Editor's Note: I especially urge you to check out the comments thread on this post. It veers a bit off-topic, to our beloved, ill-starred central Phoenix, but it's some of the best stuff our fine contributors have done.
The narrative surrounding the defeat of five anti-illegal immigrant bills in the Arizona State Senate goes like this: "Business leaders" finally weighed in to stop the worst excesses of Russell Pearce & Co., worried about their effect on the economy. As the New York Times put it, "In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry."
It's nothing of the kind. When Evan Mecham was forced from the governor's office in 1988, it was indeed driven by the business leadership — because there was one. Valley National Bank and Dial, for example, were still independent, major corporate headquarters, located in the central city, carrying the role of civic stewardship one expects from giants in their hometown. In addition, the Real Estate Industrial Complex saw that Mecham's brand of craziness and racism were badly damaging the state's reputation and ability to draw capital. The Arizona Republic was still locally owned, the flagship of a major newspaper chain headquartered in downtown Phoenix, and it both thundered and investigated, bringing questionable campaign contributions to light. The Legislature still had a Republican Party with a brain, as well as a robust Democratic competition.
Mecham, in some ways a tragic figure, was always an accidental governor, a product of the circular firing squad of the Democrats Bill Schultz and my mother's dear friend Carolyn Warner, and complacency by mainstream GOP candidate Burton Barr. Mecham was proudly ignorant, hostile to education, drunk on all manner of Bircher propaganda. He was, however, a warning of what was coming: The Big Sort bringing reactionary Midwesterners to Arizona who, allied with much of the LDS, promised a new kind of Arizona politics embodied by Pearce and today's state Republican Party. In any event, his undoing was a real example where Arizona came to its senses, led by a business leadership that still saw its interests twined with those of the broader state.
The same dynamics are not at work this time. For one thing, the old business leaders who could write checks and knock heads (e.g. John Teets) are gone. Also, the media environment has changed. And the millions of Anglos who came after 1988 added both to the self-selecting reactionary base and to those who "just want to be left alone" and neither see Arizona as home nor ever vote. What business remains is much narrower, even within the real-estate industry upon which the state depends far more than before 1990. Phoenix is a branch-office town, one of hundreds. Even during the days of St. Janet, I recall people like Jerry Colangelo complaining how the Legislature simply wouldn't listen any more when business leaders weighed in to help the universities or biosciences.
This is not to say the state economy hasn't been damaged by Arizona's international reputation for intolerance, cruelty and craziness. It has. But it's difficult to separate this damage from that done by the real-estate crash. And in any event, the closed-loop "reasoning" of the white-right will either deny the damage, or ascribe it to illegal immigrants.
The white-right has already won. Tilting against the 14th Amendment or denying medical care and further putting up walls to the education of immigrants can wait. SB 1070 was the big deal, and it's law — unless struck down by federal courts. All state offices are held by reactionary Republicans. Jan Brewer is governor. The most draconian cuts have been made, further dragging down the state economy and hurting its chances for the future. Economic strategy? It's tax cuts and more of the same failed policies of the past 20-plus years. The Gabrielle Giffords shooting did nothing to stop the most irresponsible gun liberalization from continuing at the NRA-owned 17th Avenue Zoo. The base of reactionary Midwestern transplants, Mormons and deluded libertarians (a redundency?) is stronger than ever. The Democrats are shattered, aimless. Mission Accomplished.
As I've written before, the anti-immigrant strategy was always more about political power and voter suppression than about seriously stopping illegal immigration. If that were to really happen, the low-wage economy would collapse. The theater of SB 1070 would not have been possible if the Real Estate Industrial Complex had still been humming, building houses for 100,000 new residents a year. For it depends on illegals: cheap, scared, easy to push around.
Arizona deserves every bad rap it carries. It's earned it, the old-fashioned way.
I mostly agree, yet still remain hopeful that we will overcome. Just as we learn that much of the strife in the Middle East stems from minority leadership regimes that don’t represent their subjects, so too is the case in Arizona. Demographic numbers are not on Pearce’s side, and this trend continues no matter what scare tactics his GOP employs. I look forward to an end of this era for AZ and expect that it can come sooner rather than later.
