Random observations from my trip to Arizona:
'Zonies, particularly Phoenicians and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, are always after cheap praise. "Make the community feel good about itself," as the diktat from the Arizona Republic to its "information center" goes. This is usually a license for boosterish fraud and an extended holiday from reality. Real accomplishment must be earned. I saw some of that on display.
* This past weekend's inaugural Tucson Festival of Books was a wonder. Sponsored by the Arizona Daily Star (what a concept: a newspaper supporting reading and printed media) and the University of Arizona, it was the first big-time book festival to happen in the state. The crowds were large and enthusiastic (people even came to see me speak and sign books). Big-name authors came from around the country. What was most amazing was the cohesive community support behind the event, from the array of corporate and philanthropic sponsors to the army of smiling volunteers. Tucson took its best-practices from the world-class Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and gave the state something magical. It's also important: a community push to improve literacy in a county where one out of five residents is functionally illiterate. Eat your heart out Phoenix.
* Getting to Tucson requires taking what is arguably the ugliest drive in America, through land where the groundwater has been mercilessly pumped out and man-made ugliness is everywhere. Most of I-10 is still the rural interstate that was built in the late '60s (even then inadequate), so traffic is thick and treacherous (with all those nasty Arizona drivers in their trucks and SUVs). This is surely the largest metro combination with no train service -- and there were three trains daily each way between Tucson and Phoenix as recently as the 1960s. Man-made Pima County is more of an abortion than even Maricopa County (Marana being a prime example). But Tucson itself has potential.
* The city is still relatively contained, especially the oldest parts. It hasn't torn down buildings relentlessly, leaving opportunities for reuse and avoiding the blight seen in Phoenix. Tucson wears its genuine desert landscape better than Phoenix's fake gravel and occasional dying cactus. Downtown and 4th Avenue could really be something with more private investment, more smart urbanites, and, of course, an economy that's not dependent on real estate and car dealers. They are already the most interesting and vibrant urban setting in the state. The anti-city Kookocracy in charge presents a headwind. Still, Tucson itself has potential. The missing link: transit. Other unsolicited advice: quit widening streets and don't build freeways.
* Back to earned accomplishment. Light rail in Phoenix is fast, sleek and efficient. And in my observations, as well as the stats, it's even more popular than its advocates had hoped. This is no surprise to me. Light rail has succeeded everywhere (I counted on Phoenix to screw it up; however, this system is done right, down to the smallest details. Even the shade structures seem to work). Anyone who rode the Red Line bus knew the system would be used -- but would it be used by more than the poor? The answer is, yes. I saw tourists, professionals, people out on the town. While visiting Portland's restaurant, I watched professionals taking light rail down to have a drink there, then returning to pick up their cars (or even to their center city neighborhoods). So, to repeat from my previous post, We built it, you bastards -- and it's working.
* I had a drink at Portland's and then dinner at Cibo. These are center-city businesses that were built on the hope of Phoenix's revival, and the owners kept faith through lean years. They're thriving, despite the down economy and helped, especially in the case of Portland's, by light rail. Portland's Dylan and Michelle Bethge and Cibo's Tony and Karen Martingiglio are the kind of civic stewards every city needs. Give them and the other center-city local retailers your business.
* Alas, much of the rest of central Phoenix looks like the set of an apocalypse movie. I'd guess that -- at the most -- 10 percent of the private projects promised between 2003 and 2007 are complete or under way. What's left is a pathetic landscape of abandoned construction sites, fenced and otherwise; stymied, half-done projects, newly uglified buildings, and empty land. Acres and acres of empty land. The city has been even more aggressive in tearing things down. You'd never know the old buildings Phoenix once had, and the potential they held. More about this in a future post.
* People are depressed and scared -- those paying attention, at least. And no wonder, the local economy is in a Depression. There's little full realization tbat the old growth machine is not coming back. They argue with me about the need to let the Kooks implement their policies, as the only way to showcase their failure and lead to them being thrown out. "I don't have that long to live!" one progressive legislator told me. Amazing to hear the widespread naive wailing about the departure of Saint Janet. The betrayal! The surprise! Really? Even I knew she had her exit plan in place for quite a while.
