Rogue Columnist

Phoenix in the 'teens'

In 2010, Phoenix and Arizona were stuck in the worst (by most measures) bust since the Great Depression. Unemployment peaked at 10.9% in January statewide and 10.2% in metro Phoenix. Single-family housing starts in the metro area plunged from a monthly peak of 6,000 in 2004 to 854. Construction jobs fell from 183,000 in June 2006 to 81,000 in the summer of 2010. Phoenix was a national epicenter of the housing crash.

It was an eerie time. Freeways that had been clogged with tradesmen's pickup trucks were noticeably empty.

Now, nearly a decade later, the economy has recovered. Metro Phoenix joblessness was 4.1% in October, higher than the 3.6% nationally but still a marked improvement. Building permits clawed out of the 2009 trough but are still at levels of the early 1990s.

Population — the holy of holies worshipped by the local-yokel boosters — bounced back. After falling from 2008 to 2010, it rose by 653,000 by 2018 in the metro area. A much ballyhooed snapshot had the city itself the fastest-growing in the United States from 2017 to 2018. But the percentage rate of change looks to be slower this decade than the 2000s or the record 1990s.

True, the decade doesn't officially end until a year from now. But the "twenties" begin in the popular imagination this New Year's. So let's take stock of the "teens":

Spreading tech innovation

A new report from the Brookings Institution highlights how "Superstar Cities" — Boston, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco and Silicon Valley — captured nine out of 10 jobs at the headwaters of advanced industries from 2005 to 2017. (See the coverage here and here). And it offers an ambitious plan to spread tech centers to "loser cities" in what is mostly considered flyover country.

An interesting footnote: One of the authors of the Brookings study is my friend Mark Muro, who worked at the Morrison Institute at ASU in the early 2000s.

One can't argue with this reality, particularly set against rising inequality and four decades of mergers that took away the economic crown jewels of hundreds of American cities. But some context is also necessary. In addition to these headwinds, many of the "loser cities" made their own fate.

And I'm not talking about Detroit or Cleveland. A better example can be found in Phoenix. Despite being the nation's fifth-largest city and 13th largest metropolitan area, Phoenix punches well below its weight. And no outside force has done this to Phoenix as much as Phoenix has done it to itself.

When Payson was small

In 1967, my mother arranged for me, my friend Billy Warren, and my grandmother to spend much of the summer in Payson. It had not been connected to the outside world by a paved highway for even a decade. The population was around 1,500 and it was clustered around a real tiny town, the enchanting massif of the Mogollon Rim towering to the north above the forest. I was 10.

We lived in a rented house on what's now called Frontier Street, a few blocks west of Arizona 87 (the Beeline Highway). Like almost everything in town, it was built of wood. An early look around was a disappointment to this callow city kid: No trains, no chain restaurants, no easy biking to parks or soda fountains. I don't recall having television, either. Payson revolved around the two-lane highway, with logging trucks rumbling by and everything locally owned. At night, the darkness was primeval under the vault of billions of stars.

The fear of boredom didn't last more than 24 hours at most. The volunteer fire department had a new station a block south, a place to hang around, admire the apparatus, and talk to the firefighters. I got a library card and quickly became a darling of the librarians by being a bibliophile and checking out books every few days.

But the big show was outside.

Both Billy and I were in Scouts — Camp Geronimo was north of Payson — so my grandmother had no concerns about us spending most of the day wandering around the forest. And we did, armed with canteens, pocket knives and compass. She trusted our good sense and caution. In those days, child abductions were rare. Today, Arizona has 909 open cases of missing persons, many children.

Into the wild

When I was about three, my family was driving from Tucson to Phoenix in those pre-Interstate times. I have three vivid memories. The first is the restaurant where we ate breakfast; it had ancient double doors with windows behind ancient double screens. The second is the fierce rainstorm that cut visibility severely, almost the desert version of a whiteout. We headed out of Coolidge, my mother behind the wheel, me between her and my grandmother. No other cars were on the two-lane road.

My third memory is of a vast torrent of fast-moving latte-colored water that suddenly appeared in front of us.

I'm sure it wasn't as wide or as biblical as I recall it. I had never seen water in a river before! But what was undeniable is that the bridge had washed out — perhaps at the Gila River — and only my mother's caution, slow speed, and fighter-pilot reflexes prevented our deaths.

As I write now, searchers are still trying to find six-year-old Willa Rawlings, lost when her father's "military-like truck" was swept away in flooding Tonto Creek. The bodies of her brother and cousin, both five, were found Saturday. Only Willa's shoe has been recovered. Her parents escaped.

The Republic's Laurie Roberts hit the right notes of sympathy and bafflement — that the driver would try to cross the flooded creek, and that the Legislature in its low-tax religion has failed to build a bridge. Yet I suspect little will change. Especially on the common-sense front, for bridges can be overwhelmed as anyone knows who remembers Scottsdale's comic attempts to span Indian Bend Wash in the 1970s.