Jon, I agree with your piece, particularly, “the anti-immigrant strategy was always more about political power and voter suppression than about seriously stopping illegal immigration.”
Demographics overcome only when U can vote or riot sufficiently to chop off the king’s head. But a riot is what these ole boys want and they got the firepower and NATO will not employ a no fly zone against these Posse Comitatus, John Bircher, Whackos.
I read something strange awhile back about the Udalls: the patriarch had two wives, and all the Udalls from one mother were Democrats, while all from the other were Republicans. I remember Mecham being pretty far out there with his little unsolicited rolled-up rants being tossed at the front window, but most Mormons used to seem generally sane, and were good neighbors and citizens. Maybe being a dispenser of social services itself, the Church, Inc. resents having government providing people with an alternative social safety net?
My pea-sized brain tells me that Russell Pearce got caught up by his pig-headed over-reach. It was a long time coming. Whether the pushback comes from bona fide business leadership or fed up legislators, it appears that the juggernaut has been at least partially derailed. That should be worth something, shouldn’t it?
Seeing John McComish on the media as the Senate’s voice comes as quite a contrast to the uneducated redneck (Ron Gould) whose gentleman’s clothes are like putting earrings on a pig. Maybe the times they are a changin’?
I blame the Mecham blip on the Goddards (Sam specifically). Talking Rose out of running so Terry could screw a sure thing up (again). Otherwise I’m in total agreement, especially the we earned it ending. But now I do have this image of your Mother and Carolyn Warner sitting on the porch smoking cigars and sipping whiskey.
stopdesertrock, great handle, Ed would have liked it. Per UR quote, “being a dispenser of social services itself, the Church, Inc. resents having government providing people with an alternative social safety net?”
Nail on the head. The Udall’s have mostly been and still are “liberal” compared to the Pearce and Jeff’s of the day. In my 70 years with 61 years in the desert I have hung out and have relatives within the clan of white lizards. Many of those folks hate any governmental interference unless directed by their Salt Lake leader. And quite a few don’t always like his rules. I have spent time with a number of LDS and “others” who seriously believe even requiring them to have a drivers license is an impingement on their freedoms plus that they have to pay the state to get it. The more zealous believe the only reason to pay taxes to the US government is to provide for a standing military to prevent foreign invasion.
Talton writes:
“The same dynamics are not at work this time. For one thing, the old business leaders who could write checks and knock heads (e.g. John Teets) are gone.”
Point taken in the greater context…
But let’s be aware too that Teabaggers can whore out the legislation with the best of them:
~~~~~~~~~~~Paste from Az Daily Star
PHOENIX – Some companies pay millions of dollars to plaster their names on public facilities – see the University of Phoenix Stadium and Chase Field, for example.
But the cost to the Colt Manufacturing Co. to get the Arizona Senate to name one of its products the official state weapon? Zero.
Company lobbyist Todd Rathner conceded that he wrote the measure, which calls the gun “historically important to the founding of the state and to the survival of the state.”
https://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_832e0e5f-e447-5cf0-ba92-a9d2ca07f988.html
~~~~~~~~~~~End Paste
Crazy, stupid, ugly, old, and shameless…
And yes, they’ll prostitute themselves for the right pimp just like their intellectual ancestors…
Go Jon, “And yes, they’ll prostitute themselves for the right pimp just like their intellectual ancestors…”
or as Charles Bowden said “a ticket to La Jolla”
I won’t pretend to know the back-story here. It might have been that the Chamber of Commerce letter gave cover to the pro-business state senators to vote as they did. Will Russell Pearce pay these renegades back with primary challengers? The Republican Party is radicalized at its precinct level so that’s probably a good bet.
My state senator is Adam Driggs, a Mormon and legatee of a storied family dynasty that came to Arizona from Idaho. There’s still a small town on the western side of the Grand Tetons carrying their name. The Driggs family owned Western Savings back when these things really mattered. Phoenix had a Driggs (John) as mayor back in the early 70s, the last to be selected by the Charter Government committee.
