27 December 2018

The Future of Ozones for Mesa > More Industrial/Residential Sprawl

That was the answer to a question  appearing in my inbox in an email blast sent by Smart Growth Action Content on December 13, 2018.
First of all - and it certainly looks like it's a foregone fact-of-life here in Mesa:
Mesa Sprawls!
Here is a 32-year time lapse of urban sprawl in Mesa.
Published on Dec 14, 2016, so far the streaming upload has only received 41 views! HEY!!
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Here in Mesa it's definitely a Tale of Two Zones located in The Outer Loops that don't exactly fit the established criteria to get pre-designated as 'low-income communities' - in affluent Northeast Mesa and affluent Southeast Mesa:
The Falcon Field Opportunity Zone
The Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport Zone
(Both former military airfields now clustered with industrial/tech corridors and master-planned communities)
Hold onto that thought for a moment to see what a new OZone report has to say after meticulously ranking and assessing 7800+ Opportunity Zones by their smart growth potential and current social equity to identify which ones are positioned to bring positive social, environmental, and economic returns 
Sprawl or smart growth: the future of Opportunity Zones
Guiding Equitable Investments
Smart Growth America

Which Opportunity Zones have the most smart growth potential?

The newly created Opportunity Zones program will likely go down as the largest and most significant federal community development initiative in U.S. history, with trillions of dollars in new private investment about to start flowing into pre-designated low-income communities around the country.
The BIGGEST QUESTION TODAY IS THIS: will these investments benefit the people living in these communities now, or will they be displaced as new interest and development brings increased property values and rents? And what kind of development will this incentive bring? Unsustainable, car-dependent sprawl (the dominant growth paradigm in the United States today) or walkable, mixed-use communities with a variety of housing options for everyone?