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April 14, 2010

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Great post Jon. one unresolved issue I do have though, is how to deal with the 'burbs usurping the Phoenix name to give their events and/or company the appeal of belonging to the '5th biggest city' even though they never step foot in the Valley.
In one sense, we are all in this together' and need to come together under one banner if we are to succeed, but in another, these suburban entities are taking resources and talent away from the core and instead investing it in perpetuating the sprawl of which the 'kookacracy' is so fond.

Why does civic pride not grow in the desert? Guesses: No history, no future, only the present. Add to that the rootlessness of the new inhabitants that Jon so often alludes to. (Maybe desert people have to be nomads.) Because of that, a lack of common culture, except a rejection of "common culture"? No physical manifestations (of what?) to be proud of. No physicality in general because Phoenix is in the middle of nowhere and no one wants to be outside too much to experience the physicality of that place - heat & sunshine, endless dreary samey settlement.

Phoenix is also everywhere because of the lack of distinctions and boundaries to the surrounding municipalities. If it weren't so spread out, geographical distinctions such as the valley might have played a bigger role. Geographical restrictions and features like water and mountains are what make the character and raison d'etre of a city. All the great cities have them.

Phoenix instead has become much too big for its own good. The are no geographical restrictions. There is cheap and flat land all around and even the restrictions of distance and climate are temporarily paved over with cheap energy. Multiply and spread everywhere into an indistinguishable mass!? The restrictions of physics and biology will assert themselves soon enough.

Finally, boosterism can not replace genuine confidence. Those who could profit from boosterism don't need it. Do it too much and when the varnish degrades there is no self, no character -- who are we anyway? Is there only fear and self loathing in Phoenix?

When we talk about Phoenix history, we're really talking about a city that inadvertently doomed itself with too much success. It had been a sweet little city at one time and then exploded after World War II with such force that it dissipated its best possibilities. Instead of galvanizing the region, it let the region strangle its host.

We are an unfortunate accident of history. Combine cheap energy, cheap land, cheap water and this is what you get.

The name Phoenix does not connote quality or something longstanding and durable. But there are some wonderful things here if you look hard enough. And chances are you'll find them in the older parts of the city or in the topography of the desert. No one will remember or care about Gilbert, Chandler, Peoria or Goodyear. There isn't anything there except the throwaway wrappers of consumer America. Most of Phoenix is similarly expendable. But the few things that redeem this hellhole we call the Valley are disproportionately in old Phoenix.

If the name Phoenix is lacking cachet, that's entirely appropriate. We aren't a real city and haven't been for 50 years. But there are ghosts here more vital than any Wal-mart. They're the only good reason to live here.

The problem from my perspective is one you alluded to. Put simply, most people are not proud of Phoenix. A city that had so much potential (climate, natural beauty, unheard of disasters like floods and earthquakes, etc.) was ruined. Our ocean views (the mountain preserves) were littered with giant, bright houses chopped into their sides with Phelps Dodge sensitivity. Some of the most beautiful areas of our lush desert were destroyed (Ahwatukee, north Scottsdale). Our building stock consists of mostly terrible quality stucco boxes and the factory-produced "ranches" of Maryvale. The few vertical buildings we have are mostly the dehumanized Deathstars of modernism. Our public square is the traffic jam on I-10.

Is it lost forever? I'm not sure. The light rail system is one of the only things we've done right in this city in the past 40 years or so. You're starting to see small signs of ownership and pride returning - but we have a long way to go.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Phoenix (depending largely on how we handle the downtown area), but have a few notable observations:

-- Went with a few friends to explore the newly growing nightlife downtown several weeks ago. It was depressing, with the sole exception of my old standby Seamus McCaffrey's.

-- Overheard a friend telling others at a party last weekend that his girlfriend just bought a place in Arcadia. "Where's Arcadia," they asked. "It's a neighborhood just to the west of Old Town Scottsdale. Nice area."

-- Had multiple recent conversations with affluent contacts from around the country with no perspective to call this a "Valley of..." anything, but they still refuse to acknowledge Phoenix's presence -- opting instead to refer repeatedly to Scottsdale, even implying that I was from Scottsdale or whatever.... It especially irked me when one complained that he had to fly into Phoenix in order to reach his parents' house in Carefree/Scottsdale: "Why isn't there a bigger airport IN Scottsdale?" The conversation moved on before I could explain.

-- Meanwhile, the only people I typically see actively promoting the "Phoenix" brand do so with either 602 tattoos or with the Phoenix logo as a tattoo or window decal. Maybe we could step it up with Calvin decal peeing on Glendale or Mesa's city logo?

