Many of the attractions are located near downtown or on the north side of town. Highlights in downtown are Bricktown, the city's fast growing entertainment district and tourist showpiece, the new Oklahoma City Museum of Art, home to the largest collection of Chihuly glass in the world as well as an art house/revival theater and a restaurant, and The Myriad Gardens, an impressive urban park with a 7 story botanical garden. North of the museum is the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. The memorial is both one of the most visible attractions in the city as well as its saddest, which has posed some problems for the city's tourism department. The outdoor symbolic memorial is free and open 24 hours a day, while the very well done Memorial Museum (located in the former Journal Record Building next door) can be visited for a small fee.

Many of the neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of Downtown are textbook examples of urban blight, but to the northwest of downtown is a cluster of interesting early 20th century neighborhoods near the campus of Oklahoma City University. The most notable are The Paseo, a ramshackle artist colony located in a 1930s era urban neighborhood, and "Little Saigon" or as it's officially known, Asia District, home to the city's large Vietnamese and East Asian community. The Paseo was built in conscious imitation of Kansas City's Country Club Plaza in the early 20th century, but has since developed a gritty bohemian character that can feel like a breath of fresh air. Dozens of art galleries, restaurants, clothing stores and other related businesses are clustered in the area. Technically the Paseo is only comprised of a single street lined with deco Spanish revival buildings, but it has grown to encompass much of the surrounding neighborhood, including a stretch of storefronts on NW 23rd street, sort of the main street of the Northwest side.

West of The Paseo along Classen Boulevard is the Asian District, home to the city's majority Vietnamese Asian community. After the fall of Saigon in 1976, one of the cities picked by the US government for the relocation of refugees was Oklahoma City. Since then, these initial refugees have been joined by later immigrants from both Vietnam and other southeast Asian nations, as well as by Vietnamese Americans from elsewhere in the country. The district is home to many great restaurants, too numerous to mention, as well as Super Cao Nguyen Supermarket, the largest Asian market in the state.

Just West of Asia District is Oklahoma City University which features a small art museum and a variety of cultural events and programming.

To the North of Oklahoma City University is the "NW 39th Street Enclave", the largest gay neighborhood in the state, Crown Heights and the Western Avenue District, which are home to businesses and restaurants catering to young urbanites (Sushi Neko, a fine sushi bar and Will's, a coffee shop, both inside the restored art deco Will Rogers Theater complex, are worth a look).

On the Northeast side of the city is the capitol complex, which is interesting in itself, and the Oklahoma History Center, set to open this fall. There is a medical research cluster northeast of Downtown centered on the OU Health Science Center that is large and growing, but unless you're a patient, a doctor, or a scientist, you're unlikely to spend much time there. (However the historic Lincoln Terrace neighborhood that is between the OUHSC and the state capitol is worth looking at if you enjoy historic architecture.) The Harn Homestead is also located nearby on NE 16th street.

North of the capitol is the highly ranked Oklahoma City Zoo, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Kirkpatrick Center (which features a children's science museum, an air and space museum, a photography museum and more), Remington Park a thoroughbred and quarter hoarse racing track with a Casino and off-track betting.

The Southside is notable primarily for Capitol Hill, a large Hispanic district, and the Stockyards, a neighborhood built around one of the largest cattle markets in the world. Cattle are still bought and sold there every Monday morning, much to the dismay of PETA and other local activists who can sometimes be spotted protesting nearby. The Stockyards resembles in some ways a wild west themed amusement park, sans rides. There are stores selling just about anything western themed that you could imagine, from saddles to belt buckles to truly giant hats. One of the few places in the city where your newly purchased giant hat will go mostly unremarked upon is the venerable Cattleman's Steakhouse, which has been serving up hearty steaks and "lamb fries" (a polite term for fried bull testicles) for over a century.

Capitol Hill to the east is one of the city's great contradictions; riven with poverty and violence, it can also be one of the liveliest and most welcoming neighborhoods in the city. Capitol Hill's main street along SW. 29th St.. is full of bustling Mexican owned shops and restaurants, as well as the somewhat out of place seeming Oklahoma Opry.

A short drive south of the Oklahoma City is its largest suburb - Norman, location of the University of Oklahoma . The university is the primary attraction in Norman, with a beautifully landscaped Victorian campus and several fine museums, including the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. Norman is also significant for its leading role in meteorology (Doppler radar, the basis of modern weather prediction was invented there) as evidenced by the National Weather Center, currently under construction. North of the university is Campus Corner, a dense conglomeration of bars, music venues, restaurants, and retail catering to the college crowd. For those with less disposable income, cheaper bars, music venues, restaurants and retail can be found further north in Norman's small Downtown along Main Street.

Due North of Oklahoma City is the affluent suburb of Edmond. Edmond is mostly a product of urban sprawl and bad planning, but nevertheless has some great qualities, including good restaurants, the third largest university in the state - University of Central Oklahoma and some quaint, quiet neighborhoods near its rather successful downtown.