Will OKC Be Innovative With Its Downtown Streets?
Let’s define innovative first. It’s not easy, especially when it comes to discussing street lights, furniture and traffic poles. But Aubrey Hammontree, the city’s urban planner, gave what might be a good starting line when it comes to street lights.
New York City - street light of the future?
It looks cool – and it’s far removed from any street lights seen today. Because this prototype being introduced in New York City uses LED lights, it’s far more energy efficient. And yet it’s contemporary design isn’t jarring – and it has been said the wire connections up top are reminicient of early day gas lights.
Here’s the background story from the Aug. 10, 2009 issue of Architect Magazine:
The prototype is the result of the second of two competitions held by New York City. The streetlight’s form emerged in the first competition, won by a team that included OVI and Sobek, and was led by New York–based architect Thomas Phifer and Partners. For the second competition, to develop a prototype, OVI and Sobek were the only entrants. Phifer is contracted separately to oversee aesthetic changes during the prototyping phase. Despite this slightly tangled project history, the jury focused its praise on the harmony between design and engineering: “The form seemed purposeful,” John Ronan said, “a nice integration of form and technology.”
The arced luminaire housing stands in sharp contrast to the squat, bulbous forms of standard high-pressure sodium streetlights. The pole can be locked into place with bolts already embedded in the sidewalks for existing streetlights, and its fluted profile allows signs to be slid into metal guides and locked into place at any orientation on the surface. “That’s going to clean up the cityscape right there,” Craig Hodgetts said. The testing and engineering is done, and the project is just waiting for the green light from the city.
No such competition is being held in Oklahoma City. And yet the opportunity for Oklahoma City to transform its downtown streets, all at once, is almost unmatched anywhere – including New York City where so much innovation has taken place.
I’m in a delicate position – I’ve been given generous access to a process underway to implement the wishes of Devon Energy to improve all of downtown through its $115 million tax increment financing district. And yet these wishes come with a radically short timeframe to get it all done. Smart good people are tasked with making decisions that will shape downtown development for decades.
Over the next week I’ll be delving into conditions that exist today, how the streets can guide development, how streetscapes have been pursued downtown this past decade and what’s being contemplated. And then, as respectfully and politely as I can, I will ask, are we rushing into mediocrity despite the best of intentions? Are the right people at the table? And can Oklahoma City match NYC’s Phifer competition?
“Think of this as the perfect simple black dress – one that must go with all the various accessories found in the outlying districts like Bricktown, MidTown, Automobile Alley and Film Row. That’s what we’re shopping for. Something that is classy, elegant and timeless.”
- One of several very talented local design experts I’ve spoken to this past week.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
That is excellent. Modern look. Forward-thinking, low energy consumption – I hope we can continue to make good decisions that keeps OKC on these BusinessWeek-type lists of greatest (enter subject here) metros.
Maybe Dave, but the light above, so far, isn’t even in the running for what might be picked for downtown OKC.
LED would be the way to go, but I’m sure they would have some concern about higher up front expense.
I agree with Michael, however I do not like the NYC street lamps. Looks to me like something we’d want to get rid of in 10 years.
I agree with the need to find a simple black dress, but to me those streetlamps don’t represent a simple black dress. They represent a simple wife beater.
I love the idea of having a design competition, just two caveats about that. The first is that it may have not been considered due to timeline constrains, which sort of define this project unfortunately. The second is that OKC has a history of having design competitions and then ignoring the results. Case in point: Metro’s bus stops.
This process doesn’t need to be difficult. Just follow Jeff Speck’s guidelines. He even provided us with potential designs. What else did we pay him $50k-ish for?
If you look at the NYC urban design manual (available for free download from NYC DOT), it recommends many different styles of street lighting ranging from modern and slick to historic and traditional. I’m not sure we need exact uniformity here. NYC has all types.
Steve, so Hammontree has no input into this? You were just posting a picture of what he thought we should use? I like the design you posted– simple, elegant, energy efficient.
Aubrey (a she) Hammontree is one vote on a committee, and it appears as if the NYC design may be too expensive for what they’re considering.
I am sure whatever OKC decides to use “as their guidelines” it will without doubt be a copycat from some other city, but “will be the best like no other city”. It’s a fact that it will be this way….it always is.