Tto top it all off, I go back to observation #1 and Jon's comments about local boosterism. The sad part for me is that when you actually look at what Phoenix offers her typical middle-income residents these days, it's mostly a tad pathetic. We have entirely ordinary neighborhood sandwich shops masquerading as regional hot spots in the dining sector and generally meager retail or like services throughout much of our city (parts of the Biltmore/Arcadia and North Phoenix exempt).

My proposal is that we start digging deeper and help promote some of the seemingly benign local treasures that you absolutely cannot find anywhere else. What do our historic barrios have to offer? Their resilience could teach us plenty about how neighborhoods interact over time, forgotten by the speculators and city leaders, and left to get by on their own. Let's just take the good from what they do and build around it.

By the way, no offense intended toward to those local sandwich shops that I regarded as "entirely ordinary," but my point was that their presence in most city's of Phoenix's size probably would not be well known beyond a couple miles. I still like and respect what they're doing. Please keep it up, guys. That's all.

What happens when we ask a fairly recent transplant why the came here? My perspective spans 40 years, so it does change with time but several things are constant. They love the scenery, they love the golf, they love the dining and the many entertainment options. Why? Because these attributes are all mostly better than where they call "home".

Bottom line: we still have a lot going for us. Yes, our "legal immigrants" and their myopia are an issue, but we still have a lot to recommend us.

"AWinter" wrote:

"Phoenix is also everywhere because of the lack of distinctions and boundaries to the surrounding municipalities. If it weren't so spread out, geographical distinctions such as the valley might have played a bigger role. Geographical restrictions and features like water and mountains are what make the character and raison d'etre of a city."

Phoenix is home to the two largest municipal parks in the United States: The Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and South Mountain Park. There is also a large network of canals, which are now bike paths. Try hiking and biking to get a sense of the geographic features of the city.

Try it at night if it's too hot during the day, but don't take a flashlight. There is plenty of ambient light in the middle of any city, and if that isn't enough at first, wait for a moonlit night. There is nothing like a night hike from the TV towers in South Mountain Park to Tempe. It isn't yet rattlesnake season.

There are certain places in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, too, which are magical for a hiker. Those mountains on the horizon, backlit with an indigo glow at night, remind me of a planetscape about half way out in the solar system.

"For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!"

-- Edgar Poe, "Dreamland"

"Soleri" wrote:

"The name Phoenix does not connote quality or something longstanding and durable."

The desert was once a sea. It will be a sea yet again.

"A phoenix is a mythical bird that is a fire spirit with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (Greek for sun-city). It is said that the bird's cry is that of a beautiful song."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology)

When I think back on the many hours of the decades of my Arizona life in the Sprawlopolis™ spent in a suffocating box either cringing from speeders or being jerked around in stop-and-slow traffic, I wonder if truth in advertising should require the entire mess to be renamed "Cargatory".

Jim may have inadvertently hit on one part of the problem. If the newcomers arrive seeking golf, dining and entertainment options — and this is the Scottsdale-PV-Fountain Hills set — with some exceptions they don't value community or city. They're after the exclusive and exclusionary "resort lifestyle." Even Scottsdale becomes a throwaway community, to be used up. These folks also tend to vote against every proposal for civic good; no surprise there. Great cities all have dining, entertainment and golf, but that can't be the foundation of their civilization.

Man, ya'll are depressing. It's hard to live here in the summer, and the lack of creative jobs is a bummer, I admit. I struggled with coming back to my hometown after living on the East Coast for years. But it's not all bad, you know.

Orange blossoms in March. Green chile burros. Saguaros. Desert sunsets. Eating breakfast outside nearly year round. Monsoons. Cottonwoods turning yellow in the fall. A day trip to Prescott's town square to enjoy fresh snow. Low slung ranch houses. Family.

And honestly, my "hometown" is Tempe, but I rarely said that back east. Phoenix was easier--and true. Since coming back in 2001, it's what my address says too.

Jon is correct. The "resort lifestyle" tends to be rather shallow and lacks much in the way of community involvement. He contends that this mindset is more related to Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and little Fountain Hills where I live to escape the bad air. In reality, I believe that it pervades (or at least influences) many more modest communities hereabouts.

But if it brings in folks with reasonable financial resources, it is probably a net positive vs. the low skill/low wage "legal immigrants" who are presently in such financial trouble.

