Dallas Suburbs vs OKC Suburbs

[oil capital]

Originally Posted by walker1962

But again Denton benefits from being the county seat and having rail access into DFW, including links to the airports.

Links to the airports? Yes, I suppose technically that's true, but let's take a look at the reality.

A rail trip from Denton to DFW takes 2 hours, minimum, and that's if your're starting at the Denton train station. If you actually live elsewhere in Denton (which of course, everyone does), the trip will be significantly longer, especially if you want to do the whole trip on public transit.

The rail trip to Love Field, also minimum 2 hours, starting at the Denton train station.

Neither is a serious transportation alternative.

[brickpatio2018]

The thing about Dallas' suburbs is they are built around a grid of 4 lane divided roads. They typically have live oaks planted down the middle of the median and slight barren-looking back-yard fences (within subdivisions) along either side. Am I the only one who finds this look slightly depressing?

I've been trying to figure out what other cities do to make themselves prettier. I think the Park Cities and North Dallas are prettier because the houses face the main thoroughfares, and thus the main roads are lined with lush yards filled with trees and pretty landscaping.

In a new suburb where people's back-yard fences within subdivisions face the main thoroughfares, they need to put in open space and wooded landscaping along both sides of the main roads to approximate the look of those lush, green yards seen in Park Cities and adjacent North Dallas. Plus they need to encourage homeowners to plant a bunch of trees in their back yards to give the area a wooded, forested look, rather than having all tiny back yards with nothing but a cheap fence around them.

By comparison in Edmond, Oklahoma, I noticed that first it's quite rolling or hilly. The main roads are two-lane, rolling, and fairly wooded, at least moreso than most Dallas suburbs. Also in Edmond there is a more intermittent variation between homes with wooded front yards facing the main roads and subdivisions backing up to the main roads. But even the subdivisions seem to have more trees along those back-yard fences adjacent to the main thoroughfares.

I've seen other models such as Celebration, Florida where the developer put on one side of the main thoroughfares a bunch of trees (i.e. wooded) and the other side has a huge open space that is either a lake, golf course, or just lush green fields. The subdivisions back up to the main roads, but they are either hidden by the woodlands on one side or a visible from the main roads but 200-300 feet away from the main roads, separated by the lakes, golf courses, and lush meadows.

For suburbs to adopt the latter model, they would probably need to ask developers to preserve open space along the main roads and reimburse them at market rates to permanently preserve these areas as natural conservation areas.

[Threestep2]

Apples versus oranges. Do you want to go into details from population, water, infrastructure to age of location?