Phoenix had perhaps the worst luck of any major American city from the standpoint of urban design and civic beauty. It came of age in a huge spurt of growth in the 1950s and beyond. The City Beautiful Movement was forgotten. Suburbia, lookalike houses, automobiles and long single-occupancy car trips moved to the center of American life.
An old city still exists — what wasn't torn down by City Hall from the '70s through the '90s — but it's not much and most Phoenicians don't even realize it exists. When I lived in Willo, it was always painfully entertaining to be picked up by the airport shuttle, already full of people from the suburbs. They were giddy over the front porches! The shade trees! The old houses and walkable neighborhood and closeness to the center of the city! I learned that their real-estate agents had never even showed them this part of the city.
Suburbia wasn't always, as Jim Kunstler would put it, a cartoon landscape not worth caring about. Willo was once a suburb on the streetcar from a compact Phoenix. In Cincinnati, there's the magical Mariemont, a leafy "planned town" from the 1920s, which accommodated the American longing to "get out of the awful city," while creating a real community and a real human space worth caring about. It was accessible by — especially by — streetcar and interurban railway to downtown Cincinnati. Now the latter two are long gone as America has embraced a life with fewer choices.
A large number of people in metro Phoenix and a majority of the Anglo middle class live in something altogether different — a radical enterprise that has transformed civic life, urban form and even democracy: the "master planned community."
The "master planned community" differs substantially from ordinary single-family house construction — even large subdivisions, such as Maryvale in Phoenix or the blond-brick tract houses on the west side of the Sauerkraut Curtain in Cincinnati. Both those are organically part of their city. The "master planned community" -- I use quotes because it is a meaningless, feel-good marketing term -- is deliberately separate from its city, with profound and malignant consequences.
Imported from California (of course) in the late 1970s, these massive real-estate ventures promised development fees to the cities to which they were nominally attached. But in exchange, the developers received tremendous latitude and powers in everything from usurping traditional roles of elected government to setting deed covenants to keep the area "upscale." In other words, de facto segregated. A more extreme subgroup is the gated property — promoted as "gated communities," with metro Phoenix having among the largest share in the nation. Research by economists Wyatt Clarke and Matthew Freedman found that residents of these new mega-developments were more white and Asian than in traditional neighborhoods.
Governance largely comes from the developers and the so-called homeowners associations (HOAs) — which gained standing before the law — rather than from city councils. HOAs grew from almost zero in 1960 to covering 60 percent of homes in the United States in 2010. They govern more than 80 percent of new single-family houses in new subdivisions. The power of HOAs is focused on house-owners, as anyone who has tried to use an "unauthorized" paint scheme or even display an American flag has found. Traditional property rights and city zoning are handed off to the HOA.
Among the first such master-planned in metro Phoenix were McCormick Ranch (then larger than the extant city of Scottsdale), The Lakes in Tempe and Arrowhead Ranch, built on the citrus farm of Goldmar, partly owned by Bob Goldwater and family, and at the least on friendly terms with mobsters. Goldmar would play heavily in the 1976 Arizona Project by Investigative Reporters and Editors, following the bombing death of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
The "communities" are different in other ways as well: scale — they're huge; sprawl — they often leapfrog out beyond the existing urban footprint; environmental degradation, both based on their size and the practices of some of their kingpins (George Johnson in Pinal County, for one), and highly questionable water supplies in many cases, especially of the newer developments begun or proposed. Enjoy rapidly rising summer temps that last until Thanksgiving and lack of nighttime cooling? Thank "master planned communities" and the loss of citrus groves, farm fields and natural desert (not gravel) they obliterated.
They are death to real community. I remember speaking at a consultant's meeting to "blue sky" the future of Buckeye. A planner from Mesa said something to the effect of, whatever you do, please avoid master planned communities. In practice, these powerful development companies and the HOAs they leave behind hold enormous veto power over city hall and elected government.
Yet the sheer size of the ventures imposes ongoing costs on the public that were never covered by the initial development fees paid. If they're paid. In Arizona, impact fees are either nil or very low. Much of Mesa is hamstrung by "master planned communities." If Buckeye ever reached the ambitions of its boosters, it would be little more than a mass of these gigantic, semi-autonomous real-estate enterprises, each cut off from the other by walls, resulting in no real city.
