Phoenix and Arizona sleepwalk on. Mesa is giddy about the promise of a big new resort out in the middle of nowhere. It’s fascinating that the metropolitan area and state seem to have no substantial economic development strategy other than to hope that more clones of Scottsdale golf resorts can be birthed. Tourism, of course, brings notoriously low-paying jobs, many part time and lacking benefits. It may be facing structural challenges as American living standards fall and energy prices rise. And considering that golf is a stagnant pastime — as many give it up as take it up every year — well, do the math…
"Chandler shifts to urban focus," the headline proclaims. The story is about studies on what happens when the suburb runs out of greenfield development space. But they know they shoot studies in Arizona. Chandler has been deeply engineered as an automobile suburb, complete with wide highways ("streets"), walled off "communities" and ugly berms to separate land use from highways. It is completely car dependent, without commuter or light-rail links. I doubt there will be much interest by developers in doing anything remotely urban. But it’s rich enough to survive awhile if the growth machine revives and moves elsewhere…
Meanwhile, a "marketing strategy" was launched to tout Phoenix as an "emerging leader" in green and solar technology. Hahahahahahaha. I hope this is better than the "marketing strategy" of Copper Square. I guess anything helps, if the region could lure at least a few California companies. Unfortunately, the Legislature and extreme political climate’s refusal to fund meaningful economic development tools and research will keep metro Phoenix a backwater. A "city" based on endless driving in individual automobile trips while spreading out into the desert without enough water to sustain it can’t be any kind of green leader, emerging or even flaccid…
Then there’s the crackup of the medical school…
The Republic tried to put a "positive" spin at the top of its story (the first two graphs where you either grab readers or not):
Arizona leaders see the new University of Arizona medical-school
campus in downtown Phoenix as an anchor of a biomedical hub that will
train more doctors, foster cutting-edge research and spur the state’s
economy.
But as 48 students usher in the Phoenix college’s second year of instruction, much has changed from the original vision.
I’d say. It sounds as if the worst fears of tuned-in observers are coming true. The UA faculty in Tucson continue to resist the new Phoenix campus. The Legislature won’t provide adequate funding. After being led along by Banner, then dumped — after refusing the Maricopa Medical Center (which might have meant — gasp! — poor people), there’s no teaching hospital. The vision of linking teaching at the med school, pharmacy and nursing colleges to research at T-Gen to clinical applications at a new hospital to private sector startups and big pharma, all in close collaboration on the downtown campus, seems on life support.
It’s a despicable failure that sets back the city and state’s chances to actually diversify its economy into high-end, 21st century jobs and leap-frog its competition. Yet no one seems to be held accountable. The plan doesn’t offer a golf course, so who cares, really? What’s astounding is that the so-called local leaders, much less the populace, have no idea how fast the world is moving, and how far behind Phoenix is. San Francisco’s Mission Bay biomed campus and Seattle’s South Lake Union biotech district have risen powerfully while Phoenix diddles and struggles and watches its entrenched hospitals fight to prevent any change in the status quo. And then there’s China and India…
Finally, I should not be surprised at the lack of curiosity in the local media about the big storm, aside from basic, cub-reporter level stories. I can recall no other weather event like this in Phoenix history, with hurricane-level winds doing so much damage. We do know that the power of the monsoon storms that actually make it into the city is intensified by the heat island. If this is the shape of things to come, watch out.
I’m almost afraid to visit Willo and Encanto Park on my trip later this month. It sounds as if many older trees were uprooted. And given the terrible confusion about being "responsible desert dwellers," Phoenicians probably won’t replace them and make the well-worth-it investment in the shade canopy. I’m sure Frank Fairbanks and the parks department can’t wait to throw down rocks. Heartbreaking.
Jon, I think the heat island impact as it relates to that storm is still firmly in the theoretical. Hurricanes and intense tropical storms aren’t real common to the Gulf of California, and that’s what produced all the unstable air for us. This wasn’t the typical tropical air flow for us. We were getting it from two sides.
What’s more interesting to me is we are in El Nino-neutral conditions yet we’ve been receiving a healthy amount of moisture from the Pacific. It appears, to me anyway, this storm was just a prelude to an intense wet season for Arizona and the Southwest — and probably a crazy monsoon season next summer.
I’m in Germany at the moment where the economy and the middle class appear quite strong. Europe overall feels much more solidly middle-class than the USA. For all our blather about growth and low unemployment, our standard of living really pales by comparison. Of course, we all have to drive, and the cities we live in are execrably ugly. There’s no socially reinforcing retail – shopping districts, locally-owned businesses, walkable streets – so even our relative prosperity disguises some costly deficits.
The few American cities competing in the 21st century have magnetized the creative class but their relative rarity says a lot about American ‘values’. When Mike Huckabee scorned Obama’s trip to Europe, you could catch the paralyzing resentment that keeps Americans (and Arizonans in particular) stuck in place.
Phoenix will fail, as it must, because it’s very size prevents any kind of adaptation to the new realities of energy scarcity as well as global competition. There is literally nothing we can do since the dominant paradigm exerts such huge gravitational force. But as long as our wingnuts are secure in their gated communities, there will be no debate or discussion.