This discussion about resort amenities reminds me of one of Jon's earlier articles regarding exclusive retirement communities. We invited throngs of people who have no interest in contributing to the common good, and it appears that we continue to do so.

Jon and others have mistakenly singled out tiny Fountain Hills (pop. 24,000) as one of those self-styled "exclusive"enclaves having little interest in contributing, etc. With an average age of 45 years, it is really a bedroom community with some elderly vestiges of the old McCulloch Midwest marketing plan where they flew the DC3's down from Minn-e-so-ta, laden with potential land buyers. Average home values are pretty modest . . in the $300's. Volunteerism flourishes. And it has a real citizen-driven strategic plan. I'd much rather call this my home town than claim Phoenix with its congestion, pollution and stucco lookalike strip malls!

Jim is a highly unusual resident of Fountain Hills: progressive, deeply committed to Arizona, interested in the outside world, etc. That said, I watched McCulloch level one of the loveliest Saguaro forests in the state to build Fountain Hills. Then make its signature the further abomination of "the world's tallest fountain" -- using water not to create shade trees or crops, but just to market houses. FH was an early example of the costly, environmentally damaging leapfrog sprawl that has done so much damage in Phoenix and around the country. Now exurbia has passed FH by and surrounded it. Shea "Boulevard" is a parking lot (and the area is where the region's smog stacks up against the mountains). So FH is what it is, and has nice people as every place does. But it is totally car dependent, etc. When I lived in Phoenix I was in a house built in 1914 in the old city and didn't go to malls. So there are alternatives to exurbia and suburbia. If you want to see what Shea looked like once, rent the movie "Electra Glide in Blue."

Mr. Talton wrote:

"I watched McCulloch level one of the loveliest Saguaro forests in the state to build Fountain Hills."

I daresay they mowed down even larger and lovelier forests of saguaros in order to built Phoenix. The place was a desert, after all. One only gets greenbelts in a desert via irrigation (and that uses more water than any fountain, by far).

"Then make its signature the further abomination of "the world's tallest fountain" -- using water not to create shade trees or crops, but just to market houses."

Probably quite attractive. And what counts for water usage isn't water volume but water throughput. In a fountain, what goes up comes down; then it gets sucked into the pump again, to go up. The only replacement cost is via evaporation.

"FH was an early example of the costly, environmentally damaging leapfrog sprawl that has done so much damage in Phoenix and around the country. Now exurbia has passed FH by and surrounded it."

Every outlying development is a suburb or exurb until growth fills in the gap (as it almost inevitably does). Just consider the ever-changing borders of Phoenix-proper from the early 20th century onward. What we now call "Central Phoenix" includes a large number of areas which originally were rural fringes or desert.

"Shea 'Boulevard' is a parking lot (and the area is where the region's smog stacks up against the mountains). So FH is what it is, and has nice people as every place does. But it is totally car dependent, etc. "

Well, isn't Phoenix just as car-dependent? And if not, what are those greyish-brown clouds visible from every hilltop, which get thicker and more omnipresent every year?

Though I did see a recent article in the Arizona Republic, containing some unusually progressive elements, about a possible expansion of both light rail and commuter rail. One of the most interesting portions, under the sub-heading "The Great Recession", read:

* * *
When an inflated housing market cratered the economy and cheap gas became a thing of the past, Phoenix-area planners realized the grow-outward model could become unsustainable.

The recession pushed thousands of people to abandon their homes to foreclosure, starting in suburban fringes.

"The places that had the most foreclosures were the places with the most exposure to transportation costs," said Scott Bernstein, president of the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology, which analyzes the combined costs.

A decade ago, nationally, suburban and urban foreclosures matched one-for-one. Last year it was four-to-one, he said.

Aaron Golub, a professor of sustainability and urban planning at Arizona State University, points out that in 2006, Arizona and the country saw for the first time in history a sustained drop in driving. He said it suggested a shift in habits. Longer-term shifts are more significant.

"The demographic changes are so vast that the number of single-family detached homes that the Valley needs in 2050 have already been built," he says.
* * *

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/04/15/20100415new-routes-for-arizona-light-rail.html

Of course, there's a big difference between an idea and authorized planning; and a plan is not a funded project -- that takes tax dollars.

Still, the article contains some remarkable statements: (a) nationally, the ratio of suburban to urban foreclosures is now 4-1; (b) long-term demographic changes, if continued, suggest that Phoenix already has enough single-family homes to last until 2050.

"When I lived in Phoenix I was in a house built in 1914 in the old city and didn't go to malls."

