Today we continue with our guest blog posts from Summer 2024 TURC students’ research project. Each student was challenged to write a brief post that showcased an element of their research from this summer, in addition to an original visual representation of data they have been analyzing. Students will present their full research project on August 9th from 1-2pm (Helmerich Hall, Room 219). The presentation is open to the public and you can find more information and RSVP here: https://pp.events/a8l1nMpb
Today’s second guest blog is from Rojina Adhikari, a TURC Junior Scholar and a rising senior at Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics who has been focusing this summer on determinants of single family building permit activity in Tulsa. Rojina can be reached at roa3845@utulsa.edu or rojina.adhikari@ossm.edu or you can connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rojina-adhikari-1464b5282/
The Impact of Public Spaces on the Tulsa County Housing Market
Introduction
According to the 2023 Tulsa Citywide Housing Assessment, Tulsa has an extremely competitive housing market with rapidly increasing prices and rent with limited availability. In fact, the housing assessment reports that we must develop 12,900 units over the next 10 years to meet housing demand and support equitable growth in the housing market. The report suggests private sources, public programs, and new funding sources and tools as numerous ways to meet housing demand. We decided to narrow down our focus to how the presence of public spaces nearby may correlate with single-family residential housing development.
Research Process and Data
To examine recent development patterns in Tulsa, we gathered building permitting data for Tulsa County between the years of 2018 and 2024, inclusive. We focus solely on completed single-family permits for now. We utilized the Census Geocoder tool to convert addresses of single-family residential homes to latitude and longitude coordinates of those homes. We incorporated Google Maps to outline the boundary of Tulsa County and discover what public spaces may exist within the boundary lines.
Analysis
The maps below lead us to consider how the existence of popular public spaces around Tulsa may spark the development of residential housing nearby as well. It is important to note that our definition of residential housing consists of new single-family homes, duplexes, and townhouses. The map reveals clusters of housing development that exist in places where the city of Tulsa thrives socially. Popular public spaces in Tulsa are the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa Zoo, Tulsa Botanical Garden, and the Pearl and Brookside District of Tulsa. For example, a particular cluster of housing development exists in central Tulsa, near the Pearl District. Another popular public space in Tulsa is the Gathering Place, located along the Arkansas River. Around the Gathering Place and Philbrook Museum of Art, we can see an influx of housing development.
Public spaces continuously provide many employment opportunities, which may act as both a benefit and drawback for the housing market. The Tulsa Citywide Housing Assessment reports that Tulsa’s expanding job market will not only attract new residents, but it will also increase demand for housing in an already tight market.
The red dotted lines represent the boundary surrounding Tulsa County. We have highlighted some of the most popular public spaces in the city in pink.
Each coordinate represents the location of a newly completed single family residential home. Comparison between the maps reveals that the clusters of coordinates exist near the highlighted popular public spaces.
Future Work
In the future, we hope to analyze Claremore’s housing development patterns and determine if a similar trend occurs in Rogers County. Claremore is much less dense than Tulsa, which may impact the degree of a possible correlation between public spaces and new housing development in the city. For instance, housing development may be more spread out, and public spaces may not be as strategically integrated into residential areas in such cases.
Furthermore, we would like to investigate a possible correlation between property values and the presence of public spaces nearby in both Tulsa and Rogers County. As of right now, we know that median home prices are generally higher for the southern ($260,000) and eastern parts ($230,000) of Tulsa compared to the northern neighborhoods ($110,000), revealing how property values vary substantially throughout the city. We intend to check whether Rogers County displays a similar trend. Lastly, we aim to repeat this study and analyze development patterns for commercial real estate as well.
References
“Census Geocoder.” n.d. Geocoding.geo.census.gov. https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/locations/addressbatch?form.
“City of Tulsa.” n.d. Cityoftulsa.org. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/.
“Tulsa Citywide Housing Assessment.” 2023. Housing Solutions of Tulsa. https://www.housingsolutionstulsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Tulsa-Citywide-Housing-Assessment_Final-03.01.23.pdf.