OKC’s brilliant renaissance

This afternoon a contingent of i2E folks heard economist and author Barry Asmus call Oklahoma City a “renaissance” city for charting a new future 20 years ago with the ambitious MAPs project.

We’ve seen how that worked out with the emergence of Bricktown, a new downtown skyline, the Oklahoma River and the relocation to OKC and subsequent success of the NBA’s Thunder.

As keynote speaker at a Greater Oklahoma City Chamber “State of the Economy” luncheon at the National Western Heritage and Cowboy Museum, Asmus also called the city “brilliant” for making all the right moves. The city has become a role model that others are trying hard to emulate.

After the luncheon, I came back to the office and saw an item in the Innovation Daily blog that perfectly complemented Asmus’s perspective. It was a list on the New Geography website that ranked Oklahoma 18^th out of the top 51 metropolitan areas for net population gain in 2010-2011.

In an article titled “Where Americans Are Moving,” New Geography talked about the migration of the national population to the Sunbelt cities.  Oklahoma City is clearly staking its claim as a go-to city for people seeking an attractive place to live.

According to New Geography, Oklahoma City saw a net inflow of 8,746 people during the 2010-2011 time period.  We ranked just behind Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee (9,323) and just ahead of San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif. (5,880).

Ranked No. 1 among all American metro areas for population gain was Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas with a net gain of 39,021.  Four of the top 10 metro areas for population gain were from Texas.

Biggest loser was New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, N.Y.-N.J. with a net loss of 98,975.  Most of the national exodus was from Rust Belt cities.

Here are the top 5 and bottom 5 metro areas for 2010-2011:

Top Five

Bottom Five