Adam Driggs voted against these bills, as did Michelle Reagan, probably the most liberal Republican in the legislature and whose name is magic. (Her Scottsdale district is silk-stocking although I sometimes wonder how much heresy they can take).
Arizona’s most famous Mormon, Ev Mecham, was on one level an embarassment to his church. He was a car dealer, not a banker, lawyer or doctor. His paranoia and radical-right fixation were not atypical for a tribe that saw itself attacked by ungodly and unjust powers. Still this church could also be very pragmatic and business savvy. The kind of cultural resentment that Mecham carried was neither good for business nor his church.
The Rome of Mormonism is Salt Lake City, and it’s clear from just about every perspective that it’s not Phoenix. SLC is clearly the business hub of its metroplex. It has an extensive and growing light-rail network. It hosted the Olympics in 2002 (briefly imagine Phoenix doing something like that). Its downtown has two department stores (Nordstrom’s and Macy’s) and there a lot of invested capital from the church keeping it relevant and vibrant.
No religion bears scrutiny very well and Mormonism, in particular, is trapped by the hocus-pocus absurdities of its relatively recent creation. That said, it tried to explain reality to early 19th century Americans who wondered where all the Indians came from. Think of it as vernacular anthropology. We laugh today but there was a time when some thought it was a thinking man’s religion. Today, it navigates the rough straits between cultural reaction and business-class bottom lines. If Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee next year, maybe Mormonism will finally bridge the gap between the bizarre and the bazaar.
I don’t know why Mormons would shun car dealers… the Smiley Ford dealership had to bring the Berge brothers in so the locals would buy there. To each their own.
I like the term “sleeping giant.” That is what we have in Arizona and it is not the white-right. What will it take for this sleeping giant (the Hispanic, Young, and Non-voting Moderate Camp)to awaken? That is an important question that warrants discussion.
It seems inevitable that a bloc, much like the Latinos in Los Angeles, will one day vote their interests. That day is coming and white, racist Republicans like Pearce will have no where to go.
Not even Utah wants Pearce. SLC does have a nice little downtown, but it will always remain so. Nevertheless, you have to love the light rail system there and they had the foresight to start building this infrastructure before Phoenix. However, SLC is not a very hip city; actually, it is not at all a hip city.
I was there for the Winter Games and one of the biggest complaints was the lack of evening festivities and libations; this I heard mainly from teenagers and some young 20 somethings so I assume those older than me (a young teen at the time) had similar complaints.
Most Europeans I met were dying to get to Vegas, L.A., and Scottsdale as they and I had our fake I.D.’s ready to go (note: Europeans were savvy enough to know that Scottsdale was near Phoenix, and not the other way around – gotta love them Euros).
Back to Mormons, I only have two Mormon friends (they are nothing like Pearce) and they are active in the Church. I think Pearce is a special breed of Mormon, the most regretful type. The day is coming when a different demographic will vote him and his cohort out.
My Mormon friends know I am happy with my life and possibly have found a man to love and they do not try to recruit me or “change” me. Although they acknowledge that those born into the Church can be sent to a “hospital” where the gay is “prayed” out of one’s soul. LOL! There isn’t enough prayers in the the world to take the gay out of me, and I’m not an effeminate Mo…
PSF, SLC isn’t hip. Neither is Phoenix despite being much, much larger. Of course, we washed out just about any and every redeeming characteristic here to get to a point where there is no point.
Because I’m an old hippie, I have a fondness for folk singers like Utah Phillips. Arizona had a few like Dolan Ellis and Marshall Trimble (an idiosyncratic historian, to boot). That said, it says something about a place that it will manifest an extraordinary talent like Bruce (Utah) Phillips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Phillips
Arizona’s great characters – Ed Abbey, Paolo Soleri, Philip Curtis, Emmett McLaughlin, Richard Shelton, Geoffrey Platts – are enough to make me proud of this state. I wish there were more of them (or less of us) because Arizona is mostly undetectable now.
Soleri, I think we have different definitions of “hip”. Instead of getting into our typical disagreements (I think we share more in common despite that), I will agree to disagree. 😉
I would likely define some of those personalities you listed a eclectic. That in no way subtracts from their great talents, individual spirit, vision, and originality. We need more of everything in Phoenix, your definition of hip, mine, eclectic folk, and the list goes on but a white-washed Mormon town we are not!