Residents of "master planned communities" are by design separated from their nominal cities, both physically and psychically. I remember reading of the fairly routine abduction of a child or teen in Gilbert or Chandler and thinking: That would be much less likely here in the historic districts, because we have houses with windows and porches facing the streets, and we know each other.
The newer construction consists of roads, walls, garage doors and a focus on the "Arizona room" inside and the pool in the back. Shopping is a long drive to the mall, not a walk down to the corner retail district as in nearly every neighborhood of cities such as Seattle. Cul-de-sacs and few entry points keep the "community" separate from the community. Long roads wind through alongside subdivisions with nothing on either side but walls.
"Master planned communities" outlaw public spaces. This is on embarrassing display at Verrado, where the New York Times' clueless suburban apologist David Brooks saw, a la Lincoln Steffins, "the future."
Verrado sought to mimic the feel and design of the Phoenix historic districts. Even now, on a Google search, it oddly promises "downtown Phoenix Arizona homes." Unfortunately, Verrado is about 30 miles from downtown Phoenix, a leapfrog "master planned community" that is nominally part of Buckeye. (And good luck with that, because such leapfrog development leaves the hapless house buyer to commute partly on rural Interstate — because the developer sure as hell isn't going to pitch in for a wider freeway, much less commuter rail).
What is most striking about Verrado is its town center "park." But it's not a public park. It's privately owned, existing only as part of commerce. No homeless person can loiter there, as he or she can in, say, Encanto Park. The central cores of real American cities must serve as the last resorts for the castaways of multitudinous suburbs. Interestingly, however, Verrado's research showed a hunger for traditional neighborhoods among buyers. So the seeming popularity of "master planned communities" is largely explained by them being the only game in town. And by the neglect of public schools outside rich areas with these developments.
It would be bad enough if these dreary built environments were merely soul-deadening, socially isolating and a driver of a dysfunctional society. But, as noted above, they have tremendous power over city government, short-circuiting democracy, through deals negotiated by savvy developers years or decades ago.
Throughout the Sun Belt, "Master Planned Communities" have been ground zero in the catastrophic housing bust. Highly profitable in good times, they were ideally suited to a moment of large, consolidated house builders, a world awash in capital for real estate and cheap gasoline.
After the housing bust, unbuilt or partially built-out "masters" were public liabilities. They were foreclosure central. Their unfinished houses are stripped of copper and aluminum by thieves like something from the Third World, the big promises of developers dust in the mouths of struggling municipalities. The infrastructure costs of the leapfrog developments pushed out into the future remain a drag on state and local taxpayers long after the real-estate sharpies became wildly rich.
This is the dominant form of development in Phoenix. Millions file unquestioningly in and out of its dead ends every day. The dreamers in the Real Estate Industrial Complex imagine millions more living that way in Buckeye, Maricopa and the rest of Pinal County, Superstition Vistas in huge "Master Planned Communities" yet to come...Please, God, give me one more boom...
Yet even now some of the older "master planned communities" are starting to inevitably morph into linear slums — this is what happens when you have a low-wage, low-quality economy, a devil-take-the-hindmost society. They will be particularly resistant to retrofitting for transit or walkable neighborhoods with close-by retail — things that will be demanded by a higher-cost energy future and a talented cohort of people who don't want lives of garage doors and endless driving (or even championship golf!...whatever the hell that means). If you think central Arizona has the water to support "master planned communities" for another 3 million or 6 million fools from the snow...well, I have some land to sell you.
They are indeed dead ends. Walled off. Unsustainable. So very 1970s. And defining much of metro Phoenix. Perhaps the best outcome can be an orderly retreat to a sustainable core city, with the "communities" bulldozed and returned to the farmland, groves, (real) ranches and desert from which they sprang. The cooling and close-by food supplies will be badly needed.
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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.
Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.
Jon -- I recommend "Last Harvest: From Corn Field to New Town," Wytold Rhybczynski's readable history of real estate development. It's an east coast history, of course -- Rhybczynski is at Wharton and isn't that the only place that matters? But it's intersting to learn how the industry got its start.
You are right about the social, soulful impacts of the MP community (I am less aware of the impact on government, but I'm going to learn more). The walls and fortress-front houses create a level of isolation that can eventually take its toll on families and individuals. Other institutions -- schools, churches -- are left to close the gap. People patch together "custom" communities made up of a few friends from here and there : Little League teams, church, Scouts, etc. (This has been my life, anyway). When circumstances change people drift away ... It's a challenge for leaders to keep institutions like churches healthy and strong enough to provide the community we need, and when they fail, the emptiness hurts. The built environment is the result of external social and historical forces, but once in place it becomes a force itself. The MP community is pernicious in lots of ways -- oh please, no more. Let's find a different way.
