Rogue Columnist

Phoenix should leave GPEC

A little history: The Greater Phoenix Economic Council was formed in the aftermath of the 1990 recession. Fueled by savings-and-loan grifters and spec-building con artists (Charlie Keating combined both roles), it was the worst downturn the city had faced since the Depression.

Up to that point, of course.

It stung that the "infamous" and "negative" Barron's article calling out Phoenix was correct. But there were enough locally headquartered companies, civic stewards and sane political leaders remaining to be concerned about more than image. Phoenix and Arizona started a serious effort to diversify beyond real estate, to recapture the efforts of the late 1940s through the 1960s aimed at creating a robust, high-quality economy.

And for several years, GPEC was successful. The keys were the first president, Ioanna Morfessis, who had a sophisticated understanding of economic competitiveness and development; also, she was backed by a board of business titans who could knock heads and write checks. One other element helped: the city of Phoenix was still the unquestioned center of gravity.

Unfortunately, the decade saw 40 percent population growth and massive new sprawl. At the same time, most of the city's corporate crown jewels were either bought or significantly downsized and almost all the stewards died or retreated. The appetite to seriously build a quality economy, to sustain the cluster strategy, waned. In this "drunk on growth" atmosphere, Morfessis left.

She was followed by Rick Weddle and Barry Broome, both capable. But GPEC and the metropolitan area had changed dramatically.

'Is Arizona hopeless?'

This was the most frequently asked question I encountered in Phoenix recently. Admittedly, the Resistance was demoralized by the results of the election. But the query-cum-statement came from more than activists — indeed, they are more likely to be too invested in the fight to allow a crack of doubt to enter.

Those asking are natives or have lived in the state for many years or decades. They are not nostalgiacs. They are intelligent and pragmatic. Some are considering leaving, adding to the brain drain of urbanites who come to Phoenix starry eyed at a "blank slate" only to discover the many barriers to progress and depart for Portland, Denver and Vancouver, B.C.

In raising this issue, I don't want to provoke the usual denial, sunny codependency or angry defensiveness. I was surprised that so many people, unprompted, asked the question.

Is Arizona hopeless?

It certainly doesn't seem that way to the Republicans and "conservative"-leaning independents who vote. They continue to get the place they want, with the exception of such socialist outbreaks as light rail (WBIYB). Some are people with whom I went to school but remained there. They are decent, smart individuals and, against all odds of the Cold Civil War, we remain friends. Anyway, the cons have no reason to complain — but that won't stop it from manufacturing its lifeline of perpetual grievance and victimhood. They tend to be sore winners.

So the question applies to others. How many are there? It's difficult to say with precision. People keep moving to Arizona, albeit at a slower pace. A Morrison Institute poll of more than a decade ago found that a strong plurality of residents would leave the state if they could.

Who would ask such a question? Anyone to the left of today's "conservative" dogma (which would include Barry Goldwater, were he alive); liberals and progressives; people with urban values; those concerned about the destruction of the environment; those disheartened by the struggle to build and maintain civic, economic and cultural assets as befits a big city, and the ones beaten down by the struggle as Arizona has become a one-party, one-ideology state.

Is Arizona hopeless?

You know this is the wrong place to look for booster lies ("Talton hates Arizona"). And as much as I would love to write a stirring column channelling Henry V or Churchill, it is a little late for in the game for that.

So the answer partly depends partly on how one defines Arizona and how one defines hopeless.

Stick it to Phoenix

I was going to write about Ferguson but the reaction I provoked on Facebook yesterday over the name change for the Suns' home made me switch gears. I wrote, "Talking Stick Resort Arena. That pretty much says it all about Phoenix's inability to be a big city."

So far, 50 people have "liked" it. Much debate came in the comments. Aside from a small number of the usual why-are-you-picking-on-Phoenix notes, there was "Pitiful," "We have no visionary leadership in this city," "This all just makes me want to cry," and "Wait'll they move both teams to Talking Stick neighborhood. .....$10 says that is in the works."

On the other hand, I made some fans (so they said) mad for allegedly being unfair to Phoenix. Still others thought it wasn't a big deal. But they took the time to comment. Someone made the excuse that Phoenix is a "young city," a canard I have tried to knock down before. A couple of comments gave the whiff of, "he doesn't just hate Phoenix, he tortures kittens for sport (and from Seattle, which doesn't even have an NBA team!)".

It started as an offhand comment. Then it became clear I had run sandpaper over a very raw nerve.

Let's stipulate that pro sports are one of the many cesspools in our evermore corrupt and venal society. This is true everywhere. Naming rights always struck me as odd. Who chooses to do business with an outfit because their moniker is stuck on a sports arena? Maybe it's like penis enlargement spam. Somebody must be responding or it would go away.

All over the country, team owners have not been content to extort palaces from the taxpayers under threat of leaving. They also want to milk more cash from naming rights. Only a few places — Wrigley Field, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park — have avoided the sellout. It's one more way to suck income upwards while also destroying the history and even poetry of many former sports venue names.

Novel open thread

As I wrap up the next David Mapstone Mystery, I am going to have to take a week or two away from Rogue. I'll keep the Front Page and the special report pages (including Arizona's Continuing Crisis) updated. So you should have plenty to discuss. Thanks for your support.

 

Phoenix 101: The Seventies

Central Avenue and Van Buren in 1972. Note the full block of businesses heading north to the Westward Ho. Central was still a two-way street.

No series of events better epitomized the 1970s and the turning point they marked in Phoenix than the fight over freeways, specifically the "inner loop" of the Papago Freeway.

Most Phoenicians had a vague idea that freeways were a possibility since the Wilber Smith & Associates plan was adopted in 1960. Interstate 10 had been completed to Tucson and was abuilding from the west. By mid-decade it had reached Tonopah, requiring a long drive over largely country roads to reach. Real-estate values plummeted along the path of the inner loop. But by 1970, Phoenix's freeway "system" consisted of only the Black Canyon (Interstate 17) which curved at Durango to become the Maricopa (I-10).

All this changed as the new decade opened and the plan's stark reality became clear. Specifically, the Papago would vault into the air, reaching 100 feet as it crossed Central Avenue. Traffic would enter and exit via massive "helicoils" at Third Avenue and Third Street. The freeway was promoted as being Phoenix's defining piece of architecture.

It didn't take Eugene Pulliam and the anti-freeway advocacy of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette to make most Phoenicians horrified. In 1973, voters vehemently rejected the inner loop. They only had to look 372 miles west to see the destruction wrought by freeways. They didn't want Phoenix to "become another Los Angeles."

Better than nothing?

A rendering of Phoenix Central Station, the oval-shaped tower that would be built at Central and Van Buren.

This year, Seattle's core has seen 100 buildings permitted, under construction or recently completed. In central Phoenix, by my count, there's the proposed skyscraper above, the University of Arizona's 10-story research building on the Phoenix Biosciences Campus, the ASU college of law, and a 368-unit Lennar apartment complex in lower Midtown.

It's better than nothing, right?

Phoenix Central Station by Smith Partners would be the most interesting, rising 34 stories with 475 apartments, 30,000 square feet of commercial space and, of course, a parking garage.

The tower would rise above the homely central transit station, which nobody will miss, but retain the use as a transit hub. It has its virtues: more apartments for downtown residents, close proximity to ASU and a shape that would provide a bit of variety from the mostly dreary boxes that make up the skyline of the nation's sixth-largest city.

Young Phoenix

An interesting report, The Young and Restless and the Nation's Cities, came out recently from the City Observatory think tank. The premise is straight-forward:

The young and restless — 25 to 34-year-olds with a bachelor's degree or higher of education, are increasingly moving to the close-in neighborhoods of the nation's large metropolitan areas. This migration is fueling economic growth and urban revitalization.... Businesses are increasingly locating in or near urban centers to better tap into the growing pool of well-educated workers and because these center city locations enable firms to better compete for talent locally and recruit talent from elsewhere.

The top gainers of this coveted demographic from 2000 to 2012 are what you would expect: Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Silicon Valley, New York, the Research Triangle and Seattle.

