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In 2010, Oklahoma City commissioned a renovation of the greenhouse (by Gensler) and park (by the Office of James Burnett), leading to greater use of the gardens.

Fueled by public initiatives and energy dollars, a plains city calls on design to improve quality of life Photo © Thomas Tucker Even with temperatures in the low 100s, Oklahoma City residents gathered in droves this summer to enjoy weekly outdoor movies on a grand lawn just beyond the glimmering new 50-story Devon Energy Center and marvel at the ongoing transformation of their downtown. Oklahoma City, a sprawling, vehicle-addicted community long known for big-box architecture and chain stores rather than boutique shopping and style, is celebrating a renewed emphasis on architecture and design. A downtown declared dead in 1989 by

Photo © Rob Ferguson When New York's Rogers Marvel Architects (RMA) finishes work on SandRidge Commons (left) in 2014, the site'which is anchored by a soon-to-be-renovated 30-story office tower designed by Pietro Belluschi in 1967'will include a series of connected public greens and two administrative-office buildings for oil and natural-gas company SandRidge Energy. The project, a collaboration with Chicago-based landscape designers Hoerr Schaudt and Arup's environmental group, aims to bring restaurants, shops, and other amenities downtown, says RMA principal Rob Rogers. It will incorporate nearby Kerr and Couch parks and, with the renovation of the Belluschi building, create SandRidge's new

Photo © Rob Ferguson The newly finished SkyDance pedestrian bridge, by OKC-based design group S-X-L, takes its form from the colorful state bird, the scissor-tailed flycatcher. The team won a competition to create the 197-foot-tall, locally-fabricated-steel structure. Architect Hans Butzer, a member of the S-X-L team, hopes the bridge will become a symbol of an enlivened Oklahoma City.

Photo © Robert Shimer/Hedrich Blessing/Courtesy Elliott + Associates Architects Designed by 'Harvard Five' architect John Johansen in 1970, Stage Center'previously known as Mummer's Theater'is mired in preservation controversy: The prime downtown parcel on which it sits is the envy of developers, while the seminal (though deteriorating) building is the darling of preservationists. Unoccupied since a 2010 flood and now up for sale, the theater's fate hangs in the balance.

Photo © Jason Meyer/Feinknopf Cleveland-based Dimit Architects' 27 townhouses in Little Italy, near University Circle, hit the market in early 2009'not the most auspicious time for real estate. Perhaps because of their flexible floor plans, industrial aesthetic (the property was a former brownfield), and proximity to the city's largest employers, all of them sold in two and a half years. The three-story houses, clad in cement board and phenolic panels, contain 1,600- to 3,400-square-foot loftlike units with roof terraces. The architects are working on another townhouse project for the same developer in Cleveland's Rocky River suburb.

The Metropolis of the Western Reserve Reclaims its Urbanity Photo © Roger Mastroianni   Cleveland has long been ridiculed as a dysfunctional city bisected by the once-infamous Cuyahoga River, where oil-soaked debris caught fire in 1969. Yet today more than 40 species of fish live in the far cleaner Cuyahoga, crew teams ply its curves, and the $250 million Flats East Bank development, with an 18-story office tower, hotel, nightclubs, and apartments, is rising amid the numerous bridges that link the city's halves. Burning River, meanwhile, is the name of a pale ale made by the local Great Lakes Brewing

Photo © Mr. T in DC Fifteen years ago, wig shops dominated East Fourth Street; the wigs in the windows were color-coded to correspond to the drugs for sale inside. In 2000, local developer MRN Ltd. used historic tax credits and abatements to begin to buy out 250 owners and create 224 apartments, for which there’s now a 400-person waiting list. More than a dozen restaurants, a House of Blues, and a bowling alley keep the lantern-strewn strip buzzing. Downtown needs retail and more residents, but East Fourth Street helped jump-start the revitalization.

Photo by Dean Kaufman/Courtesy MOCA Cleveland Farshid Moussavi's first building in the U.S., the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), opened to the public this week. (Click the image above to view a slide show.) On the corner of Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road, MOCA adds another crown jewel to the neighborhood known as University Circle when it opens this month (see RECORD's feature on development in Cleveland) It is also a powerful urban accent in relationship to its neighbor, Stanley Saitowitz's mixed-use Uptown project. The four-story, 34,000-square-foot hexagon is clad in mirrored, black stainless-steel panels. A glass atrium contains

Photo © Brad Feinknopf Cannon Design's 375,000-square-foot cancer center opened in spring 2011, combining all of University Hospitals' cancer departments under one roof (the health-care system is an affiliate of Case Western Reserve University). Located on the edge of the Case Medical Center campus next to a linear park and connected to the existing hospital, the center is another head-turning structure in University Circle. The architects stacked 10 floors of services between swerving glass curtain walls that bring daylight and distant views of Lake Erie to patient and treatment rooms.