Is Oklahoma City Our Urban Future?

Derek Thompson asks if Oklahoma City is the model of American cities going forward, a low cost city with a lot of jobs. Well, that sounds good. I will say that the “eds and meds” model of jobs has a lot of problems going forward because the spiraling costs of the former especially is simply not sustainable. Thompson talks about people wanting to live in places where costs are reasonable, but what we see in the last 15 years is an increasingly aggressive market that anywhere that does create urban living that is fun and where it might be affordable rapidly turns into an overheated market that drives people out–not only in New York and San Francisco, but in Boston, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Nashville, etc. So if Oklahoma City really does become a place educated Americans want to live, will it remain a place educated Americans can live if they aren’t millionaires?