Do Phoenix and Mesa Seek The Same Urban Future?
Reference to this article in New York Times June 20, 2016, 7am PDT | Irvin Dawid
Phoenix, once described as 'the world’s least sustainable
city' is focusing growth on its downtown and investing in light rail and
bike share to attract high tech companies and workers.
Blogger's Notes & Video Inserts:
Phoenix is the 6th largest city in the U.S.
While Mesa is classified as "a city", with about 465,000 residents
most live in master-planned suburban sprawl outside of downtown
[population less than 3,000].
Mesa is a suburb located about 20 miles (32 km) east of Phoenix.
As of the 2010 Census Mesa became Arizona's center of population.
Mesa is the third-largest city in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson, and the 38th-largest city in the US.
Growth in the East Valley - like the 3,000-acre Eastmark shown in
the image to the right is the standard land-use pattern for economic
development.
Unlike Mesa that has a big inventory of vacant parcels of mostly city-owned land ripe for in-fill development, in downtown Phoenix "These days, there is hardly an empty lot left in the city’s core, and there are as many apartments under construction, or about to be built, as all of those that were built from 1996 to 2008. But, are there enough people to fill them? That is a multibillion-dollar gamble, and Phoenix has gone all in.
First, let's go back and take a look at the rapid expansion in urban Phoenix growth from 1972-2011 in time-lapse Landsat images from nasa.gov
Published on May 22, 2013
Timelapse of Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Ariz., from 1972-2011. In
these Landsat images, vegetation (that is, plant growth) appears red.
Or this
Published on Jun 6, 2012
Most people think of urban sprawl as the construction of roads and buildings at a rate that exceeds population growth. Phoenix, Arizona, however, offers a contrasting model of sprawl. Its metropolitan area has grown more than 300 percent in recent decades, but its population has grown even faster. Since the mid-1980's, the city's population density has increased as people continue to move to the region even as the urban area's boundaries have grown more slowly. This trend is by necessity, since the water supply cannot feed an ever-expanding metropolitan area.
Or this [ 22:48 ]
Published on Aug 21, 2013
A narration from the book: Suburban Nation, from the chapter: The House That Sprawl Built. Music: This Will Destroy You - They Move on Never-Ending Tracks of Light, Hammock - I Can Almost See You, Pulsar47 - Myriad Creatures, Ben Harper - The Three of Us, Ben Harper - Give a Man a Home.
The city bought entire blocks of empty land to entice three
state universities to build their campuses downtown, increasing the
number of students to 12,000 this year from 400 just 10 years ago. It has given developers tax breaks and other incentives to build, build, build.
"Phoenix that has been disparaged by so many is undergoing a change," writes Fernanda Santos, Phoenix bureau chief for The New York Times. Santos includes not one but four references to the city's negative reputation.
The change "began when the housing bubble burst and
affordable home after affordable home went into foreclosure," adds
Santos. "The collapse started in new-housing areas on the fringes [in
2007] and then swept inward, hitting more established areas as the
unemployment rate climbed," according to The Arizona Republic
"City officials, intent on revitalizing the place, searched
for a new formula, one that focused not on the outer edges of the
desert, where there remains plenty of room to expand outward, but on the
long-neglected downtown," continues Santos.
These days, there is hardly an empty lot left in the city’s core, and there are as many apartments under construction, or about to be built, as all of those that were built from 1996 to 2008. But, are there enough people to fill them? That is a multibillion-dollar gamble, and Phoenix has gone all in.
Mayor Greg Stanton added transportation to the effort with a successful sales tax measure last summer for extending light rail.
A bike-sharing program survived its first summer, a time of the year when riding a bike, or doing any other outdoor activity for that matter, is borderline heroic.
The thrust of the article is on Stanton attempting to attract Silicon Valley businesses, workers, and millennials to the city, by building a vibrant, dense downtown.
“I don’t want people to move here because we have great golf courses and cheap homes,” Mr. Stanton said in an interview. “What I want is young college graduates from the East Coast moving here, and our college graduates staying here because they see their future here and we have a great urban community.”
Published on Saturday, June 18, 2016 in The New York Times
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