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Harvest-Development-Washington-Twenty-First/dp/0743235975/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253891029&sr=8-1
Posted by: Liz | September 25, 2009 at 08:08 AM
I totally agree with about everything you say. We live in Chandler right now and we are wanting to escape to downtown. I have lamented for years how the empty lot at the entrance to our subdivision would make the perfect spot for a corner store, but nope. Probably because they can't find a "big box" retailer to fill the space.
Which, speaking of big box retailers, that is the other half of the coin...the fact that there is a Target every 5 miles and a CVS or Walgreens every 2 miles. There is very little allowance or encouragement of locally owned and operated businesses. There is a too tight tie between developers and big box retailers and it suffocates local ownership. After a while of shopping at the big boxes you realize they only view you as a "consumer unit" and not as a person.
If you are right that our housing culture was born out of a 70's attitude, then our retail culture was born out of the big business, big box 80's mentality.
Posted by: Aaron Stiner | September 25, 2009 at 08:41 AM
Why do you hate Arizona?
Posted by: Boor | September 25, 2009 at 09:37 AM
You know SciFi talks about the present as much as the future when you watch the 1999 movie "The Matrix": "'I’ve seen them Neo. Vast fields where humans are grown and liquefied in order to produce this', and Morpheus holds up a battery". The imagery of humans trapped in huge arrays of isolated incubation pods spread out over the landscape reminds me of...
Posted by: Merk | September 25, 2009 at 10:04 AM
Is it a bit of a stretch to conclude that outer-ring suburbs (including most master-planned communities) are the political soul of the new right? Isolate people in their houses and cars, privatize many public functions, and economically segregate them from those less fortunate. This artificial world compels the arguments of the "haves" who proudly claim not to need or depend on others. It veils the choices people make from their ultimate consequences. And it feeds the delusion that those consequences can be neatly compartmentalized, thus neutralizing energy and environmental concerns.
David Brooks celebrates this world partly because it's the demographic counterbalance to an increasingly diverse nation. He might prefer more Hispanics and even blacks in master-planned communities just to see if it can alchemize among them similar responses. If so, the future of the American right is assured for the long term.
I bicycle a lot and sometimes wander into these places. What are people watching on those glowing big-screen TVs? Is it a reminder of a real place, more dangerous and exciting, but entirely "out there" and contained? Are they clucking their tongues at the craziness and disorder they see represented? Do they self-congratulate for their own security?
I'm not a sociologist like David Brooks but all I see is the pain nice people thought they could avoid by escaping to these places.
Posted by: soleri | September 25, 2009 at 11:27 AM
The Unbearable Lightness of David Brooks:
"Most of Brooks's own ideas are clichés borrowed from popular culture....Like William Whyte, another child of Philadelphia's western suburbs fascinated with the interplay of money and manners among his contemporaries, Brooks is a journalist who works on sociological turf. But Whyte, who was an editor for Fortune in the 1950s, observed how people lived, inferred trends, considered what they meant, and then came up with grand conclusions about the direction of the country. When, in 1954, he wanted to find out which consumers were trend-setters, he went into Overbrook Park and surveyed 4,948 homes -- all inhabited by real people. Brooks, by way of contrast, draws caricatures. Whether out of sloppiness or laziness, the examples he conjures to illustrate well-founded premises are often unfounded, undermining the very points he's trying to make.
"In January, I made my own trip to Franklin County, 175 miles southwest of Philadelphia, with a simple goal: I wanted to see where David Brooks comes up with this stuff. ...As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home."
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos_in_paradise/
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | September 25, 2009 at 05:09 PM
The Adventures of The Idiot David Brooks (in easy to digest comic-strip format):
http://dir.salon.com/story/comics/tomo/2005/01/31/tomo/index.html
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | September 25, 2009 at 05:17 PM
CityScape was pitched as the suburban mall in the downtown specifically for downtown newcomers who still wanted chain stores. That's pretty much tanked, and it's turned out that the restaurants that feed the business crowd and the Stand Up Live venue survive.
The reason for cars being sold now with GPS units is all about driving into master planned communities that are so cookie cutter, you simply can't tell one house from another!
Posted by: Steve Weiss | August 04, 2013 at 01:11 PM