But I leave with the hope of earned accomplishment of those keeping faith with the place. I try to do so on this blog, even though my hometown had no place for me, and with all the dolorous changes, it wasn't really home anymore.
I went to UofA back in the early 70s. Tucson was close to magical then: downtown was thriving, the university dominated the city geographically and intellectually, and best of all: the nearby mountains and desert were unmarred by Phoenix-scale development.
I knew it would change and that it would break my heart. Today, Tucson is feels as listless as central Phoenix. There are still great things here and there. On the other hand, downtown died. The funky retail streets around the university are mostly gone the way of Mill Avenue (or gone completely). The city's schizophrenia about growth made major streets function like freeways but without that level of efficiency.
The city's 70s-era slow-growth movement unwisely ceded the battle by freezing Tucson's boundaries, thus allowing unchecked autocentric sprawl north of the city. Tucson's greens were never going to win. The pro-growthers - people like car-dealer Jim Click and land speculator Don Diamond - knew that power proceeds from wealth and easily vanquished the ragtag slow-growth forces.
Still, it was no small accomplishment keeping freeways from devastating the city. The price they paid - traffic congestion and street widening - was an inevitable consequence of wanting conflicting things: Tucson's basic suburban template but without the alienating kind of growth they saw in Phoenix.
Today, Tucson looks and feels like a suburb of Phoenix. The attrition of downtown power players, as in Phoenix, accounts for the feeling that there's no longer any galvanizing center here. Sprawl itself is not just the physical manifestation of decentralization, it's an actual consequence of it as well.
There's always going to be a film-like narrative that youth tells itself about lost edens. I'm as guilty as anyone in believing those stories. Certainly, there was this elegiac sense about the place even back in the 70s. Edward Abbey said it was doomed, even as he enjoyed Tucson's honky-tonks. Then there's the wonderful Tucson poet Richard Shelton who captured the mood in his Requiem for Sonora. Here are the last lines:
I am older and uglier
and full of the knowledge
that I do not belong to beauty
and beauty does not belong to me
I have learned to accept
whatever men choose to give me
or whatever they choose to withhold
but oh my desert
yours is the only death I cannot bear
Posted by: soleri | March 16, 2009 at 12:04 PM
You went to Portland's and failed to walk across the street to meet me? Shame on you.
Posted by: Matt Self | March 16, 2009 at 01:47 PM
Very incisive post. Thanks.
Posted by: Richard | March 16, 2009 at 03:49 PM
Just today I saw Channel 5's talented reporter Morgan Loew interviewed on CNN's morning show. He provided an overview of Phoenix's economic straits. The CNN anchor asked him at the close of the piece what would signal a rebound. Loew's response: The removal of so many foreclosed homes from the sales inventory and a resurgence of housing starts. Loew is a smart, resourceful and often counterintuitive journalist. But the groupthink -- that the state's growth industry IS GROWTH -- is ingrained and persistent. We have such a long ways to go.
And I agree: Tucson has a soul. Phoenix has an addiction.
Posted by: wally pip | March 16, 2009 at 04:45 PM
Another downtown Phoenix suggestion: Open up Union Station and bring the trains back.
Posted by: Bill | March 17, 2009 at 11:06 AM
Damn. I was at the festival and did not know you were there. I felt bad about it and then finally gleaned from the festival's awful (AZ Daily Star-provided) unnavigatible website that you had been on at the same time as the one author that I had gone there to see -- Elmore Leonard. They did a poor job of promoting the festival and a worse job of scheduling.
Posted by: Paul Benjamin | March 18, 2009 at 01:54 PM
I was signing at the booth right across from Leonard.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | March 18, 2009 at 02:10 PM
I lived in Tucson from 2001-08, and I loved the Sun Tran bus system. It had its flaws, but it really worked, and I had fewer stories of unreliable buses than my peers in the Phoenix metro area. I just think...If they could do so much with the support they have, how amazing could transit in Tucson be if the public really got behind it?
And yes, the lack of a train between Tucson and Phoenix is absurd.
Posted by: SLI | March 22, 2009 at 02:05 PM