Blanchard Street Design Workshop

Blanchard, Oklahoma | Spring 2018
View the Final Report Below

In early 2017, the City of Blanchard received a grant through the Oklahoma Municipal League to receive matching funds and complete an assistance project with the University of Oklahoma Institute for Quality Communities. City officials were seeking ideas for improving Main Street, especially the intersection with Broadway Street, where a historic flag pole is positioned in the center of the intersection.

In Spring 2018, 17 students in the Environmental Design Practicum took on the project as part of their course work. After several weeks of studying street design concepts and ideas about how to demonstrate potential improvements through tactical urbanism, students were ready to look in detail at Blanchard.

On February 8, the class traveled to Blanchard for a meeting with local civic leaders, city officials, and stakeholders. Teams of students also split up to walk along the street interviewing business owners. Finally, teams collected measurements, photographs, and data about Main Street and the surrounding blocks. The class discussed the most important topics from the site visit in order to think about what their projects should address. Overall, they defined three main priorities, shown on the facing page.

On March 1, five teams were ready to present their proposals to city officials for review. City officials and other reviewers provided excellent comments to refine the proposals. On March 15, students returned to Blanchard armed with prepared projects and supplies for assembling their projects in the street. Using temporary materials to demonstrate the projects allowed the students to explain their work to a group of stakeholders while evaluating how it worked for regular users of the street. The rest of the document presents an evaluation of these five proposals.