…why search in the first place? Doesn’t OG&E have a finger in this pie too? (And we KNOW they have a huge sensitivity toward design…)
Do you hear what we’re saying?
“Let’s copy some other city’s design, but make it cheaper!!”
My apologies to Aubrey.
Steve, what is the committee doing to select a design? Are they looking at designs of other cities? Asking anyone to come up with something new? Asking those like you to help? Are they required to use an existing design that can be manufactured quickly, or can they select an entirely new design?
I realize Devon wants to get this project done by the time their new tower opens, but what is the huge rush here?
This is a massive undertaking and I’d rather see them take their time and get it right — or as close to right as possible.
I have a bad feeling about this. Steve, can you be more vocal in the paper about this topic? FAR more readers than your blog, no offense. I and most of us would LOVEEEEEEE to see some public input on this before decisions are made, if they haven’t already been.
Steve, I think one problem is that nobody knows what the hell is going on. No offense, but the most we’ve gotten out of you has been a few comments about \oh, big change is coming to downtown.\ That’s it. So we can’t exactly be vocal about what changes we’d like to see when the media isn’t letting us know anything about what is supposed to happen, or when.
I mean, seriously, what are they planning on doing? When are they planning on starting? How much do they have to spend? What area will it encompass? We haven’t had any straight answers from anyone, including the people whose job it is to find out.
Are they going to redo the sidewalks? How? New cement? Paint it different colors? Remake them all in brick? Put in neon glowing lamps in the ground? I’m seriously got no idea. Are they doing new stop signs? Signs that have street names on them? A big thousand foot wide floating antigravity sign with lasers on it that just sort of hangs over the city? \Welcome to Downtown\. And it just laughs ominously in a mechanical voice. That would actually be pretty badass.
Asking us to give constructive input at this point is like asking my mom to tell you what she wants her computer to do. She has no idea what possibilities are available, and she’s got no idea how much it would cost to actualize it. Because if we’re just spitballing here, with no real idea what to go on, I’d like them to get somebody bitten by a radioactive spider, so we can get our own superhero. *That* will make us a \Big League City\. Take that, Seattle. And we need a villain with a secret volcano lair.
Is that the sort of thing we are looking for, or something else?
I apologize for this being longer than the actual post, but you did ask me to “weigh in:”
The design for the new NYC street lights stem from a competition held in 2004 and they are not intended to replace all the streetlights, but to simply provide a more modern design to be installed in areas that are newly developed or areas where it would make sense aesthetically.
I read this article Monday morning, and that evening as I rode the bike home I tried to pay attention to the street lights. One of the defining characteristics of the Manhattan street at night is the soft, warm yellow glow that mixes with the people and the light spilling from bodegas and clothing stores. The generalized experience of the street lamp is more about the quality of light – the rest of the street lamp blends in and disappears.
In New York City, we have roughly 330,000 streetlights and about a dozen different designs. Right by my office I can count three: Twin acorn-shaped bulbs hang from a Y-shaped green mast near Madison Square Park. On 6th Ave, ornate “Shepherd’s Crook” lamps stand in line with standard city issue “Cobra Heads” that crane their necks and stoplights over the roadways below. Every once in a while, you notice the more decorative lights, but in general, the lights are strangely invisible.
So to paraphrase the quote in Steve’s article, it sounds like the city asking for a little black dress to help us blend in with the rest of the party, rather than the DVF version of the little black dress that lets others know you are the party.
“Classy, elegant and timeless.” Those three words are Pandora’s box in terms of the design of a street lamp. And something I’ll skip right now.
The more important issue is implementation. I personally believe that the lamps should ‘elegantly’ disappear into the urban fabric and not become an aesthetic signifier of where you are (leave that to the architecture and street life.) With that being said, the implementation of the lamps is more important than the lamps themselves. I seem to recall images of streetlamps in the middle of midtown sidewalks…that’s bad. Pulling off a cheap knockoff of Thomas Kincaid-esque street lamp under 20’ high would be bad. Trying to make the streetlamp overtly “designed” would also be bad. I don’t think the city is off base when they are asking for a “Little Black Dress,” I would just put more emphasis on the elegant and drop the connotations most people associate with classy and timeless.
