A Powder Blue Sport Coat

This began as I was completing the "About Me" portion of "My Profile" and rapidly exceed the allotted 1200 characters. So "who are you"? to steal a lyric from the band The Who and why is a 60 year old, white male, living midtown Tulsa writing a blog? Answer - a passion and love of this City.

I am a lifelong Tulsan, I am an architect/planner by training and that has evolved into my passion. Thinking back, I remember my Mom worked for Don Osgood, City Planner for Tulsa in the early 1960s and me, a skinny young kid with a crew cut haircut, would go with her when she worked late or on weekends at the planning office. During those visits I would thumb through the multitude of plans, drawings and documents with great curiosity that someone could actually plan a city. It must have been those times that instilled this passion for city planning in my soul. I also remember Don coming to dinner at our home on a few occasions. Maybe I should have listened closer to those stories related to dealing with City government, although those were the days of a commission style of government and that worked remarkably well for the efficient running of government operations. It may not have been equitable across all areas of our city, but it worked.

The passion began in high school with drafting classes at Central High School, directed by George Reeves,  and raised to new heights when I went to Oklahoma State University in the Architecture program from 1968 to 1973.  I think a great deal of my early urban thinking was formed by the philosophy and sociology classes I took. In the early 1980s, I got a new dose of passion for city planning when I enrolled in the Urban Studies masters program at the University of Tulsa headed by Dr. Earl Reeves.(I did not realize until writing this how people named Reeves family played such an important role in my life).  I could not get enough of classes, studying or spending time at the library or Urban Studies house on campus. I was so disappointed when they dropped the program and hope that someday it might be brought back. In addition to Dr. Reeves, I truly enjoyed my Urban Sociology class with Dr. Jean Blocker, my Real Estate class with Dr. Larry Wofford, both of whom are still at the University. By far though the class most remembered was Dr. Reeves' Community Organization class where Anthony Downs' "Inside Bureaucracy" and Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" were the required reading.

As a staff planner at the City of Tulsa, I did the primary research and writing of the Historic Preservation Ordinance and was part of the planning team that created the Downtown Plan for Tulsa in the late 1980s.
I have had the profound honor and opportunity to be a principal in the A/E firm Matrix, that has been the design firm or part of a design team for some of the most significant projects over the past ten years. The master plan and re-design of Expo Square, the renovation of the Fairgrounds Pavilion, the BOK Center, the Convention Center expansion, City Hall move to the One Technology Center and many more.

Growing up here and going to the state fair, concerts at the original Convention Center - I must have attended every Beach Boy concert that came to town, experienced the truly great James Brown Cape routine, and in June of 1970 I went to the Jimi Hendrix concert. I wore a light blue sport coat, dark grey slacks and all evening I wondered where the grass fire was. Life really change after that night. Upon returning from college,  the new City Hall/Civic Center was being built and now having been a part of the move of City Hall, the Convention Center expansion and the BOK Center, and total renovation of the fairgrounds that skinny kid with a crew cut has lived the dream. Now I am going to go do something new - write, advocate and be an activist for a new vision of Tulsa. My beautiful loving wife tells me I'm also going to make some money, so if you need a planner/architect, you can contact me at 918.606.2029 or email be at urbaininquiry.birkes@gmail.com. I love this City.