But some among the leaders are cities against which Phoenix should benchmark itself and ought to be able to compete with: Denver, Austin, the Twin Cities and Columbus.

Instead, by a critical metric metropolitan Phoenix comes in 45th. Behind Orlando, Birmingham, Rochester and Indianapolis, hardly cities one would associate with urban cool.

The death of authentic Phoenix

Authentic Phoenix can still be found at Durant's.

The impending closure of Baker Nursery and Mary Coyle's raises an issue beyond losing beloved businesses or even the extreme struggle faced by locally owned firms in Phoenix. It cuts to something essential to a real city even if it is difficult to define: authenticity.

Critics may dismiss this as nostalgia, a cheap emotion for a golden past that never was (this is one way Very Serious People invalidate my arguments now). Or some academic fad of the latte-quaffing creative class elitists. Instead, it is critical to a city's success.

"Authentic" in connection with a city involves historic roots, local ownership, places that are valued, human scale and encouraging human interaction, aesthetics, a distinctive vibe ("cool"), and a strong degree of critical mass and density. The asteroid belts of suburbia with their chain restaurants and malls are not authentic — they annihilate it. No wonder educated young people, many empty nest boomers and world talent want to move to authentic cities.

As these losses continue (and Mary Coyle's had been dead to some since it left its 15th Ave. and Thomas location to flee north of Camelback), it's more than the city cratering or looking like Everyplace America. It is the death of a tangable part of the civilization, a concept beyond the MBAs that run the country or the real-estate grifters that run Phoenix.  A point comes where too much driving is required to reach this or that "iconic" survivor.

Air war over Phoenix

Friends in my old 'hood, the historic districts north of downtown Phoenix, have asked me to write about a change in the approach paths to Sky Harbor International Airport that is bringing airplanes lower and louder over these neighborhoods.

Coverage has not been lacking (see here and here). But I won't pile on repetitively because my initial reaction is to be...torn.

When I lived in Ocean Beach in San Diego, everybody knew when it was 6 a.m. That's because flight operations were commencing at Lindbergh Field whose one runway took outbound planes directly over our neighborhood. I lived a block-and-a-half from the beach, in a cool district the tourists usually missed — but the airplane noise came with the bargain.

Cities are noisy. As I write from the 10th floor of my downtown Seattle condo, I hear traffic, sirens, people yelling and, yes, airplanes approaching Sea-Tac (albeit from a higher altitude). During the daytime there is construction noise from one of the scores of new skyscrapers going up. The sounds are one of the energizing things about living in the heart of a city.

Central Phoenix, by contrast, is uncommonly quiet. There's the hum of the Papago Freeway. At night, the Santa Fe train whistles that remind me of my boyhood (one hardly hears the Union Pacific now compared to when it was the Southern Pacific years ago and Phoenix was a major point on its main line). Otherwise, especially if you are a block in from a major arterial, it is perhaps the quietest place in the metro area. It is much quieter than when I was a boy and central Phoenix was vibrant.

Bones

The other night I was in a Twitter discussion with economist and blogger Noah Smith about the implosion of Las Vegas' hopes to create a vibrant "real" downtown (see the links on the City Desk). It's a sad moment, but I remarked that Vegas didn't have good bones. Smith asked a logical question for anyone not among the urbanophiles: What are good bones?

Since I now have more than 140 characters, let me answer more clearly. "Good bones" are a variety of architectural styles, especially pre-World War II — Art Deco, Beaux-Arts, Spanish Colonial Revival, Gothic Revival, Chicago School, Victorian, etc.

Good bones are dense downtowns and human-scaled neighborhood retail districts right up to the sidewalk. Parks designed by the likes of Frederick Law Olmsted or Adolph Strauch. Inspiring public spaces. Narrow streets and real boulevards. Palatial theaters and concert halls. Grand bridges. Infrastructure such as subways and magnificent railway terminals. Stately public buildings. Packed row houses. Downtown retail (especially a hat store). These are all good bones.

Here, Las Vegas is in an even worse position than Phoenix. In 1940, the end of the Art Deco era, its population was 8,422. The only architectural asset it gained was the lovely streamline moderne Union Pacific Railroad station above — demolished for a garish hotel in the 1960s.

While I was away

John Sperling passed on. I am mindful of Horace's de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but Sperling was a public figure of consequence, deserving an assessment. In keeping with the life he led, Sperling died in the Bay Area, not the city whose name he took for his empire of for-profit education.

The New York Times wrote, "A survivor of childhood illness, learning disability, poverty and physical abuse, he earned a doctorate from the University of Cambridge; a liberal former union organizer, he spent years battling government regulation; a longtime professor who did not enter business until his 50s, he became a spectacularly successful capitalist."

The University of Phoenix made him fabulously wealthy. His net worth in 2002 was $1.1 billion and he spent 20 years on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. With the troubles of parent company Apollo and its stock drop, he was below a billion in 2013.

He reveled in being quirky, combative and rebellious, especially against the education establishment and the government. And yet the GI Bill — authored by Arizona Sen. Ernest McFarland — allowed Sperling to get his bachelor's degree from Reed College in Portland, Ore. Federal student loans turned what would have once been considered a "business college" into a mighty profit engine.

Among the individuals who wrecked the commons, Sperling is right up there. Privatizing profits, socializing losses, the cost and quality of an education at the University of Phoenix and other for-profit schools deeply questionable.

Phoenix 101: What's downtown, what's not

This is downtown (pre CityScape):

This isn't downtown (it's Midtown):

This isn't downtown, either (it's 24th Street and Camelback):

I wouldn't dare move to Chicago and claim that Hyde Park is the Loop. Nor could I say Hawthorne is downtown Minneapolis. Cincinnatians would quickly set me straight if I said Over the Rhine is downtown — downtown begins at Central Parkway. The natives in all these cities wouldn't let me get away with it. Nor would the transplants who felt a convert's zeal to protect the geographical integrity of their cities.

Yet people in "the Valley" (Silicon? Red River — of the north or of the south? San Joaquin? San Fernando? Of the Jolly Ho Ho Ho Green Giant?), many of them from these very cities, get away with this transgression every day in Phoenix.

Downtown Phoenix runs from Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street, and from the railroad tracks to Fillmore, or perhaps Roosevelt. It includes the original townsite and some additions. City Hall's definition taking the northern boundary to McDowell is ahistorical.

Walkable Phoenix

This beautiful scene in central Phoenix is from 1917. It makes you want to step into the picture and stroll. Not bad for a small, isolated city in a brand new state. More about that later. Alas, today the same location is a blighted vacant lot south of two once-graceful houses that have been turned into the Old Spaghetti Factory, the lawns replaced by asphalt.

I write because of an article in one of the online nooks of Fast Company headlined, "Phoenix is Pulling Off an Urban Miracle: Transforming into a Walkable City." Read and decide for yourself. On Facebook, someone said it came off like a press release. The kindest interpretation is that it represents an aspiration. To make it real, a little history might help.

Although Phoenix's growth is closely connected to the automobile age, the city was actually once highly walkable.

Let's define our terms. By "walkable," I don't mean you can drive your car to a canal bank or a desert "preserve" and hike. Not even the enchantingly shady, last time I checked, Murphy's Bridle Path. I mean the arrangements I enjoy in Seattle, where almost everything — shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, culture, health care, transportation hubs — is a quick walk or bus/bike ride away. One doesn't need a car.

Prior to the mid-1950s, when sprawl took off and never looked back, Phoenix offered such a "lifestyle." For anyone who grew up in the actual town prior to World War II, it was taken for granted.

Even the G-men...

Dear Diary,

It seems that I cannot escape the toxic blob that Phoenix has become even when working on the new David Mapstone Mystery. I learn that the FBI's Phoenix Field Office decamped its Midtown fortress in 2010 for leased offices at Seventh Street and Deer Valley Road.

The FBI has a long history in Midtown, once being located on the second floor of a modest office still standing on the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Osborn. Back in the hardly innocent 1960s, it was labeled with "FBI" right on the outside wall. By the time I returned in the 2000s, the bureau was in a hulking, anonymous and heavily guarded midrise around Second Street and Indianola, with a motor pool a block away. If you tried to stop your car on the street to drink the Diet Coke you had purchased from the (now closed) nearby McDonald's, a uniformed federal officer appeared and told you to move on, no questions answered.

