SustainLane 2006 US City Sustainability Ranking

Tulsa: Rich History. Clean Tech Future?

Originally a cattle town in the 1880s, Tulsa was irrevocably changed in 1901 when the first oil gusher was struck in Spindletop, Texas. The wealth that the oil industry generated in both Texas and Oklahoma guaranteed a rapid cultural and development transformation for the entire region.

By the 1920s, "T-Town," as musicians referred to it, was a hotbed of jazz and blues. The art deco buildings that still dot the Tulsa landscape were part of the 1920s building boom. The city continued to thrive until the oil bust of the early 1980s. Tulsa is now once again an important fossil fuel energy center with very little commitment to less cyclical, more sustainable living. There are some noteworthy community-based projects for locally produced food, but Tulsa has virtually no public transportation and remains an auto-dependent US city.

Like other lower-ranking cities with very little infrastructure or planning for sustainable living, Tulsa has a lot of work to do. What sets Tulsa apart from those cities is that it has both for-profit and nonprofit groups that promote renewable energy. The city would do well to tap into some of these local project innovators and make their important work more accessible to the larger community.

Overall, Tulsa has a lot of opportunities to become more sustainable. It might consider public transportation, green building incentives for commercial or residential building, creating an environmental department, and developing a sustainability plan. Each of these mutually supportive elements could help support better livability while reducing the economy's vulnerability.