COMMUNITY CENTER

Shane Hood is a partner at Align Design Build in Tulsa. He's also a trustee at the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture (TFA) and sits on both the Tulsa Planning Commission and Tulsa Preservation Commission. Through his work, Shane helps to educate the general public on the importance of historic architecture and design in order to build community support for preservation efforts. In this conversatio...

Landry Willis is a candidate for City Council Ward 6 in OKC. Landry is a government affairs specialist at Francis Energy who previously worked for the OKC Realtors' Association on the ADU ordinance. In this conversation, Landry discusses what he considers to be some of the major issues facing OKC today, which includes affordability, sustainability, access to housing and transit, and government tra...

Erika Warren is the communications manager at Oklahoma City's Key to Home Partnership, which is a public-private partnership aimed at coordinating efforts to address the issue of homelessness accross OKC. Key to Home works with many partner agencies to provide aid and services to individuals experiencing homelessness. In this conversation, Erika discusses how systemic factors cause people to becom...

Lisa Chronister is a planner at the City of Oklhoma City with a background in architecture. For the past several years, she has been working to rewrite OKC's zoning ordinances to allow for better development patterns that will better incentivize walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented, mixed-income neigborhoods throughout the urban core. In this episode, Lisa walks us through some of the changes com...

Matthew Peacock is an architect and city councilor in Norman, OK. In this conversation, we talk about the role he has played an important role in pushing for zoning reform by removing minimum parking requirements and allowing ADUs by right in all residential zones. Matt is also an Incremental Development Alliance faculty member, through which he provides training for those interested in getting st...

Camal Pennington is the OKC Ward 7 City Councilor. He is also the executive director of It's My Community Initiative, a nonprofit which provides a wide variety of services to community members in need of help. Previously, he also sat on OKC's planning commission. In this conversation, we discuss how local government works and what we can do to get involved in the processes of local decision-making...

Ron Frantz, Jr. FAIA is a licensed architect who has spent his career focused on architectural historic preservation. He has worked with communities throughout the state of Oklahoma including Guthrie, Chandler, and Pawhuska to preserve their historic buildings and tell the stories of those communities. In this conversation, Ron tells us about some of the intricacies of working on historic structur...

Austin Tunnell is the founder of Building Culture, a vertically integrated real estate development, construction, and design firm working to create beautiful buildings that will last for centuries. They are working to resurrect the lost art of structural masonry construction right here in Oklahoma City. In this conversation, Austin shares a bit about how he got started on this path, what is so exc...

Vanessa Morrison is the co-founder of Open Design Collective alongside Architect Deborah Richards. Their Oklahoma City based practice employs the tools of planning and design to empower unerrepresented communities and to build spaces where they can prosper and thrive. In this conversation, Vanessa updates us on several projects she has worked on, including the South of 8th neighborhood plan, the J...

Michelle McBeath Lubbers is the executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Her work connects professionals from across disciplines who have a focus on commercial real estate and on shaping the built environment. In this conversation, Michelle shares some of her thoughts on how ULI Oklahoma's impact on her and on the community around her. The Community Center is a...

Larry Hopper is a retired Oklahoma City planner who has been a longtime advoceate for multimodal transportation options in Oklahoma City. He is a founding member of the Oklahoma Alliance for Public Tranportation, which has recently helped save the OKC Route 19 bus that serves Spencer, Oklahoma. In this conversation, Larry shares some insight into the way he thinks about the history of OKC's develo...

Thomas Dougherty is an architect and urban designer with a particular focus on creating more human scale urban spaces in US cities. His practice is called Innerblock Design, and he works with Building Culture in Oklahoma City. Thomas has written a book titled "The American Alley: A Hidden Resource" that highlights the history and hidden potential of alleys throughout the US. In this conversation,...

Rhys Martin is a Route 66 preservationist who is heavily involved with historic preservation initiatives pertaining to the highway on a local, state, and national scale. After traveling the world, Rhys returned to his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he began to pay more attention to the unique culture and history of the central US. In this conversation, Rhys shares what he's come to love about...

Danny Vo is a photographer, and videographer with a background in marketing who is one of the primary organizers of HideAndGoBike in Oklahoma City. HGB is a "critical mass" bike ride, where people gather weekly to bike around OKC and generally have a great time doing it. In this conversation, Danny shares the story behind HideAndGoBike, some of the logistics behind planning such an initiative, and...

Carol Ross Barney is an architect and educator based out of Chicago who was awarded the 2023 AIA Gold Medal. Her practice places a heavy emphasis on design projects within the public realm, including parks and transportation infrastructure. She is also the designer of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which was built to replace the space that was destroyed during the 1995 bombing. In this conver...

Ethan Mazzio is a mobility planner with the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments (ACOG) in Oklahoma City. His work has an impact on public transportation and cycling and pedestrian infrastructure all throughout central Oklahoma. In this conversation, Ethan shares some of his insights into the planning profession and his thoughts on the future of transportation in central Oklahoma. The Commu...

Donald MacDonald is an architect based out of San Francisco who has worked on bulidings, bridges, and more around the world. He got his start at the OU College of Architecture, which is where, in the mid-20th century, professors such as Bruce Goff and Herb Greene pioneered a style of teaching focused on individual creative development with an emphasis on contextual problem solving. MacDonald later...

Miles Taylor is the creator of Miles in Transit, a YouTube channel where he "push(es) transit to its limits, while attempting to be entertaining." In this conversation, Miles shares his thoughts on the state of public tranist today, forming his channel and community, and potential ways to advocate for a better transit future. The Community Center is a show about building community. We interview va...