Now it is in a 210,202 square foot building built and owned by the Ryan Cos., meant to be home to the field office "for the next 20 years." News reports tell me the building won a LEED Silver design award, which shows the moronic/mendacious nature of these greenwash labels. The office is about 17 miles away from the most common destination for the feds, the Sandra Day "I Gave You The Presidency of George W. Bush" O'Connor Federal Courthouse downtown. It is located far from the urban footprint. How can this possibly be considered a green building?

Ballinger's masterpiece

When the pink-and-white Civic Center opened at Central and McDowell in 1950, it included a "little theater" but the art museum didn't come along for another nine years. Both were considered small confections to the main course: the public library. Things were not much different in 1974, when a young University of Kansas graduate named Jim Ballinger joined the museum's staff as curator of collections.

That the Phoenix Art Museum today enjoys national stature and draws prestigious international exhibitions — and has grown to take up most of the former Civic Center block — is mostly because of Ballinger, who announced Thursday that he will retire after 40 years with PAM. He became director in 1982. No other single figure has done more for the city's cultural landscape — to create, grow and sustain one — than Ballinger.

The reader should know that Ballinger and I are friends. We also were neighbors on Holly Street in Willo. But he first sought me out when I started as a columnist at the Arizona Republic, writing on such issues as the city and state's economic narrowness, lack of civic engagement, poor educational outcomes and difficulty in retaining talent. In our first conversation, he showed his incisive grasp of how such challenges would affect the future viability of cultural institutions.

Downtown podcast

Edward Jensen was kind enough to interview me on the history of downtown Phoenix and the issues facing it. Listen to the Downtown Phoenix Podcast here.

If you want a deeper dive, try the Phoenix 101 columns, "What Killed Downtown." Understanding this history is important for future progress.

 

 

 

Park it

Before getting to the preliminary plan for the remake of the deck park, I want to linger over the most important recent story you may not have read.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, the Department of Justice has sued Barron Collier Co. over $66.5 million the government claims it is owed for parcels the giant land owner and developer has along Central Avenue north of Indian School Road.

You should read the story and try to make sense of it, but this gets at one of the most curious and outrageous events: Breaking up the old Phoenix Indian School and conveying the most attractive parcels of this public property to a private entity for private gain.

And make no mistake, there has been gain. Despite the company leaving the land a barren waste and claiming it is "not economically viable" to pay its obligations to the feds, this property has no doubt been quietly adding paper value like all the banked land in Midtown Phoenix.

The wrecking crew

I was stunned to read this story about the future of the historic Barrister Place in downtown Phoenix. The 1915 Hotel Jefferson, now city-owned, is one of the few remaining of what were once scores of beautiful old structures downtown.

The Republic's Dustin Gardiner writes, "The hotel, which featured 150 rooms, was decked out in mahogany, marble and expensive colonial furniture. It featured a coffee shop, a cigar stand, private suites and a rooftop garden with palm trees and a fountain."

As an EMT-Paramedic, I saw it in harder times, when it was an SRO which frequently required visits from emergency responders. Amid the human tragedy and shabbiness, it still retained good bones. Unfortunately the interior was later gutted. Now the city is looking for a buyer.

Here's what stunned me: "Councilman Jim Waring...questioned whether the city could get more money for the lot, in the heart of downtown Phoenix, if a buyer could demolish the building and start from scratch."

Fortunately, he didn't prevail. But behold what your city council risks becoming, Phoenix.

Questions for Arizona in 2014

So many myths, so little time or brain cells. I suppose that is why malign falsehoods carry us forward. The latest was a story I read where a UofA professor is having a loud growthgasm over Arizona's spectacular income growth and how 2014 will be even better.

I don't mean to be unfair or pick on people, but when these ideas enter the public square through the most powerful media outlets they reinforce the "everything's fine" lie that keeps Arizona backward.

To be sure, "staying positive" on the party line is a good way to keep one's job. I am proof of what happens to dissidents.

About income: Unless something radical has changed, Arizona is an underperformer and will remain so. The snapshots of "growth" are statistical noise caused by the large population churn. A certain right-wing columnist has ridden this for years to say, in essence, "Arizona does not suck, Talton!" — even though reality is quite different.

WWBIYB, to south Phoenix

Considering the divisions within Phoenix City Council, it is significant that light rail to south Phoenix passed this week by 8-to-1. The five-mile route would mostly be along Central to Baseline Road.

For newcomers to this blog, WBIYB is shorthand for "We Built It, You Bastards." It is my response to the thugs, trolls and hysteriacs that opposed light rail in Phoenix. We built it, the world didn't come to an end, and it is a great success. Light rail is the most hopeful achievement so far for Phoenix to have a quality future.

Now light rail connects to the Sky Train at Sky Harbor. New lines are moving ahead, deeper into Mesa, extensions north and west, and now to south Phoenix. We Will Built It, You Bastards.

Here's an important adjustment that's needed: Run the new line over to Third Avenue and south to Lincoln and then back to First Avenue/Central. That way it can connect with future commuter trains and Phoenix-Tucson rail passenger service that should use a restored Union Station as their hub. It won't cost much more and the benefit will be exponential.

We Will Build It, You Bastards. But the time line is too long — up to a decade. And with Republican austerity ruling in D.C., one hopes the essential federal money will be available. God knows, we subsidize roads and freeways way too much, with enormous damage to the environment. Phoenix should fast-track this.

Enemies of the good enough

In and near downtown Phoenix, three developments are worth examining.

• Renderings have been made public of the proposed Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law building for the downtown ASU campus (above and below). Someone told me it requires "seven variances" in the city code. And this code has given us a lovely cityscape? For god's sake build it, before somebody — ASU, the regents — changes his mind.

Would I have preferred a Mission-revival or other human-scale style to get away from the deadening modernism that makes downtown less interesting? Sure. Has the design been improved from its original rollout in response to community feedback. Yes, to some extent. But the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good. And bringing the law school downtown will be a substantial coup. Now people need to demand that the block have real shade trees (and grass!), not palo verde skeletons and gravel.

The building would go on the block between First Street and Second Street, Taylor and Polk, the site of the old Ramada Inn (Sahara). There is still bad blood with preservationists that ASU demolished this mid-century building rather than opting for reuse.

• Then we face the question of what is "good enough" or a good start. Many have been wondering how the city would use land it bought in and near the Evans-Churchill neighborhood just north of downtown since most of it was assembled for the abortive Cardinals stadium.

Now we have an indication, and it is disappointing to risk understatement.

Phoenix 101: The fifties

Ask almost anyone who recalls Phoenix during this time and the fifties were indeed nifty. For most, it was the best time to have lived here.

This was also the city's most sweeping era of change. It saw the emergence of many of the trends that later turned malevolent or toxic. Below the gleam of Eisenhower peace and prosperity, much of the town was troubled.

To begin, however, it is easy to see why these years are remembered with fondness, and not merely with lazy nostalgia.

The fifties were the last decade when much of the city's life revolved around such sweet, small-town reveries as the Masque of the Yellow Moon, held annually at Phoenix Union High School's giant Montgomery Stadium. Although the Jaycees Rodeo of Rodeos would soldier on into the 1990s, it reached its pinnacle then, too. School let out for the rodeo parade day. Phoenix was not far removed from its roots of planting and cowboying.

District 4

[UPDATE: As of 9:30 p.m. MST Tuesday, Pastor held a 498 vote lead over Johnson and counting may continue until Friday]

The race for Phoenix City Council District 4 might seem like small ball for this blog, but it tells us much about where Phoenix stands and where it is going.

One candidate is Laura Pastor, daughter of Rep. Ed Pastor, without whose efforts we would not have a popular light-rail system (WBIYB*). The other is Justin Johnson, son of former Mayor Paul Johnson. (Another race pits Kate Widland Gallego against the Rev. Warren Stewart, but for simplicity's sake, I will focus on District 4).

