Ground zero
"Have you noticed how many stories are generated out of Phoenix and Arizona by big national news organizations, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times? This is a big change from the days when we operated in relative obscurity. It is also no coincidence.
For one thing, the state is so different from the one I grew up in: 1.3 million population in 1960 vs. 7.2 million in 2020.
But more important is that many of the crises of the future are being played out here. Climate change. Border pressures. Demographic shifts. The crisis of political legitimacy and our experiment in self-government. We have a front-row seat and are players. Yes, I'm happy for the Suns (and that the arena contract requires the team to keep the city name) and for the center-city infill. Happy for light rail (WBIYB).
But all is not well. Indeed, it's shocking how dark the future looks — and Arizona is ground zero.
Continue reading "Ground zero" »
=========================================================================
Extracts
> Every four years, the nation's intelligence agencies publish an assessment of where the planet is headed over the coming 20 years. The latest, Global Trends 2040, is entitled "A More Contested World. . .Arizona isn't mentioned in the 144-page report. But one would have to be a fool or obsessed with the short-hustle of real estate not to see the implications. . .
> With the summers getting hotter and lasting longer (June set new record highs), the development interests have no response but more people, more sprawl, more freeways. They throw out techno-magical thinking such as "cool concrete" (which doesn't exist). Their answer to historic drought is to throw down gravel on the historic oasis to enable more sprawl. Wash, rinse, repeat. . .the residents now don't know what was lost and what's at risk. They live in highly vulnerable bubbles of air-conditioned cars, offices, and houses. They blather about not having to shovel sunshine and many take mountain hikes in high summer, often requiring risky rescues from the Fire Department. . .
> Shovel that. At some point, sooner than anyone realizes, Phoenix will become uninhabitable. With its enormous population — although with growth slowing, a historic low of 16% from 2010 to 2019 — Phoenix will present the nation with a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster scenario if the grid goes down in summer. Or a long out-migration back to the Midwest or up to the Pacific Northwest. Either way, the costs and dislocation will be huge and of national consequence.
This was one of the major points made by Andrew Ross in his 2011 book, Bird on Fire: Lessons From America's Least Sustainable City. Rather than pay attention and change course, the local-yokels attacked him and built more freeways.
They have been sowing the wind for decades with the childish delusion that only population growth mattered, and in the least sustainable fashion. Now we will reap the whirlwind."
====================================================================================
ADDENDUM FROM AN EARLIER POST ON THIS BLOG 30 December 2016
Link > https://mesazona.blogspot.com/2016/12/rogue-columnist-jon-talton-cuts-through.html
Blogger's Note
If you, dear readers, skipped over a featured post on the findings in a Milken Institute report posted on this site earlier, here's an opportunity to read the findings in the context and narrative provided by this Seattle-based reporter
In the doldrums
Jon Talton December 29, 2016
"Back in the 2000s, Phoenix was always at or near the top of the Milken Institute's list of best-performing cities. The local-yokel boosters made much of this. In reality, the metric was based on job growth and Phoenix looked pretty good, powered by the housing boom.
What a difference does the housing crash, Great Recession, and better measurements make. A few years ago, Milken retooled its survey.
Now Milken uses a wide variety of yardsticks to present a more accurate and comprehensive look at how metropolitan areas are doing.
In the new 2016 Best Performing Cities, metro Phoenix comes in at 46th.
Going deeper, Phoenix's
- five-year job growth ranked 40th;
- five-year wage and salary growth 63rd;
- short-term growth 76th;
- five-year high-tech GDP growth 56th (one-year was 110th);
- high-tech location quotient 56th
- number of highly concentrated tech industries 63rd.
It's not a pretty picture, especially when we're talking about the sixth-largest city and 13th most populous metropolitan area
At the top were Silicon Valley, Provo-Orem, Utah, Austin, San Francisco and Dallas. Among other Western peers was Seattle No. 10, Denver No. 13, and Portland No. 14. Blue "socialist" California won six of the top 25 spots among major metros. By comparison, Tucson was No. 155. Among small metros, Prescott was No. 33, Flagstaff 81, and Yuma 146. Bend, Ore., led the small metros.
Milken's emphasis on high-tech is important because this has been the sweet spot of the long recovery from the Great Recession. Cities at the headwaters of talent, innovation, and tech headquarters have done very well. For example, the hottest residential real-estate market is not in the Sun Belt but Seattle.
Another area of high performance in today's economy has been the "back to the city" phenomenon, with companies moving to vibrant downtowns to attract talented millennials and others who want a car-free lifestyle and the choices of a dense, lively city. While downtown Phoenix has made more progress, it has largely missed this gravy train. Most economic activity, and most of it low-end, is in the suburbs.
Phoenix continues to play its old game — largely without the Cold War tech industries that helped diversify the economy in the decades after World War II. Add population, build tract houses, put up spec commercial and industrial space, sell sunshine. It's not a path to prosperity or success for such a large metropolitan area. Particularly one sitting at ground zero for climate change.
Even the occasional headline about "another" Silicon Valley company setting up shop "in the Valley" reveals a back-office operation seeking cheap, low-skilled workers.
So much for the performance of low-tax, little-regulation Duceynomics.
Even by Phoenix-centered metrics, the bird falls short. In the latest Emerging Trends in Real Estate, another gold-standard survey, the top cities are Austin, Dallas, Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles. Places with, you know, real economies to support real estate.
Phoenix comes in a middling 21st (Tucson 62nd).
The devastation of the housing crash was so severe that it took until 2015 for Phoenix to recover to its pre-recession peak in jobs. But there's a big difference:
Job growth has been much more restrained than in previous expansions. Only about 20,000 worked in construction as of October, compared with a peak of 33,800 in the go-go years of the 2000s.
This is the recovery. All Phoenix got was a lousy T-shirt.
A somewhat more optimistic POV was online with this cautionary note ending with the usual euphemism 'room for improvement'
"While the development of a true 24-hour downtown gets near universal praise—having literally thousands of new residents downtown is a success story—many caution that the city’s traditional, developer-friendly culture may push out some of the elements that helped start this boom. In and around Roosevelt Row, Esser is seeing some of the pioneers being pushed out due to rising rents, and others point to the need for more middle-income housing amid the new high-end apartment boom. The bigger, long term challenge is getting young people, artists, and others more engaged in the community and cultural ecology of downtown Phoenix. He feels there’s still room for improvement."
Curbed Nov 4, 2016
_0.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment