The Fading Exurbia: City Highlight for Oakridge Park
Greetings all! I am still here and, despite Real Life getting in the way, still attempting to give this journal some update love whenever possible. I present to you here another City Highlight!
In the last post, we looked at how the core city of Grant County, Centropolis, had matured to a burgeoning metropolitan core, ready to spread out over the landscape like a B-movie blob. Here we now look at Oakridge Park, a town whose proximity to Downtown Centropolis proved to be a test case for this urban sprawl that proceeded to occur in Grant County at the dawn of a new century. This brief post looks at the small town right before that growth occurred in earnest, highlighting the contrast between rural and suburban interests that would be a fixture for decades to come.
The above map shows how Oakridge Park, positioned closest to Centropolis, was poised to be the first town to come under the influence of the emerging urban core. But at Stage 4 it remained still a fairly small farm town.
Along the steep banks of the Blue River northeast of Downtown, new housing developments crept up alongside the existing farmland.
The residents though did manage to keep some of the untouched, wild essence of their environment. Here is a roundabout abutting a wooded area next to a charming park. Much of the wooded banks of the Blue River in Oakridge Park would be kept undeveloped, eventually becoming the town's namesake. (In 1931 in a 6-to-1 vote, residents approved changing the name to Oakridge Park from Stinkburg).
Even with increasing growth, density remained very light in many areas. Increasing property values and taxes hadn't yet crushed the hopes of residents seeking wide open spaces. Not yet, anyways...
New growth during this time would trend towards the central business district, as shown here. The original part of town, with its grid layout, is shown toward the northeast (the top of the above photo). And newer development occuring southwest of the old town, pointing toward Centropolis (the bottom of the photo). This is a pattern repeated in the other satellite towns in Grant County as they too would follow a pattern of suburbanization.
Until next time!
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