The contest has been distinguished by mudslinging, with Pastor, for example, being compared with Paris Hilton — and a remarkable lack of substance.

Phoenix 101: What went wrong

If you think "everything's fine" or that Phoenix has no troubles that aren't common to other cities, this is not your post. Spoiler alert: Everything is not fine.

We discuss problems and challenges, as well as intelligent responses, frequently in this space. A previous column sought to debunk the excuses, myths and lies about the place. But reading the comments on the most recent post made me wonder: Is Phoenix uniquely troubled? If so, how and why?

Sprawl doesn't explain it. What Kunstler calls "cartoon architecture" has befouled the nation from sea to sea. Good civic design was lost everywhere. The best cities in the country are surrounded by soul-killing suburbs, office "parks," malls, shopping strips, parking lagoons and laced up with freeways.

Car culture, per se, isn't the answer, either. Oklahoma City ranks lowest in non-vehicle commuting, yet the entire metro has long backed a levy that has impressively rebuilt downtown. Freeway-mad Dallas also boasts the nation's largest light-rail system.

The First Street challenge

  The Greyhound bus depot at First Street and Van Buren, one of the many destinations along First Street in old Phoenix.

It's nice to read that the city of Phoenix is spending $560,000 on a facelift for First Street, including "street improvements, decorative sidewalks, new trees and pedestrian-friendly upgrades."

Unfortunately, my first reaction is that City Hall is about 50 years too late.

Into the 1960s, First Street, like much of downtown, was a thriving commercial avenue. Essential to this was affordable space for shops and a streetscape that meant every few feet you landed at the door to another business.

Let me give you an example. In 1956, between Washington and Monroe streets, two blocks, First was home to Russell Stover Candies, David's Shoes, Goldwater's, Hanny's, Dorris Hayman, Montgomery Ward, Porter Mercantile, Barney's Garage, Cole Home Supply, Morris Athletic Supply, Richards Dean Jewelery, Tony's Shoe Shop, The Normandie Hotel, Thompson's Indian Shop and Phoenix Stamp and Coin. All in two blocks.

That delightful commercial density was killed by "improvements" since then: Brutalist parking structures, hulking hotels that open onto other streets, teardowns and the Valley Center (Chase Tower) skyscraper. These destroyed literally scores of human-scale buildings and helped run retail out of downtown.

Phoenix 101: The oasis

The 1929 Maricopa County Courthouse and Phoenix City Hall when it was surrounded by shade trees and manicured lawns.

Alone among the cities of the American Southwest, Phoenix is the oasis. It has always been so, but whether it remains an oasis city is starting to come into doubt. A common narrative is that Phoenix attracted Midwesterners who wanted to recreate the landscape from which they came. This is untrue. In fact, the early Anglo residents were mostly Southerners. And the oasis predates American settlement. The archeology of the region is in flux, but it appears that "plant husbandry" was being performed by prehistoric tribes as early as 3,000 or 1,500 B.C. (or BCE if you are trapped in the politically correct precincts of academia). By the first millennium A.D., the most advanced irrigation in the New World was being perfected by the Hohokam. The Salt River Valley was an ideal location, with rich alluvial soil that would grow anything — just add water. The altitude and weather in the modern climate era allow for two or more growing seasons depending on the crop. Maize was imported from Mesoamerica. Cottonwoods, willows and other native shade trees grew along the riverbank and its subsidiary creeks. I have no doubt that Hohokam dwellings were well-shaded. The new settlers merely took it to a higher level.

The photo above captures the oasis city at its zenith, in the 1960s. Note the inviting public space provided by shade and grass surrounding an inspiring art deco building. This was the Phoenix I grew up in. At 10,000 feet, you would have seen a green city surrounded by bands of citrus groves, farm fields and horse pastures. And then: The majestic, largely untrammeled Sonoran Desert. What a place to live. The older neighborhoods were graced by mature trees and parking lawns, a grassy area between the curb and sidewalk. Encanto Park was an oasis within an oasis. Central, as you see below, was lined with palm trees. North of Camelback were shady acreages, often along streets with an abundant shade canopy, set back behind irrigation "laterals." My great aunt lived in one: It was a wonder of shade and tranquility behind oleander hedges on Seventh Avenue. Well into her eighties, this daughter of the frontier would walk out every Sunday evening to turn the valve and "take her water," the flood irrigation from the Salt River Project.

In our neighborhood, what is now Willo, few families had pools but most put in winter lawns to give the sweet season its magical green. Even driveways had grass between two narrow concrete strips. This was not the Midwest. It wasn't LA, although the parking lawns were imported from there. Instead, Phoenix created its own unique urban aesthetic. It wasn't planned. This Eden just happened. If you missed it, you have my deepest sympathy. Many areas of oasis beauty remain. If you want a sense of the practical benefit, drive south from Osborn on Fifteenth Avenue some summer evening with the windows down. When you cross Thomas into Encanto Park, the temperature will drop by ten degrees or more.

Midtown blues

Midtown Phoenix runs from Fillmore Street north to Indian School and from Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street. It's a big, diverse district that contains some of the city's finest assets: The Roosevelt, Willo and Alvarado historic districts; central library, Phoenix Art Museum and Heard Museum; the deck park and the boundary with Steele Indian School Park; a dozen skyscrapers, and the spine of the Metro light rail. And much of it is in trouble.

The Phoenix Corporate Center is facing foreclosure after its anchor tenant, Fennemore Craig, left for new space at 24th Street and Camelback. It was originally the Mayer Central Plaza, then the First Federal Savings Building, the tallest in the city when it opened in the early 1960s and featuring an outside elevator. The Midtown office vacancy rate at the end of last year was 28 percent vs. downtown's 15 percent. Most of the towers are now considered less-desirable B-class and C-class office space. Like much of the Central Corridor, it also suffers from large blighted empty lots, such as the northwest corner of McDowell and Central and the east side of Central north of the punch card building and south of McDonald's. Only the mile between McDowell and Thomas is filled in, and shows it as an appealing urban space. What should be a prime location, the northwest corner of Central and Thomas, is a billboard behind which the homeless camp (much like the astoundingly empty space on the southwest corner of Central and Camelback).

This is not just another story of the ongoing linear slum-ization of the nation's sixth-largest city. For one thing, it's happening in the heart of the city. Second, it is the prime example of the failure of light rail transit-oriented development. Finally, it shows how City Hall is not paying attention to jobs and private investment, both of which are moving to the suburbs.

More vines, please

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The most depressing part of Star Trek Into Darkness is not the many liberties that the filmmaker takes with some of the foundational conceits and tropes of the franchise. Only trekkers will notice (for example, a starship is not built to enter a planet's atmosphere, much less hide in the ocean, etc. etc.). No, what really bummed me out was the architecture. I mean, this is the 23rd century and we're stuck with taller versions of the insipid buildings of today? At least Blade Runner has some variety and gigantic Japanese-style electronic billboards in its vision of the future. We've got interstellar travel, transporters, phasers — and civilization is stuck with the progeny of John Portman, David Childs and Cesar Pelli. And that's if we're lucky. No art deco revival? No reinterpretations of the Chicago school? Gah! If this is the future, no wonder they want to leave the planet.

That's just movie fantasy. In the real world, there's no shortage of lists of the world's ugliest buildings (see here and here), along with Jim Kunstler's cringeworthy-but-must-see Eyesore of the Month. And to be sure, I'm treading into matters of taste, where many valid viewpoints must be considered. Still, architecture matters a great deal. It is the most important physical testimony about a civilization and its trajectory. It constitutes the built environment that at its best informs, inspires or defines so much of our lives. At its worst, it is, as Kunstler says, a landscape not worth caring about. And unfortunately a stupendous amount of our total buildings have been put up in recent decades, with most exercises in copycat banality or starchitect sculptures with little to offer humans or the surrounding streetscape.

Field notes

Catching up from my recent visit "back home..."

