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Title details for The Next American City by Mick Cornett - Available

The Next American City

The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros

by Mick Cornett
Jayson White
ebook
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From four-term Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, a hopeful and illuminating look at the dynamic and inventive urban centers that will lead the United States in coming years.
Oklahoma City. Indianapolis. Charleston. Des Moines. What do these cities have in common? They are cities of modest size but outsized accomplishment, powered by a can-do spirit, valuing compromise over confrontation and progress over political victory. These are the cities leading America . . . and they're not waiting for Washington's help.
As mayor of one of America's most improved cities, Cornett used a bold, creative, and personal approach to orchestrate his city's renaissance. Once regarded as a forgettable city in "flyover country," Oklahoma City has become one of our nation's most dynamic places-and it is not alone. In this book, Cornett translates his city's success-and the success of cities like his-into a vision for the future of our country.
The Next American City is a story of civic engagement, inventive public policy, and smart urban design. It is a study of the changes re-shaping American urban life-and a blueprint for those to come.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 25, 2018

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780399575105

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780399575105
      • File size: 944 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      August 15, 2018
      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 cities--no 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(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      June 1, 2018

      Oklahoma City mayor Cornett, ranked second best in the world by the London-based World Mayors, has reinvigorated his city through an $800 million investment in infrastructure and more. Here he argues that midsize cities are the future.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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