Somehow I'm reminded of a line from "Cugel's Saga" by Jack Vance: "I once swam across a lake of fire, merely to notify an old woman that the calamity she dreaded was unlikely to occur."

The shifting sands of relativism are notoriously...well...shifty. Everything in Phoenix (a giant, water-wasting, artificial suck-hole built in a DESERT and wholly dependent on piped-in water for the illusion of verdancy) is new relative to the East Coast.

Everything on the East Coast is new relative to the Old Country (England), which has its own architectural age snobbery in which only structures built before the Norman invasion are regarded as genuinely old. By Roman standards, England is just another fresh young face; the Greeks consider the Romans to be upstarts; and the Egyptians consider the Greeks in a similar light.

As long as the population keeps multiplying, expansion is necessary. Which brings us back to those long-term demographic changes...

Central Phoenix is on or contiguous to an area of ancient human settlement (hence, the name). Phoenix prior to 1950 was very similar to the Hohokam, using the river for agriculture, albeit with better technology. The city was walkable, scalable, could feed itself, and had both trolleys and rail service. Today's Phoenix is an artifice of a moment in history that won't last. It is unsustainable based on its urban form and probably population (maybe you could fit 4 million in high-quality density inside the Salt River Project footprint, but that's not going to happen). Finally, leapfrog housing developments are not the same as towns that arise organically. Leapfrog development brings huge public infrastructure costs and destroys important ecosystems to serve private profit for the few. They are particularly ill-conceived in a desert.

Detroit is the only other city I can think of that people will not admit to being from.

"I daresay they mowed down even larger and lovelier forests of saguaros in order to built Phoenix. The place was a desert, after all."

Contra Emil, just about all of older Phoenix was built on a large alluvial plain. The Salt River changed course periodically (at one time, it was just south of Camelback Mountain). This was not ideal topography for lush stands of saguaros. Of course, the Hohokams came before us, so the original deforestation of Sonoran flora occurred before the first Anglo settlements.

I grew up in Sunnyslope and still remember some unspoiled desert land, particularly in the hills (e.g., where Pointe Tapatio is now located). The desert here, being at somewhat higher elevation, was lusher. Saguaros were much more common on the mountainsides and near desert washes. But I wouldn't describe this, even loosely, as a forest.

Fountain Hills, as we all know, is situated in one of Earth's most spectacular eco-systems. The upper Sonoran desert (old Phoenix is "lower")
was not useful for agriculture and withstood human depredations until the miners came here, and finally, out-of-state refugees looking for their slice of heaven. They found it yet many were perplexed by it. Disneyfying this stunning desert with crushed granite and tropical plantings is an unspeakable blasphemy. How could you possibly improve on the Sonoran desert? Yet throughout the northeast "valley" you see some of the most insensitive landscaping imagineable. The architecture is, for the most part, just as insipid.

Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert remains the indispensable book for understanding our improbable (and often cruel) "hydraulic civilization".

OK, I stand corrected. Alluvial plain it is. And thanks for the eco-history!


Alex brings me to another idea: Detroit was Motown before its demise into a hollowed-out crater of the North American industrial economy. Los Angeles was 'LA', Hollywood and all the rest before SoCal turned into a teeming mass. Las Vegas was and still is Sin City and so forth.

Maybe Phoenix missed something "growing up". Maybe it could have billed itself as the "Oasis City" or something like it.

But who needs an oasis in this day and age? We have Club Med.

Reading Mr. Talton's pieces one would think of Phoenix as Los Angeles. If one were not more informed, well read, educated, and traveled it would be easy to bit the apple. While I applaud Mr. Talton's love of Phoenix' history I question the fact finding to which he bases his assumptions and I cannot call his assumptions, facts as he'll find very little evidence.

I read that Mr. Talton moved to Seattle in 2000; I've lived in Seattle long term many times since 1988 and now live in Phoenix since 2005 and base my writing here on facts and observations. Seattle IS not the "green" or environmentally friendly city that is gleamed about in Talton's writings nor is it the transit oriented haven described in many publications. Comparing Seattle's car dependency to Phoenix is rather difficult and different but some general observations can be made. I choose Seattle/Phoenix because obviously his writings are based mainly on comparisons themselves.

Seattle has always ranked FAR worse than Phoenix for congestion, miles traveled, sprawl produced traffic starts (distance to work from home), etc. In 2009 the most recent traffic study ranked Phoenix the 29th worst city/metro for traffic and congestion and average miles and time traveled/spent commuting to work. Seattle was ranked in the top 10.