• Many people asked me why Gov. Jan Brewer was backing a Medicaid expansion in apparent defiance of GOP orthodoxy. Has she finally shown a conscience? No. The major calculus is that what remains of the business leadership in Arizona leaned on her to accept the Obamacare/Romneycare deal, where the feds will pay for most of the expansion anyway. The biggest employers in Arizona provide no or minimal health-care coverage, so they offload (socialize) those costs to the public through AHCCCS. Among the big employers are health companies that profit from the system, and would make even more under an expansion.

Most of the New Confederacy is not participating, a calculated move to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. So why is Brewer different? My suspicion is the composition of the economy. The other populous, urbanized states have plenty of corporate headquarters and well-paid jobs (and in the case of Texas, oil and big government spending). So it's easy to say, "devil take the hindmost." In Arizona, the hindmost is the economy — Wal-Mart is the largest employer. That and health care. Of course, Brewer might simply be playing a game, knowing the Legislature will prevent Arizona's participation. But I think she's sincere. If she goes "Full Kook," the business interests might do an Ev Mecham on her.

Questions for Phoenix candidates

I received a query from a group called Democracy for America-Maricopa County asking me to suggest questions for Phoenix City Council candidates. I always try to be obliging, and this issue is of special importance.

It seems as if Council has lost its consensus and focus, virtues that were essential to the progress made with T-Gen, ASU's downtown campus, the Phoenix Convention Center and light rail (WBIYB). Nothing could be worse for the city than a right-wing takeover or blocking minority on Council. And members who think civic greatness is filling potholes and collecting trash ("listening to the neighborhoods) are not much better. Phoenix is at a critical tipping point. Here are the questions I suggested:

1. Please detail your connections to the real-estate industry: Properties you own; do you work in the industry and if so, doing what?; have you served on boards that make recommendations on land use?; have you profited from land-use decisions made by public bodies, including the approval and siting of freeways?

Reinventing Hance Park

I'm in Phoenix this week for my new novel, The Night Detectives (you can find a schedule of signings on my author Web site). One remarkable thing is how the conversations I have with friends never really change much when it comes to the topic of Phoenix and Arizona. Searching for something new...an effort is under way to produce a "new master plan" for Margaret Hance Park.

The site irritates me at the outset by claiming Hance Park is located "in the heart of down downtown Phoenix," whatever that means. It is in Midtown, a deck sitting atop the Papago Freeway from Third Street to Third Avenue. All together now: Downtown runs from the railroad tracks to Fillmore and from Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street. One could be very liberal and extend it to Roosevelt — no farther. You outlanders would be offended if I said the Loop in Chicago extended to Winnetka; you don't get to rewrite the geography of my hometown.

In any event, the deck park was the compromise when Interstate 10 was rammed through the heart of Phoenix, resulting in the demolition of 3,000 houses, many of them irreplaceable historic homes, as well as the shady Moreland Parkway. Originally, the Wilbur Smith plan called for the freeway to soar 100 feet over Central Avenue and traffic to exit by "helicoils" winding down to Third Avenue and Third Street. So things could have been much worse

Phoenix's new normal

Let's take a random walk through the "news from home." Much rejoicing must have come to the Real Estate Industrial Complex from the recent BusinessWeek story headlined, "A Phoenix housing boom forms in hint of U.S. recovery." Maybe it's even real and Homey was wrong when he predicted that the old growth machine — with championship golf! — isn't coming back. If so, a new housing boom would be the worst possible event in the long run. Any chance to learn the lessons of the crash will be lost, along with the opportunity to reset for a more sustainable future.

I suspect the bluster of a "boom" cloaks a recovery from a very deep bottom, so naturally the percentage gains will look impressive. In addition, we don't have the research to indicate the subdivisions that are being abandoned to "investors" — or just abandoned — as qualified buyers snap up the new stuff from the likes of Pulte. Population has increased, but not at the rates of the 1990s and 2000s. Also, the labor force for the metropolitan area is only slightly larger than it was in 2006, hardly the spectacular growth seen in the previous decades.

Some macro realities will not go away: most Americans are much poorer after the recession; wages are stagnant and have been falling on average for years; unemployment remains high and many may never find work again; "consumers" are still carrying more debt than historic norms; changing tastes and demographics, with talented young people and many boomers preferring real cities, not Sun City; Phoenix still has a low-wage economy. All these factors will be headwinds against the triumphal return of the Growth Machine.

Phoenix 101: What killed downtown, Part III

Central and Van Buren circa 1971. This once-vibrant business block is about to be replaced with Valley Center (now the Chase Tower). The old Trailways bus depot that stood at the far left has already been demolished.

Part I and Part II of "What Killed Downtown Phoenix" were the most popular posts in the history of Rogue Columnist. So much for the notion that Phoenicians don't care about the center city. Now it's time to bring the story to a conclusion.

By the mid-1970s, downtown was in a freefall, despite the construction of the Phoenix Civic Plaza, Hyatt Regency, new Hotel Adams, new Greyhound bus depot and skyscrapers housing the headquarters of the state's three big banks. Unfortunately, in the process many historic buildings were demolished, including a priceless red sandstone multi-story building at Second Avenue and Washington. Block-long parking garages and assembly of superblocks created long, empty spaces along sidewalks where once there were dozens of shops. Several valuable territorial-era structures were demolished to create the desolate, sunblasted Patriots Square (workers discovered an "underground city" from frontier Phoenix that had housed opium dens and gambling parlors, protected from the heat in an era before air conditioning). These and others lost were precisely the kind of buildings rehabbed in downtown Denver into Larimer Square.

One of the greatest calamities was the demolition of the Fox Theater, the finest movie palace downtown. This happened without a peep of protest. On the land, the city built a "transit center," which was little more than a Maryvale-style ranch house "station" and parking stalls for city buses. The Paramount somehow survived, running Spanish-language films. Another calamity was the Westward Ho, which closed as a hotel and only avoided the wrecking ball by being turned into Section 8 housing. The smaller San Carlos, thankfully, was saved as a historic hotel.

Phoenix 101: What killed downtown, Part II

Downtown was still busy in the late 1950s, at Third Street and Washington. Even though this was part of the Deuce, note the variety of businesses and pedestrians.

In the previous post, we left downtown Phoenix in 1940 as the vibrant business and commercial center of a small, relatively dense city, surrounded by pleasant neighborhoods, served by streetcars, and dependent on agriculture. World War II brought massive changes to the Salt River Valley. Thousands of troops were trained here. Phoenix was still a frontier town, wide open to gambling and prostitution, and governed by a shady city commission. At one point, base commanders declared the city off limits to troops. This began a reform movement that eventually led to a council-manager form of government and the decades of "businessmen's government" from the Charter movement.

The Battle of Britain and the threat of strategic bombing made a deep impression on American war planners. So in addition to wanting to move plants away from the vulnerable coasts, they also widely dispersed new war industries and Army Air Forces bases around the valley. One example was the Reynolds Aluminum extrusion plant built at 35th Avenue and Van Buren, far from the city center. Dispersal brought the first Motorola facility, but not to the central business district. This set in place a habit of decentralization that continued after the war when city fathers set out to bring new "clean industries" to the city. They failed to land a Glenn Martin Co. guided missile venture for the vacant Goodyear plant in its namesake town. But Goodyear returned in 1950, eventually building airframe components there. Garrett's AiResearch, which also had a plant outside the city during the war, returned after a vigorous Chamber of Commerce effort, to a site near Sky Harbor. No thought appears to have been given to locating the city's new industries near the core.

After the war, America embarked on a massive economic expansion and migration, both benefiting Phoenix. Demand had been pent up from both the Depression and wartime rationing. By 1950, Phoenix entered the list of the 100 most populous cities, at No. 99, with 106,818 in 17 square miles. Many servicemen who had trained here fell in love with the place and moved back as civilians. Air-conditioning became widely available and was installed in every house built in far-flung subdivisions. Downtown was still the state's unrivaled retail and business hub. But by the end of the decade, it had begun a decline that was not unstoppable — but few tried to prevent it or even knew how.

Phoenix 101: What killed downtown, Part I

Downtown Phoenix in the 1930s, a view facing south.