The radically short time frame? Remember that the NYC streetlamps quoted as an example started their process with a competition in 2004. It took at least a year before that for the idea of modern street lamps and the City to organize the competition. It’s the fall of 2009 and the street lamps are still waiting for the green light.
Are we rushing into this? Either people have been sitting on their hands while other issues have been dealt with, or, this is indeed just coming up to the surface as an item that needs to be addressed. I don’t know enough about the requirements the city is looking for or even why there might be a “radically short timeframe,” so I won’t try to comment on any of that. But, if I understand the TIF deal correctly, it was set up +- a year ago. Using the above example, I think anyone can do the math that if we are going to design a new streetlight for a 21st century downtown OKC, we are going to need an appropriate amount of time and we’re already a year into knowing we need improved streetlights. Can Oklahoma City match what NYC produced? Yes, there is plenty of amazing talent and this shouldn’t be a question. If it is, there are bigger issues at stake regarding talent retention, a creative knowledge base, etc.
But, there is one thing that keeps pulling at me. The job of the street lamp is to illuminate the activity on the sidewalks and roadways below. The streetlamps are very important, but I believe the bigger question is the one Steve posed at the very start:
Will OKC be innovative with its downtown streets?
When I read that question, it has more to do with what is being illuminated on and in the streets than what is happening above it.
You’ve probably missed a couple of the articles I’ve written Brian. I’ll post them here shortly. Also, I’ve given as much as I had – that’s changing with my upcoming posts. I’m just now getting the sort of information we all want and need.
Check out the latest LED exterior solution form the Vishay Intertechnology designers in Germany. I’ve been to the OKC downtown district. This ruggedized/industrialized look is timeless and would be ideal for the district. The manufacture assures us that a pilot program is available and invites all the OKC residents, city planners and developers to evaluate the technology and decide for themselves whose got the better “mouse trap” for the next 20 years+.
Sorry, Steve, that came across a little bit snippier than I intended. I’ve tried to keep up on this subject, because I work downtown and I’m very curious as far as what they’ll be doing. And I’ve seen some of your articles, but there still don’t seem to be definite answers on, well, anything.
I’ve seen plans for the Myriad Gardens, but no one knows how firm those are. I’ve seen artists conceptions for various changes downtown, but it just looked like weird colored sidewalks. I know they’re supposed to make the roads not one way anymore.
But a lot of that, I just sort of shrug my shoulders. Perhaps I lack vision, perhaps I’m difficult to impress, but I think more likely I’m just having difficulty seeing the big picture. I’m just not visualizing it.
No apology needed Bryan. You had a valid point and a valid frustration. You’re bringing up good questions – ones I hope will be answered by the end of the week.
[...] following is in response to an article I read Monday morning on the OKC Central website. That evening as I rode the bike home, I tried to pay attention to the street lights. One of the [...]
Cities like Ann Arbor Michigan are 100% LED lighting, and others like Raleigh, NC, and Danville, VA are using LED lighting. You’re telling me OKC can’t do some LED lighting in it’s most premier, compact neighborhood with a $120 million dollar gift from a corporate donor? Get real!
LED is definitely the way to go.
Austin, Texas starting implementing LED streetlights in 2008 and projected a savings of $500,000 a year, not including reduced maintenance and labor cost.
They had also replaced thousands of traffic and pedestrian signals with LEDs back in 2003. The city estimates it saved taxpayers $1.4 million per year, not including maintenance and labor savings.
I’ll also throw out that the main complaint against the LED lamps that Ann Arbor uses has been that they light up the sky too much.
I don’t like them. Its just interesting to actually see Downtown Oklahoma City do something about its street lamps. But it would be a waste of money since in Bricktown they’ve just added new street lamps to make it look nice, this would make it look so ugly.
Here’s a suggestion for Oklahoma City when and if it builds a light rail system for downtown. Make sure it circles over to the OU Health Science Center campus, which would strengthen the connecttion between the campus and downtown. I was in Houston a couple years ago visiting the MD Anderson health center, and my traveling party took the light rail line that ran through that campus to a downtown restaurant and back. Same thing can happen here.