Phoenix' light rail system, while woefully underdeveloped, has topped the charts in actual productivity. It is considered the most successful light rail start-up in the nations thus far. Sunday ridership in metro Phoenix trumps metro Seattle's ridership in embarrassing fashion: Seattle's WEEKDAY ridership does not even compare to Phoenix' SUNDAY ridership counts.

As for this article as a newcomer to Phoenix (relatively speaking) I never really hear "The Valley" as a readily used name-place for "Phoenix" as the metro. It is generally used by the media and those that wish to speak of the area on certain occasions but still is rare and is not given the emphasis that Mr. Talton described.

Moreover, many in PHOENIX are not obsessed with comparing Phoenix to Scottsdale or Mesa! Many Phoenicians (like myself and proud to say Phoenix anytime even if I am new here)do not care if a Mesan or Scottsdaler refers to themselves by their city as those places deserve their own recognition from the city center. Scottsdale has long been an elite, classy, and expensive city even if it has a poor populations or poorer population in the southern tip of the city. It has economic clout and even progressive business interests that often clashes with the "ruler" at city hall.

Scottsdale BUSINESS leaders have envisioned a light rail line connecting the city to central Phoenix because it recognized PHOENIX as the vital link to its viability. Let The world renowned Phoenician keep its false Scottsdale address. We downtowners in Phoenix would like that sprawling, yet beautiful resort to keep that Scottsdale and want Phoenix to develop its own recognizable mainstays.

More and more people nationally and internationally see Phoenix as a rising city and world class city (even if just potential terms) because of the strives made in the central city region and stretching that definition to include very old areas of Tempe, S. Scottsdale and Mesa...even Glendale.

Where Mr. Talton believed that people in metro Phoenix were embarrassed of Phoenix as a name for the region is a mystery to me! But having friends in Seattle points to some clue as to why this cheddar is sell-able in there and cities similar to it: Portland comes to mind. There is a false sense of elite-citiness in these two northwest communities. The truth is that Portland and Seattle are far worse in sustainable categories than Phoenix; they use much more energy and water on a per capita level and hide their hideous sprawlburgs underneath a canopy of green. Drive 35 miles in any direction in Phoenix and you are pretty much in open desert, do this in Portland and Seattle and you are in suburban territory (or just half way through it in Tacoma to the south of Seattle. Metro Phoenix is more dense than Seattle and FAR more dense than Portland and this trend is likely to worsen for Seattle and Portland in the coming census.

While downtown Seattle gleams with many more highrises compared to downtown Phoenix it is mianly office space as downtown seattle only contains 35,000 residents and is much larger than the 1.5 square miles of downtown Phoenix with 12,000 residents (expected to grow by 30,000-45,000 within 20 years despite the recessions effect on construction in the short term vs long term). Much wiser would be to compare the Uptown, Midtown, Downtown corridors of Phoenix which just stretches to nearly 5 miles north to south and 1 mile east to west from 7th Ave to 7th St.

I don't know the residential population of this area but I'd expect it to be greater than 35,000?

The attitude and assumptions that lead some to believe that Phoenix is a vast desert flatland, like AWinter, show that many are simply not informed of this wonderful city's topography, makeup, history, or current path to urbanization. Although our politicians and those at the State Government level fail to understand these concepts, the cities do not. Soon urban interests and young city dwellers will replace the neo-Conservatives at the State level. The voice of long time Sun Citiers and new suburbanites will be muted as they are replaced and outnumbered at the polls.

Transplants have had children that are distinctly Arizonan, Phoenician and increasingly urban minded who will shock conservatives in their communities; most notably Surprise and Mesa. These children (now adults or entering adulthood) are not embarrassed of their core city because they see amenities here and sports team even that have offer civic pride. Despite the Cardinals and Diamondbacks have Arizona in their titles they are intrinsicly linked to Phoenix.

You get on the train and see the D-backs downtown! When you say downtown in metro Phoenix EVERYONE knows you mean downtown Phoenix. One reason for this IS the light rail. It links Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix and the most traveled/visited sites and establishments in the Southwest and nation; ASU's campuses (the largest in the nation), Sky Harbor International Airport(8th busiest in the nation), Chase Field, U.S. Airways Center, downtown Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, The Heard Museum, medical centers like St. Joseph's Hospital and Barrow Neurological Institute and good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, and yes even a mall that anchor BOTH a Super Walmart and Super Target at the periphery of the central city region and near a major freeway.

P.S. Please excuse my lack of editing and second rate grammar! I posted before I read through my comment...slapped my own wrist. Thank you.

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