When you see downtown Phoenix today, be kind. No other major city suffered the combination of bad luck, poor timing, lack of planning, vision and moneyed stewards, as well as outright civic vandalism. The only thing missing was a race riot, which happened elsewhere in the city during World War II and is not spoken about. First, definitions. Downtown runs from the railroad tracks to Fillmore and between Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. Any other definition — even though much of the local media are oblivious to this — is ahistorical, inaccurate and, as my sister-in-law would say, just wrong. Twenty-fourth Street and Camelback is not downtown. Central and Clarendon is not downtown.

If one were going to site the center of Phoenix today, one would pick Arcadia, with majestic Camelback Mountain nearby. But that was not the case with the original township in the 1870s. The town was centered in the great, fertile Salt River Valley, soon to be reclaimed by revolutionary waterworks from the Newlands Act and connected by railroads to the nation. It was here that downtown grew and for decades flourished. But Phoenix was small and isolated. It did not grow from 10,000 in 1910 to more than 185,000 in 1930 like Oklahoma City. In 1930, Seattle's population was more than 386,000 and Denver nearly 288,000. Phoenix held 48,118 souls in the same year and was far from any other metropolitan area.

It's a fascinating counterfactual to wonder what might have happened in downtown Phoenix if not for the Great Depression and World War II. The decades before 1940 were the golden age of American city building, including art deco architecture and the City Beautiful movement. One can see it in such buildings as the Luhrs Tower and Luhrs Building, the Professional Building and the Orpheum Lofts (and, north of downtown, in the Portland Parkway). Conventional wisdom holds that the Depression didn't hurt Phoenix much, but this is not true. With deflation and little building happening, it stopped downtown dead. This was continued by the material shortages of World War II. By the time the economy began the long post-war expansion, downtown was facing too many obstacles and didn't have many of the grand bones of the other cities I mentioned.

Billion-dollar baby

Forbes reports that the number of the world's billionaires has reached a new high (1,426) representing a record $5.4 trillion in net worth. What slow recovery? If I were one of these mammals, here's what I'd do with my money:

The long empty lot on the northwest corner of Central and McDowell, in the heart of the nation's sixth largest city, would become a sculpture garden for the Phoenix Art Museum. The catch: It would have to be lushly graced with shade trees and other plants so it is an oasis in the city. A hundred grand would go to bribe the Willo Soviet, which is opposed to everything. One piece of sculpture would soar over Central as a walkway connecting the sculpture garden to PAM (or perhaps a glass gallery running under Central). The CVS drug store would go away. Working south on Central, on the east side toward the library, I would commission my friend Will Bruder to design two world-class buildings: A Phoenix Contemporary Art Museum and a (real) symphony hall.

So much for that part of Midtown. My big play would be between Thomas and north of Indian School.

Arizona bio: part II

A rendering of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, set to break ground on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.

A decade after Arizona, and especially Phoenix, embarked on an effort to build a biosciences cluster, this is how things stand. According to a report from the Battelle Institute, "Arizona’s bioscience industry continues to grow at a rapid rate. Industry firms have increased employment by 30 percent overall since 2001 and have even added jobs since 2007, a period which includes the deep national recession."

That said, total Arizona bioscience employment in 2010 was 21,084 vs. 62,386 in North Carolina. The state is a pygmy in research dollars and has birthed no significant bio company. Phoenix is nowhere near being one of the nation's top biotech/biosciences centers. [Updated] A 2012 Jones Lang LaSalle report ranks Boston, San Diego, the Bay Area, Raleigh-Durham, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Seattle the top "established" clusters in the Americas. The "emerging" clusters are Westchester/New Haven, Conn., Chicago, Denver, Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Dallas, southern Wisconsin, Florida,  Indianapolis, southern Michigan and Atlanta. The top players are not much changed, aside from relative ranking, from a much-discussed 2004 assessment by the Milken Institute, with one exception. Minneapolis has moved into the "established" ranks. Most of the up-and-comers are new. Arizona and Phoenix are not mentioned.

A glimpse of the competition can be found by the jaw-dropping build-out of the University of California-San Francisco's Mission Bay campus, which is dedicated to bio and went from nothing to a major contender over the same decade. And this was achieved despite California's state budget crisis. It represents one path the Phoenix Biomedical Campus could have taken but didn't. Another is Houston's amazing Texas Medical Center. This is where I center my recollections of the bio effort and what succeeded and failed.

Enough to make you sick

I had grand plans for my recent visit but spent most of my time sicker than I've been in years. Little time was left to catch up, but some observations:

The fabric of the old city continues to be torn away. The block of buildings on the southeast corner of Seventh Street and Roosevelt has been leveled with, of course, nothing to replace it. The last I recall, one building was a llantera (tire) outlet with American and Mexican flags painted on the outer wall. Now only the concrete foundation is left. A little farther south is a 1920s-era gas station, but would even this be preserved?

The demolished structures, which dated from the same era, were part of an actual city commercial streetscape that extended contiguously along Seventh Street. One saw the same on Seventh Avenue, Grand Avenue and Van Buren Street. It's almost all gone now, replaced by dreary new suburban boxes, each surrounded by Holy Surface Parking Lots. Or replaced by blighted empty lots. It is, as Jim Kunstler would say, not a landscape worth caring about and obviously nobody with money and power cared for generations. But the loss of variety, density and urban fabric on these approaches to downtown, along with the absurd widening of these streets, is a piece of astonishing civic malpractice. What a lost opportunity.

Role models

I didn't start this. An article in the Phoenix Business Journal is headlined, "Why Phoenix should be looking up to Seattle, not Austin." Behind it is the legitimate concern, written about here often, how the city is not attracting anywhere near its share of young, educated and high-skilled talent. In addition, as the article states, "The Texas capital beat out the Valley for a $300 million Apple Inc. campus last year, and General Motors is also placing a new technology center there." Naturally, it contains the obligatory, "Arizona has plenty of positive attributes in its corner: cost of living, proximity to California, business costs and nice winters."

Here are a few reasons why Phoenix can't be Seattle: No major headquarters of global corporations and non-profits; no world-class clusters in aviation and software; no civic stewards who invest heavily in the city, nurture its cultural assets and lead its continuous reinvention; no 24/7 downtown with hundreds of stores, restaurants, Pike Place Market, flagship Nordstrom, etc., and little critical mass in a dense, lively, cool center city. No diversified economy or University of Washington. No reputation for tolerance, progressive politics and long history of attracting world talent, whether for airplanes, software, biotech, world health or game development. We've covered some of this before.

Austin is sprawly, hot and has poor transit. Alas, here are a few reasons why Phoenix can't be Austin: It's not the capital of a state that puts attracting business, good jobs and huge amounts of federal money ahead of crazy ideology and revels in its power. No University of Texas. No world-famous music scene in a relatively dense quarter of downtown and tolerant "Keep Austin Weird" liberalism in the middle of a red state. No oil money. No history of largesse from LBJ (would President McCain have done anything for Phoenix? No.). No first-rate technology cluster, built up over many years, attracting top talent to the headquarters, R&D centers and labs of scores of well-known corporations.

Phoenix 101: City at night

Helsing's Restaurant, designed by architect John Sing Tang, at Central and Osborn.

The other night an Arizona Republic reporter tweeted desperately for a 24-hour coffee shop in downtown Phoenix. He was out of luck (somebody suggested a donut shop around 24th Street and Thomas, a common lack of understanding about where downtown Phoenix is located). This was not always the case. One (left) was located at Central and Van Buren, near the Trailways and Greyhound bus depots, with a lighted billboard on the roof. It survived until around 1970, when it was torn down for Valley Center, now the Chase Tower. Another, open at least into the wee hours and serving cocktails, too, was across the street on the northeast corner (Chambola's?) — after it was torn down in the '70s, the lot was vacant for decades. Yet another favorite was the Busy Bee on Washington Street, one of the many Greek-owned establishments, which (I believe) lasted until being bulldozed for Patriot's Square. These were not hipster hangouts with free wifi, but the old-fashioned coffee-shops-as-restaurants.

