be more pedestrian-friendly when I was there. I had spent hours searching the city for a neighborhood district that was charming, where restaurants and shops were clustered together, and finally found it at Ingersoll Ave.
Downtown OKC has some neat areas with lots of shiny, new aparmtment buildings have been built as well as cool little cultural districts.
One characteristic of Des Moines that might be better is that they didn't seem to have huge commercial strip highways quite as much as OKC. But on the whole I loved that OKC had lots of charming nooks and crannies and some extremely nice areas such as Nichols Hills and Edmond that were genuinely pretty and places I wouldn't mind living.
I looked up the Stage Center- it looks ridiculous. Not a significant architectural loss at all.
I'm not reflexively anti-Brutalist — I'm one of probably five people on Earth who actually likes New Boston City Hall — but that building is flat-out strange. The phrase that popped into my mind when I saw the photo of it was "Rube Goldberg." It's certainly far from welcoming. Johanssen would have done well to talk with actual OKC residents before foisting this building off on them or the theater company that was to occupy it.
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Originally Posted by Foamposite
It seems like there are a lot of LGBT options too, likely due to the counterculture that you mention.
And now that you mention it, I think OKC has long outdone Des Moines in this department. I rember that in the 1980s, it had an LGBT newspaper, wryly named The Gayly Oklahoman. (One thing OKC and Des Moines share is local daily newspapers with strong identities and family ownership that both got Gannettized. The Des Moines Register, owned by the Cowleses (Look magazine for those old enough to remember it) was "The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon."
Perhaps the reason for comparing OKC and not Tulsa with Des Moines is that both cities are their respective states' capitals and largest cities. I'm not sure which Iowa city I'd class as #2; Sioux City, Davenport, and Cedar Rapids all seem to fall into the same bucket, though I think Sioux City is the largest of the three. Council Bluffs is an adjunct to Omaha across the Missouri.
I was actually impressed by OKC when I went. Really neat collection of neighborhoods. Very nice downtown with different things to do. The central city is more progressive than I expected.
I'm not reflexively anti-Brutalist — I'm one of probably five people on Earth who actually likes New Boston City Hall — but that building is flat-out strange. The phrase that popped into my mind when I saw the photo of it was "Rube Goldberg." It's certainly far from welcoming. Johanssen would have done well to talk with actual OKC residents before foisting this building off on them or the theater company that was to occupy it.
And now that you mention it, I think OKC has long outdone Des Moines in this department. I rember that in the 1980s, it had an LGBT newspaper, wryly named The Gayly Oklahoman. (One thing OKC and Des Moines share is local daily newspapers with strong identities and family ownership that both got Gannettized. The Des Moines Register, owned by the Cowleses (Look magazine for those old enough to remember it) was "The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon."
Perhaps the reason for comparing OKC and not Tulsa with Des Moines is that both cities are their respective states' capitals and largest cities. I'm not sure which Iowa city I'd class as #2; Sioux City, Davenport, and Cedar Rapids all seem to fall into the same bucket, though I think Sioux City is the largest of the three. Council Bluffs is an adjunct to Omaha across the Missouri.
Cedar Rapids and Iowa City have effectively morphed into one metro that's clearly Iowa's #2.
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