from bldgblog -- interesting ideas if they can pull it off. what do yous think of stuff like this?

 

 

[image: Floating homes].

 

The reliably excellent Brand Avenue reported last month that "business leaders" in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "are proposing a massive change to that city's riverfront: a series of new islands covered with public parks and plazas, residential high-rises, and retail arcades, all made possible by the construction of a massive new dam just upstream."

The project, built upon the alluvial bends of the Arkansas River, will cost nearly $800 million.

 

Image: Aerial view of the Channels].

 

Referred to as the Tulsa Channels, the scheme is meant "to propel the Tulsa region past its competitors," stunning them all with unapologetic geotechnical ambition. For instance, the whole thing "begins with an impounding dam at the 23rd street bridge." This, in turn, "creates a 12.3-mile lake north to Sand Springs."

At that point:

A 40-acre, man-made island located between the 11th and 23rd street bridges, itself connected by two bridges to the east bank, rises up from the water and anchors the project. The man-made land mass features low- and high-rise residences to the north and south, separated by navigable canals from the public zone.

The whole thing may even help underwrite its own construction costs through the future sale of electricity. Indeed: "Plans call for the project to generate excess energy from hydro, solar and wind power that can be sold back to the power grid for profit."

It's not just a suburb, it's a machine.

 

 

[image: The Tulsa Channels. Two views of a very Manhattan-like model].

 

Designed by Vancouver-based architects Bing Thom, the Tulsa Channels takes its place alongside another of that firm's more hydrologically inclined landscape projects: the Trinity River Vision. This is "a master plan for the Trinity River and major tributaries" in Fort Worth, Texas.

 

[image: The Trinity River Vision by Bing Thom. The project "will enable up to 10,000 new homes to be constructed in the area (...) once flood protection is in place and levees are removed to open up the land" – as well as once a "new bypass channel and its related dam and isolation gates" have been constructed].

 

Brand Avenue – whose original post I've more or less repeated, step by step, in its entirety here (sorry!) – points out that these projects bear much in common with yet another riverine plan: this time for a series of manmade islands off the Mississippi coast of St. Louis, as reported by the Forum for Urban Design.

 

(Note: While you're reading Brand Avenue, check out their post on the container city).

Geoff Manaugh • permalink • send this / digg this

 

3 Comments:

American said...

Wow....those pictures of the model look stunning. Amazing how much time and effort is put into models these days.

 

Thu Dec 07, 08:51:12 AM 

ERic said...

Interesting notion. With a Vancouver firm doing this, it seems they're working on creating a kind of second Vancouver in Oklahoma. I loved the water taxis and the whole intimacy of False Creek. Now, if they'll just drop a soccer stadium in there for an MLS team, I'd be extatic.

 

Thu Dec 07, 10:58:12 AM 

cenoxo said...

Dam, looks like another soggy chapter of FLW writ large. Anyone for floods (not to mention tornadoes?)

 

The warmly illuminated Channels model does look nice against that calm, cool, blue plastic Arkansas River, though.

 

Wonder how many of those incoming worker bees can afford to boldly live arup on the Island of Excitement?

 

Fri Dec 08, 12:49:35 AM 

 

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/river-visions-of-midwestern-manhattan.html#comments

 

One problem I see with this is that the river adjacent to Tulsa dries up in the late summer!  When I went through there on my cross country trip there was hardly any water in there...  This project would look funky surrounded by a bunch of dried up riverbed a few months a year.

no kidding? looks like water for days in the renderings tho dont it. i wondered if it could be true to have all that water out there.

 

yeah i would think you would need a consistant river presence before you start dreaming up stuff like this.

Observe...

 

woah, thats gonna be a crimp in the plans for sure.

The river itself does dry up as pictured, however the Arkansas flow is controlled by several upstream dams that create recreational lakes and divert water to the Catoosa barge channel.  It would be very simple to keep water for the 'channels' area with low dams....infact there is already one at about 21st street.  Tulsa is or can be a very wealthy city, depending on oil revenues.  This project is certainly optimistic....even with $70 oil.