Beyond downtown, a number of late-night and 24-hour establishments were hopping well into the late 1970s. These included two Helsing's on Central, Shaefer's on McDowell at either Third or Seventh Streets and Denny's at Van Buren and Seventh Avenue. They were life-savers when I worked on the ambulance and we might not get dinner until three a.m. Bob's Big Boy anchored the corner of Central and Thomas and was the magnet for participants of weekend cruising on Central. Other popular chains were Hobo Joe's (with the hoho statue out front), Googies and Sambo's (a Sambo's building on McDowell across from the Phoenix Art Museum still stands, most recently a Thai restaurant). Helsing's and some of the others were works of art, but none still stand, unlike a few of their preserved sisters in Los Angeles.

Old Phoenix was not an all-night town. Which is not to say it wasn't a late-night town.

Arizona bio, part I

Someone important asked me to write about the biosciences in Phoenix and Arizona as the effort marks its tenth anniversary. This is fitting because I vividly remember the day I was called to the office of then Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza where he laid out the opportunity that the city had to lure star researcher Jeff Trent and the International Genomics Consortium. As a columnist for the Arizona Republic, I wrote dozens of articles to explain and advocate for this unique chance to leapfrog out of an economy that had become dangerously dependent on housing and population growth, and was falling behind on almost every measure of economic and social well-being. One column was an open letter to Dr. Trent — both of us are natives and this was from the heart — that he later told me played a big role in his decision to come home and establish T-Gen.

With Mary Jo Waits, then of the Morrison Institute, I worked to develop a "meds and eds" strategy to leverage biosciences and education; government, non-profits and eventually for-profit organizations, to create a major bio hub. As Waits repeatedly said, what if we could lay claim to the cure for cancer being discovered in downtown Phoenix? I mention my role for the sake of those who constantly yowl that I "hate Arizona," do nothing constructive, am a "quitter" or some guy in Seattle who spends his time picking on Phoenix.

The Flinn Foundation led the development of a strong strategic roadmap, as well as providing $50 million in funding. Gov. Janet Napolitano was supportive and the Legislature was dragged aboard a statewide push including leaders in Tucson and Flagstaff, as well as the Gila River Indian Community. At City Hall, Deputy City Manager Sheryl Sculley marshaled the bureaucracy to assemble land for the venture on the old Phoenix Union High School campus and oversee its redeployment. More land north was available for expansion; it had been set aside for the abortive attempt to win the NFL stadium that instead went to a cotton field west of Glendale. New ASU President Michael Crow instantly grasped the potential and soon the U of A was planning a medical school on the site. When ground was broken for the T-Gen building, even then Rep. J.D. Hayworth, hater of all things gub'ment, showed up to bask in what appeared to be a moment of history on par with the CAP. Hard as it is to believe now, it was a time of breathtaking hope.

The Sprawl Needle

Once again, it's left to homey to sun on the parade. People will once again conclude that I "hate Arizona."

Novawest, a "boutique real estate developer," has rolled out, let's call it an aspiration, to build a 420-foot-tall observation tower in downtown Phoenix. It is being likened to the Space Needle in Seattle, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2012. More about that in a moment. The developer has no financing. It has completed no project in Arizona. "But Novawest leaders are optimistic." The renderings — and I understand this is to be an open-air affair? — looked really hot, and I don't mean sexy. If every rendering proposed for downtown and the Central Corridor had been built, central Phoenix would resemble a five-mile slice of Manhattan. But let's give Novawest the benefit of a dreamer's doubt and get down to cases. [Jim Kunstler does, after his fashion, naming it the January Eyesore of the Month].

First, the Phoenix skyline is abysmally dull aside from the Viad Tower. But the combined power of the People's Republic of Sky Harbor and lack of capital, headquarters and civic leaders with means has thwarted anything better. Want some visionary skyscrapers? Go see my friend Will Bruder, architect of the central library. He's got some designs that would vault Phoenix's skyline to world prominence. But, again: Capital, headquarters, civic leaders with means. Without that combination, great civic acts are difficult. For example, Viad was built by the old Dial Corp. as a signature world headquarters and a gift to its city. Dial is gone as an independent headquarters, just another office in Scottsdale.

Phoenix rail: Next steps

Newer readers to this blog might wonder why the parenthetical "WBIYB" is always inserted after the first reference to Phoenix light rail. It stands for: We Built It, You Bastards. A reminder of the hysterical, ignorant and too often thuggish opposition to a transportation technology that had proved successful around the country. I received death threats and demands that I be fired for columnizing in favor of light rail at the Arizona Republic. Well, you bastards, we built it and it is a big success, aside from the distortions that suppress transit-oriented development. Such a big success that Mesa (!) is building the line deeper into the city — and you can thank former Mayor Keno Hawker for having the foresight to persuade his colleagues to help fund one mile into the city; otherwise, Mesa would have been cut off from a system it now embraces.

It's a tough slog. The Legislature and governor are hostile to anything but freeways. The great crash slowed funding from Prop. 400 to a trickle, and even then most of it was going to build transportation infrastructure appropriate to the 1960s rather than today, including the misbegotten Loop 303 and South Mountain Freeway. While these will enrich a few connected developers, they are engines of sprawl, congestion, pollution and expansion of the heat island. Most Phoenicians can't imagine a lifestyle that doesn't revolve around long single-occupancy car trips.

Even so, the 20-mile starter line is expanding not only into downtown Mesa but also toward Metrocenter mall. An ambitious new line is being prepared to run west from downtown to a park-and-ride at 79th Avenue and Interstate 10. The West Line/Capitol Line is widely misunderstood in the media, but it would be an important step to creating a much more robust light-rail system.

Phoenix 101: The sixties

Downtown in the mid-1960s, with the new Municipal Building, forefront, and the iconic rotating Valley National Bank sign in the upper right.

Decades are arbitrary things. One could make the case that "the sixties" in Phoenix ran from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. In any case, it was a most consequential time, arguably the decade when Phoenix set the pattern for what it would become, for better and for worse. In the 1960 Census, Phoenix's population was 439,170, making it the 29th largest city in America and 187 square miles within the city limits. This was a startling jump from ten years before, ranked 99th with 106,818 people within 17.1 square miles. Phoenix had quickly become a big city, but unlike most others: single-story, spread out, car-dependent and populated by few natives. It had decisively surpassed El Paso as the dominant city of the Southwest. Yet, as it remains today, its power was like that of a small town.

Nineteen-sixty saw the unveiling of the Wilbur Smith & Associates freeway plan. Although its closest big-city neighbor was Los Angeles, Phoenix had only one baby freeway, Black Canyon. Over the decade, this would curve into the Maricopa Freeway but otherwise the Smith plan was mired in controversy. Phoenicians didn't want to become another LA. The Valley Beautiful Citizens Council worried that freeways would destroy an already ailing downtown. A hundred-foot high Papago Freeway with "helicoils" provoked more opposition. In the end, almost all of the 1960 plan was adopted. But surface streets carried most traffic during this era.

Downtown retail was slowly dying, as was the dense corridor on McDowell between 12th Street and 18th Street called "the Miracle Mile." This included the lush, stately Good Samaritan Hospital campus, replaced 20 years later by the brutal spaceship building that remains today. Malls were flourishing, including Park Central, Tower Plaza, Thomas Mall and Chris-Town, named after farmer Chris Harri. Many of the downtown merchant princes were dead or ailing. Others, notably Goldwater's, moved to the malls.

Parking lot city

"We like our parking lots!" lawyer and Real Estate Industrial Complex apologist Grady Gammage said a few years ago when the two of us were speaking at an event on the future of Phoenix. And how. I've read that some 43 percent of the city of Phoenix alone is empty land. It would be interesting to know how much of the city is surface parking lots.

I remember when Kenilworth School was surrounded by grass and majestic palm trees. It lost part of that to the monstrous Papago Freeway. More was taken away by parking lots. The consequences are even more telling at North High School. At one time, North boasted a beautiful campus with shade and trees — it was the probably the most attractive campus in the state. By the time I got back in 2000, most of it had been paved over. Similarly, the old city-county building, where my fictional detective David Mapstone has his office, was once an oasis of shade trees and grass. Those were ripped out for "authentic" dirt and palo verdes, and recently the parking lot on the south end of the 1929 building was...expanded.

