Reviews for The next American city : the big promise of our midsize metros
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Four-time Oklahoma City mayor Cornett sees a promising future for America's flyover cities, some of them places that you might not expect.Associated with a notorious bombing and tornadoes, among other noted negatives, Oklahoma City isn't a garden-spot destination of the sort that travel agents tout. But not so fast: Cornett, a former TV news personality, recounts a long and successful campaign to undo some of the unpromising elements of the economically sleepy city. The campaign involved considerable planning built around themes that now seem common-sensical but took some selling to pull off, including the notion that "moving the city from a good place to a great city would depend on our ability to connect." That connection is not merely rhetorical, but instead literal: Vibrant cities are easy to move around in, with sidewalks, bicycle paths, streetcar and light rail lines, pedestrian trails, and other corridors serving transportation by various means. Other ingredients include civic pride-building institutions such as schools, libraries, and sports venues, though he cautions with the last against giving away the farm in order to recruit teams, citing Sacramento's program to build a new stadium with the team paying for "overruns or delays in construction." Of particular interest is Cornett's account of how he persuaded his fellow citizens to lose a collective million pounds in order to remove OKC from the list of America's fattest citiesno easy task given that there were twice as many Taco Bells, by his reckoning, in his city than in the five boroughs of New York. The author won't win any awards for his prose"well, I'm here to tell you that the middle is actually a great place to be"; "there we were, right near the top. OMG"but his achievements are real: OKC has undeniably risen in stature, and other "middle" cities of the heartland have done the same.Valuable lessons for students of urban design and planning as well as local governance. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Four-term mayor of Oklahoma City, Cornett discusses how his hometown and other midsize cities have turned themselves around in recent years, alternating Oklahoma City's renewal with varied approaches taken by other successful metropolises, such as New Orleans; Seattle; Albuquerque, NM; Des Moines; Buffalo; Louisville, KY; Chattanooga; and Charleston, SC. He takes readers from 1990s Oklahoma City, when a tornado following on the heels of an act of domestic terrorism demoralized the town, through a recovery period under his predecessor Ron Norick, when the city lost out to Indianapolis for a United Airlines headquarters. Norick speculates that the key to this revival was enhancing the town's quality of life. He proposed MAPS, "Metropolitan Area Projects," which asked voters to pass a 1¢ sales tax for five years to fund projects such as a dam to create a downtown river, a ballpark, a sports arena, a performing arts center, and new public transit. Voters agreed, and the success of these actions led to future development and infrastructure investment. VERDICT This engaging book shares the author's enthusiasm for the rebirth of midsized cities. It will appeal to planners and residents of such areas.-Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
