This is a great read.. I think KC shares quite a few similarities with OKC..

http://www.newgeography.com/content/00706-kansas-city-and-great-plains-a-zone-sanity?ref=patrick.net (http://www.newgeography.com/content/00706-kansas-city-and-great-plains-a-zone-sanity?ref=patrick.net)

my fav part of the article.

Even worse, city and regional issues seem to result in plenty of money for new expressions of wannabe grandiosity. One notable example: plans to build a $700 million-plus light-rail line, the kind of thing that has become the sine qua non for the "monkey see, monkey do" school of urban policymakers across the country.

This project makes little sense in a region with a well-below-average percentage of jobs in its downtown core - roughly around 7% – with one of the lowest shares of transit-riding residents in the nation. The relative lack of traffic makes a rail system less sensible than could be argued for higher-density urban corridors, where it at least can be imagined that many would give up their cars.

"There's a real kind of self-loathing here," notes Mary Cyr, a Harvard-trained architect (http://www.cyrarchitects.com/), who works on projects throughout the region. "We feel less than what we are. We do not know what we are as a city. We don't even realize what we have.”Wow, it's like the guy is reading my mind. Great find!

I agree. Excellent article. The self loathing is a shame and the writer nailed it. Great way to see, in graphic form, how this part of the country compares with the coasts on very significant areas. The middle part of the country is the steady, nonflashy brother of the highschool football star.

I agree with that quote as well, too many in Oklahoma and the OKC metro don't realize what we do have and how much our city has really turned around. Many don't realize that we MUST keep constantly improving just to keep up, let alone ever get ahead.