More than aesthetics are involved. Surface parking lots are a big cause of local warming, which has increased nighttime temperatures some 10 degrees in my lifetime, causing the summers to be hotter and last longer, and turning normal monsoon storms into violent affairs when they collide with the heat being released by all these square miles of asphalt and concrete. The lots destroy the fabric of the city and make walkability and convenience much more problematic. Many sit atop former farmland, which will really matter in a future of food shortages. Take a drive, ride light rail (WBIYB) or pull up Google Earth and look at all the parking lots in Phoenix. Interestingly, most of them are largely empty most of the time.

Arizona merry-go-round

I was supposed to be on KJZZ's Here and Now with Steve Goldstein on Wednesday but we were pre-empted by POTUS. So let me run through a few Arizona observations:

As of Wednesday, the state was still counting ballots. If this were happening in a banana republic, it would be one thing...but in a supposedly advanced nation? This affront to democracy is not mere incompetence but a huge opportunity for mischief — not the virtually nonexistent vote fraud the GOP claims, but official vote suppression and disenfranchisement of "those people." Once upon a time, the Secretary of State's office was a sleepy but efficient place, presided over forever by Wes Bolin and his assistant, Rose Mofford. It has become increasingly politicized, especially in 2004 when Jan Brewer was both Secretary of State, overseeing the election, and head of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign. Ken Bennett is no less an ambitious political animal. This is a scandal crying for investigative reporting and reform. Also, how could you re-elect Joe Arpaio? No wonder Gov. Fright Mask is musing on another term.

• • •

For the first time, Arizona has no Democratic statewide officeholder. This is a profound change from what had been a majority Democrat state when I was little to a competitive state for both parties for many years. One-party rule is never healthy, but it is particularly bad when the One Party denies facts and reality. The Big Sort is at work — even progressives who read this blog talk about their plans to leave. So is the outsized organization and leverage of the LDS with no counterweights in the Latino community or elsewhere (Arizona once was a big union state, yes). The Sinema congressional win is fine, but her campaign was hardly progressive. Unless widespread Hispanic voter suppression took place and Carmona stages a win, this election confirms the worst. Arizona is a solid member of the New Confederacy.

The Goldwater Library

A few quick observations on the $30 million Barry and Peggy Goldwater Library and Archives to be built in downtown Mesa. For the city of Phoenix, it is embarrassing, ahisorical, wounding and revealing.

Embarrassing because, according to the Arizona Republic, the library trustees wanted to put the institution in downtown Phoenix and city officials dropped the ball.

Ahistorical because Barry Goldwater was born in central Phoenix, attended Kenilworth School (as did I), managed his family department store downtown and was a Phoenix City Councilman who, among other things, backed construction of the Civic Center that is still home of the Phoenix Art Museum and Phoenix Theater.

Tear-down city

It's an outrage that two of the very few remaining buildings of the Deuce, the Madison and St. James hotels, are being torn down to make a surface parking lot. Phoenix sure doesn't have enough surface parking lots. Apparently a "compromise" with the Phoenix Suns, which owns the property downtown, will "preserve" a fragment of one building. That's almost more pathetic and insulting than blading the whole thing. These commercial buildings from the early 20th century only make sense as part of a whole, i.e. a walkable block of these human-scaled, useful and historic structures, a "smile full of teeth," as it were, right up to the sidewalk. In isolation, they lose these winning features. A few pieces of rubble in a surface parking lot...is that a joke?

Team owner Robert Sarver must be sitting in his San Diego palace savoring getting some of his own back, after not being able to demolish the Sun Mercantile to build a W Hotel. According to my sources, Sarver was presented with a stunning architectural option that would have twirled the hotel tower well above the roof of the historic structure. He shot it down in favor of something more conventional and dull and destructive. Which never happened anyway. It's amazing the Sun Mercantile survives, and a credit to preservationists. Does anyone think Sarver, had be owned the Suns at the time, would have pushed for a downtown arena as Jerry Colangelo did? Just as I'm sure Ken Kendrick and pals wish Chase Field was on the rez near north Scottsdale. Seattle's looking for an NBA team. Don't assume anything with "stewards" like this.

I realize this post is coming very soon after a meditation, sparked by the fight over the Wright house, on all that Phoenix has lost. And yet the losses just keep coming. A century-old store in Higley was no match for the sacred widening of the holy wide "streets" which are the width of major highways. But the downtown calamity especially stands out.

Phoenix 101: Lost

The main waiting room of New York's Pennsylvania Station, shortly before it was demolished in 1963.

The effort to save the David and Gladys Wright House has become a cause célèbre, or as much of one that can find traction in the sprawling, just-rolled-in-from-Minnesota "civic" climate of metro Phoenix. A Facebook page has been set up. The New York Times flew in architecture critic Michael Kimmelman to write an appreciation of this Frank Lloyd Wright work, including such details omitted by the local media as the demolition company (!) being the one who realized the treasure they had been engaged to rip down and going to the city. The odds of success are long. Perhaps if this were the Joe Arpaio House and it was being torn down to create a day labor center for illegal immigrants. Otherwise, only the Resistance and minority of Resistance-minded citizens have a clue.

The modern preservation movement in America is often traced to the 1963 destruction of Pennsylvania Station, the classically-inspired masterwork of McKim, Mead and White in New York City. It was replaced by a brutalist Madison Square Garden with the railroad station in rat-passages underneath. New York has never gotten over this loss, nor should it. But it ensured that thousands of buildings nationwide were saved, including Grand Central Terminal. This never happened in Phoenix, yet it's not because we wanted for something grand like Pennsylvania Station to be destroyed by barbarians.

The Japanese Flower Gardens was one of our Pennsylvania Stations, a breathtaking Eden at the foot of the South Mountains. The gardens ran for miles along the legendary and evocatively named Baseline Road and offered staggering views of the city — and for anyone, not just the toffs. Lost. Replaced by miles of schlock subdivisions, faux stucco apartments, fast-food boxes and huge expanses of asphalt. Nothing was learned from this colossal act of vandalism. Not one change came to land-use regulations or an attempt at farmland preservation.

Phoenix 101: Blue highways

Van Buren Street east of 24th Street in the 1950s. Across the street is the State Hospital.

Between the glory days of the railroads and the completion of the Interstates, most visitors and newcomers to Phoenix arrived on the United States Highway System. Not for us the legendary muse Route 66 or the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental improved road that became U.S. 1, 40 and 50.

When the system was created in 1925 to standardize the many named highways that existed, Phoenix probably had a population of 35,000. It was isolated and difficult to reach, with formidable mountains to the east and north and forbidding desert to the west. Phoenix's coveted agricultural produce was shipped by refrigerated railcars. What Phoenix did eventually gain were U.S. 60, 70 and 80, along with U.S. 89.

U.S. 60 evolved from the many "auto trails" and plans for highways in the early 20th century, including the Atlantic and Pacific Highway. U.S. 70 joined it on the east at Globe. U.S. 80, which gained its own folklore history elsewhere in the country, came east from San Diego to also join U.S. 60 in Phoenix. In addition, U.S. 89 came north to Phoenix from Tucson.

And all four U.S. highways converged on Van Buren Street, which for decades was the gateway to the city and lined with "auto courts" and motels, all set off with neon signs to lure weary travelers. The Sierra Estrellas Web site offers a detailed history of the many motels and Douglas Towne wrote an interesting meditation on Van Buren for Modern Phoenix. Another aspect of U.S. 60: It was the demarcation for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. All living and farming south of U.S. 60 were interned, including those on Baseline Road.

With Van Buren being the repository of so much local highway history, two other gateways risk being forgotten: Grand Avenue and Buckeye Road. The WPA-built rail underpass on 17th Avenue south of the capitol shows the route where U.S. 80 separated from Van Buren, turned south and then west on Buckeye, which was also lined with small motels. Grand, the only diagonal in the young city's street grid, was another neon-lit boulevard carrying U.S. 60 to Los Angeles via Wickenburg and U.S. 89 to Prescott up terrifying Yarnell Hill.