Oklahoma City’s Strong Neighborhood Initiative: Beautifying Communities for Quality of Life
OKLAHOMA CITY—Oklahoma City’s Strong Neighborhood Initiative is a program that is changing the face of the city for the better. It is often focused on the topic of affordable housing and neighborhood rejuvenation, but it also recognizes the importance of community aesthetics, beauty, and public art, making sure that the neighborhoods reflect their community’s cultural identity and vibrant aesthetics. The program aims to make sure that people want to live in these neighborhoods by putting serious effort, including landscaping, streetscaping, beautification, and public art. This article will take a closer look at the Strong Neighborhood Initiative and how it is beautifying neighborhoods to increase the quality of life.
The Strong Neighborhood Initiative is an established program created by the city of Oklahoma City that aims to revitalize underserved neighborhoods through community development, beautification, and strategic public investments. The program’s main goal is to build strong neighborhoods by empowering communities to take charge and shape their quality of life around them through strategies of community engagement.
So much of the conversation around affordable housing and neighborhood rejuvenation in Oklahoma City seems focused solely on the pragmatics and statistics of the issue. However, just building a house or restoring the structures of a neighborhood aren’t likely to be enough. You have to make sure that people want to live there. And that means putting some serious effort into landscaping, streetscaping, beautification, and public art.
According to Shannon Entz, Program Planner for Neighborhood and Commercial District Revitalization with the City of OKC Planning Department, “All of those things contribute to our quality of life.” Entz thinks about beautification and outdoor, public rejuvenation projects on a daily basis. She believes that increasing the tree coverage and neighborhood landscaping is not only good for aesthetics but also important for practical benefits. For example, urban trees are extremely important to cities, especially if they can help cool off some of the pavement and provide a home for wildlife.
As one of the leading figures behind The City of OKC’s Strong Neighborhood Initiative, Entz believes that beautification is not only essential but also critical to the revitalization of underserved neighborhoods. “Who doesn’t want to live on a tree-lined street?” she asked. “Or who doesn’t want to live somewhere where they could walk anywhere to go to the pharmacy or the doctor or to work or to school?”
One of the most immediate and noticeable ways that the city’s SNI projects are changing the face of the revitalized neighborhoods is by adding much more greenery and tree life. “When anyone builds any home as part of an SNI project, the landscape ordinance requires they plant a tree in the front yard,” Entz said. “But that’s just for infill housing. We also do tree plantings that anyone in the neighborhood can apply for.”
Apart from streetscape and landscape projects, the SNI program is also focused on developing public artworks and artistic spaces in their neighborhoods. “Public art is a big part of our program,” Entz said. “Just like trees and streetscapes, public art is something that everyone can experience and that can be a real catalyst for economic development and even for quality of life as well.”
The many public artworks that SNI has supported are among Entz’s favorite projects from the program. She is particularly excited about one that is just recently taking shape. “In Capitol View, they want their neighborhood to be a monarch butterfly sanctuary,” she explained, “so every time they’ve applied for public art, it always has a butterfly theme to it. They have a small community space with three really tall, beautiful butterfly statues, and at McNabb Park, about ten large butterfly statues there as well.”
In addition to landscaping and public artworks, those projects are also focused on shared spaces like parks and plazas, creating places where people can gather and enjoy the neighborhood together. One of the most buzzed-about and anticipated SNI projects is the long-awaited Capitol Hill Plaza, designed to function as a large-scale community arts and gathering space.
“It’s a fantastic location for people that have needed it for a long time to celebrate their culture,” Entz said. “We haven’t celebrated our international communities enough, and this is one way that we can do that. So it’s about beautification, and it’s about economic development, but I think most of all, it’s about bringing together the community in a space where they feel safe and loved and like it’s their own. And that is priceless.”
It’s not always about changing the look of a neighborhood, though. Sometimes, enriching a community’s aesthetic is all about staying true to its history. When this happens, the SNI program is all about listening to what the residents themselves want.
“It’s a true collaboration with the neighborhood,” she said. “We start with public engagement meetings where we try to bring the neighborhood together to talk about strategy. And they are just jazzed about it, telling us everything that they need.”
Chief among the aesthetic requests for new homes in nearly every SNI neighborhood in the city is a focus on preserving the character and visual styles that already exist in the community. “The Culbertson East Highland neighborhood, for example, was very vocal that they did not want suburban-style homes built there,” Entz said. “They wanted front porch homes. Nine times out of ten, the neighborhoods want front porch houses. They want homes that look like the homes already on their streets.”
Apart from increasing property value and desirable aesthetics, Entz says that the revitalization projects are aimed at ensuring that existing residents are heard, represented, and reflected in their communities. “These are low-income neighborhoods for the most part, and they have day-to-day needs” she said. “So for them to focus their efforts, and sometimes their money, toward beautification tells you how important that the space they live in is to them, and that they want to live in a place they’re proud of, just as much as anyone else.”
Overall, Oklahoma City’s Strong Neighborhood Initiative is a significant and commendable program by the city to provide aid and promote revitalization, beauty, and public art in the underserved communities. It shows the city’s commitment to create well-rounded neighborhoods that residents can be proud of, to continue to build strong communities, and promote economic development.
