Rogue Columnist

The best of Rogue 2015

Photo by Eugene Scott

• Phoenix should leave the Greater Phoenix Economic Council: "GPEC can't serve the special needs of Phoenix and the appetite of the sprawl boyz. Maybe a few projects to far north Phoenix. But what has GPEC done for downtown, the Central Corridor or to fill abundant empty land along the light-rail line in the city? Not much if anything."

• The evolution of the press, radio, and television in Phoenix: "It is an open question of how much power "the Pulliam press" actually had in post-war Phoenix. The city was attracting large numbers of middle-class Anglos from the Midwest that already shared his larger political philosophy. Pulliam was a civic leader, but hardly the only one, and most shared a common vision of a "business friendly" low-rise city with minimal restrictions on individuals. At least on white people."

• Still got Dick Nixon to kick around: "For decades, Richard Nixon has been the devil to the left. But the left isn't politically relevant anymore (Jerry Ford Republicanism is what passes for "the left" in today's broken political spectrum). What's more consequential is that Nixon is now the devil to the right, which is more powerful than ever. So in the public square today, we are relitigating not Watergate but the domestic achievements of Tricky Dick."

Man behind the curtain

It seemed like the 1980s and 1990s all over again, the recent Arizona Republic story about a speculator ordered to pay $86.4 million arising from a lawsuit over the "Road to Nowhere" land play west of the White Tanks. The project promised housing for 300,000 residents. It was never built.

I urge you to read the story. The labyrinthine deal and long-running court battle defy easy explanation and benefit from the authoritative writing of veteran Republic reporter Dennis Wagner. If you're outraged by a government official padding his expense account, you should see how the private sector rolls in Arizona.

Unfortunately, local journalists rarely venture into alleged wrongdoing by corporations, much less the enormously powerful elements that comprise the Real Estate Industrial Complex. When this happens, however, the curtain rises, ever so slightly on how "the system" really works, how power is used.

This is one of those rare moments. And, not surprisingly, at the center of this story is the fascinating Conley Wolfswinkel. At about age 65, he is the Energizer Bunny — or the Terminator ("That's what he does! That's all he does! You can't stop him!") — of central Arizona land speculation.

Happy holidays

The saddest Christmas story I've encountered this year is the lack of holiday lights on Central Avenue.

From the time that I was a child until I left Phoenix in the late 1970s, decorations spanned Central downtown. You would also find the at Park Central, when it was still a mall.

Later, more compact displays were attached to the light poles along the main boulevard of the city. This continued in various reincarnations into the 2000s. But not this year.

So while Phoenix is full of places to see great Christmas lights, there's nothing on Central. This shows that despite the progress made in the core, something essential is lacking.

The cost of choices

We had a lively discussion on the previous column about people wanting choices in where they live. One of Phoenix's biggest competitive disadvantages is that is largely lacks the choice of a vibrant downtown and real urban neighborhoods. Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Denver, Portland and Seattle, among others have them. They also have suburbs, malls, championship golf, big boxes and chain restaurants. Phoenix mostly only offers the latter.

I have an urban sensibility; growing up close to a then lively downtown Phoenix I always have. So while I don't "get" the appeal of suburbia, much less the exurbia exemplified by the mess outside Prescott and in the Verde Valley, I don't want to harshly judge those who want that.

I only want them to pay for it. And they don't.

Suburbia and exurbia, for all their GOP "I got mine" individualist attitude, are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Let me count the ways.

• FHA, other federally backed mortgages, and the mortgage tax deduction enabled especially Anglos to buy houses in the Maryvales of America and their successors. Urban neighborhoods were often redlined and assistance was not available. Smart Growth America reported that these federal subsidies cost $450 billion a year.

• Freeways sucked the life out of cities and made suburbs more convenient. Freeways did nothing positive for cities and entailed the destruction of entire urban neighborhoods. In the case of Phoenix, freeways made otherwise worthless desert or land only valuable for agriculture into gold mines for sprawl developers. This, along with the massive subsidies detailed elsewhere, has proved highly distorting to market forces.

Cautious signs of hope

After spending two weeks in Phoenix, I'm tempted to conclude that the central city is undergoing its most robust efflorescence in decades. And it is happening below the "red line" of Camelback Road.

This is not based on any single project — the Central Station tower and new arena for the Suns and perhaps Coyotes may or may not happen. Rather, dozens of smaller projects, mostly residential, are completed, under construction or in advanced site work or planning. Lots that have sat vacant for decades are seeing construction. Buildings are being restored — one example is the nice job the Old Spaghetti Factory did with its two former mansions on Central.

Commerce is happening, albeit on a mostly small scale, with startups and a few companies moving jobs into downtown, Midtown and Uptown. The restaurant scene is booming. We're far beyond the days when we struggled to keep Durant's, My Florist, Portland's and Cheuvront in business. Traffic is busy on Central again; more important, so is pedestrian and bicycle activity. Outside the core but in the old city many shopping strips have been given new looks.

This is small potatoes for what should be happening in the core of one of the nation's largest cities. Seattle has about a hundred major projects recently completed or underway, many of them highrises. The skyline is being dramatically remade. But considering the damage done to Phoenix over many decades of civic malpractice, it is verging on a spectacular rebirth.

Why do they hate us?

I thought President Obama gave a decent speech: measured, mature, mostly realistic. I also thought: Many of us are going to miss "No Drama Obama." The number of minds changed: probably zero. So it goes in our Cold Civil War.

The elephant in the Oval Office was Saudi Arabia. Its funding of Wahhabi ideology across the world — and whose practice as a nation with stoning, beheading, etc. resembles an ISIL* (ISIS, Daesh) gone legit — is a huge factor in the rise of radical, militant Islamist terror. Remember 9/11?

This is not the only disconnect in our ongoing strange days, where the cavalcade of domestic massacres was interrupted by the San Bernardino shooting. That one was committed by Muslims at least one of whom had pledged allegiance to ISIL.

Whatever that means.

Traffic in old Phoenix

Nothing has done more to wreck American cities than cars. Jane Jacobs was more precise: Planners and road builders "do not know what to do with automobiles in cities because they do not know how to plan for workable and vital cities anyhow — with or without automobiles."

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she continued: "The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood and satisfied than the complex needs of cities... Cities have more intricate economic and social concerns than automobile traffic. How can you know what to try with traffic until you know how the city itself works, and what else it needs to do with its streets? You can't."

This 1961 warning did not stop the ongoing civic vandalism, which was particularly visited on Phoenix with catastrophic consequences.

Old Phoenix, with its 17 square miles and 105,000 people in 1950, was convenient and walkable. Streets were of modest widths — you can still see it on Third and Fifth avenues today. Cars easily co-existed with pedestrians. One fine example was the shady City Beautiful Movement parkways on Moreland and Portland streets. North of McDowell, Central was a two-lane street lined with lush palms.

But the planner elite, with their superstitions about how cities should work, were already undermining it.