OKC really a C? (Oklahoma City, Tulsa: hotel, taxis, living)

[Nameless]

Yes, I was talking about the Hornets. And that's all for another discussion wether we get the Hornets, Sonics or whoever. But I believe we will very soon.

[mrsadams03]

Hello I am moving to OKC in just a bit but I was wondering now that I have been talking to people about moving down there I am being told there is outragous amounts of crime there. I am hoping this is not true. The house we found is in spencer can anyone tell me about this area and the crime? Thank you so much.

[peggydavis]

Spencer is a poorer, more rural area in the NE area of the metro area. As in any poor area, you will have more crime but I have driven through Spencer at all hours and never felt unsafe. Plus the school system there is not good. In the same NE area, Jones and Harrah have better schools.

[mrsadams03]

any areas I should stay away from in OKC?

[bchris02]

Oklahoma City is a medium sized market. I used to live there and thought it was lame compared to other cities like Dallas or Houston. Now I live outside of the godforsaken town of Fort Smith, Arkansas (population about 80,000) and now I see OKC in an entirely different light. A city is a place with a very wide array of shopping choices ranging from wal-mart to high fashion shopping, good restaurants and cuisines of every kind, nightlife/clubs/bars, family recreation, modern conveniences, and traffic, all which OKC has.

Question for those who don't consider it a city. What does OKC not have, besides pro sports, that a real city would have?

[RockyMtnr]

OKC does have "The Yard Dogs" - arena football - but that's probably not pro enough, eh? What OKC doesn't have that bigger cities do is ... more of what they do have. Urban sprawl now reaches past Norman. OKC actually has two downtowns - just like Houston. If Salt Lake is a city then I suppose OKC is a real city as well.

[RobertC]

I'd consider OKC a proper city by two benchmarks: First, despite the fact that it's only slightly over 1M people (a common criteria for "city"), it has hundreds of times more people than you could ever get to know by name. You could go your whole life there meeting 15 new friends a day, and still not know half the city by the time you die. On that note, I would consider OKC to be a midsize city. Of course, I have a different scale than most people use. I rank them Village < Town < City < Metropolis, with metropolises often being called cities due to the less bulky nature of the word.

The second metric I use is the fact that despite never having been there, I can see on my map a number of facilities that could be used to qualify OKC as a major city, including Ph.D.-level universities, full-scale hospitals, major retail establishments, several industrial sectors (as opposed to being a simple "company town"), a financial district, airports of every size, a rail hub, a dedicated mass transit system, and a large number of restaurants and lodging establishments. Simply put, there are very few things that you have to "drive into the city" to get, except for a limited range of items that you might have to drive into DFW to pick up.

I just noticed that the last part more-or-less duplicated bchris02's post above this, but I'll leave it in just to solidify the point of OKC being a midsize city, whereas something the size of say, Wichita might be called a small city, and places with less than 100,000 being considered a large town.

[nhzero]

Originally Posted by mrsadams03

any areas I should stay away from in OKC?

It depends on where you are from and what you are looking for. If you are looking for affordability with easy access to cultural centers, I would recommend living in SW OKC, preferably south of I-240, maybe even Moore. I would stay away from NE OKC until you get well away from downtown, plus, NE OKC has no easy access to Interstates, so it's harder to get around. Midwest City is spotty, some places are great, some are not so great. Del City has been going downhill for years, but still has some standout amenities, Mid-Del Christian School being one, and their school district is vastly better than OKC district. Stay away from OKC schools as if your life depended on it, because your kids life truly does depend on it. Even some of the outlying areas have miserable schools, Western Heights is a great example of what happens when Mr. Joe Kitchens falls asleep on the watch. It went from great to awful in about 4 years. South of Tinker on Sooner still has some great additions that are reasonably priced, and are in the Mid-Del district. You need to watch out about school districts, because they don't follow city lines at all. If you have any other questions, my wife is a lifelong resident of OKC, and I graduated from University of Oklahoma in Norman, and lived next to Will Rogers Airport for 5 years, so feel free to ask me questions at nhzero at yahoo.com.

[Check123]

A dedicated mass transit system? Financial District? You pulling my leg?

[nhzero]

Originally Posted by Check123

A dedicated mass transit system? Financial District? You pulling my leg?

While I would agree that there isn't that much of a "Financial District", there are a number of companies that are either based in OKC or are historically sited there. Chase Tower is a major landmark in the city, and there are a host of other nationally recognized companies that are based there, like Cox Enterprises of Cox Cable infamy, Love's Travel Stops, Braum's, ex-SBC, and Sonic, not to mention major arms of Dell, Southwest Airlines, and others.

The dedicated mass transit system is a joke only because of the extreme sprawl of the city, which can be attributed to the propensity of OKC's city government to annex everything it can get its hands on. Orlando and Atlanta are definitely cities, yet both of their bus system leave much to be desired.