PSF, we’re worse than a whitewashed Mormon town. We’re 3000 square miles of crap. At least in a place like Salt Lake, there are a few interesting breaks in the monotony. BTW, Salt Lake is a liberal town. It had a mayor, Rocky Anderson, who would have caused our local heavy breathers to reach for their inhalers.
Hipness is a good sign but it can’t be a goal. Scottsdale is hip and it’s also pathetic. We’re not going to redeem Phoenix with pr and puffery. The problem, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, is that there’s no “there” there (i.e., here). We once had it. Now it’s gone. Great local characters, story-tellers, poets, singers, and – dare I say – truthtellers like Talton are as necessary to a great place as great buildings. Phoenix, sadly, is impoverished on all fronts.
From Soleri on LDS “Today, it navigates the rough straits between cultural reaction and business-class bottom lines. If Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee next year, maybe Mormonism will finally bridge the gap between the bizarre and the bazaar.”
The LDS beginning was motivated by a religious reading epileptic that learned from the natives that smoking Missouri River bank wild marijuana mixed with herbs and ground up white lizard was calming. But not enough to keep a new angel from appearing on the scene to provide divine guidance. The non theocrats of the time were having none of this and set about to drive this cult out of town. I don’t think LDS folks were persecuted as much as they just were not accepted, hence Utah. LDS has worked itself from these beginnings to a highly efficient social and economic giant. No longer just another organized religion (read organized crime) but a highly efficient and profitable worldwide corporation. It’s just a matter of time before the Muslims by population growth eradicate most other organized religions.
So I predict the last nuclear war will be in 2300 when the world population peaks about 30 billion and the two theocratic religions or as I refer to them, the M & M boys go hand to hand.
SLC liberal, now I’ve heard it all. In that case, haven’t you heard! Phoenix is the San Fran of the Southwest. Sinema might not be our mayor but she represents my district in Central Phoenix and she is a bi-sexual woman currently in a lesbian relationship. This is not at all unusual for Phoenix.
Hip is good and all you list is the truth, but to simplify matters I interpret our different stances on Phoenix as a glass half full/half empty outlook. You’ve seen the glass emptied since the 60’s here in Phoenix. Me, being relatively new have seen a nearly emptied glass refilling.
This simplistic explanation likely defines our drastically different views on Phoenix. I live within a community in Phoenix that did not exist in its current form and size 5 years ago; and no, there is nothing like it in SLC…
phxsunfan, I have two Jewish friends and I am sure your two LDS friends are great guys, faithful to the core. Young boys are the subject of two books on the LDS that might interest you. The Sins of Brother Curtis by Lisa Davis. Brother Curtis couldn’t wait to get those young boys down to their underwear and the LDS attorneys tried everything possible to cover it up. Or how about “Lost Boy” by Brent Jeffs a story of a LDS leader, Warren Jeffs that loved to have his brothers physically hold down 5 year old boys while Warren sodomized the boys.
Cal, I think you’ve read too much Sci-Fi…
And I think I will skip those books! But, one Mormon friend is female, the other male and they aren’t the Jeffs kind and neither are their parents; they only have one spouse…
That being said, the Warren and Jeffs story reads a lot like many Catholic Priest’s. Difference is, the Catholic flock is now dithering away. I think as time marches on the same will occur to the Mormon cult.
PSF, er, “Phoenix is the San Fran of the Southwest”?
Really?
Not to get quarrelsome, but what are you smoking? I can’t think of two more diametrically different cities than SF and Phoenix. I love Krysten Sinema, and she can have the hottest sex this side of Lesbos, but she doesn’t make Phoenix “hip”. John Waters having anal sex with Ben Quayle on Joe Arpaio’s desk wouldn’t make Phoenix hip.
And SLC proper is “blue”. Utah is deep red.
Hip, is New York, Singapore, Amsterdam, Berlin, maybe San Francisco. Moscow is more hip than Phoenix and SaltLake combined
Somehow you failed to read between the lines. I was being sarcastic because of your SLC comment. Now we are playing word games with liberal and hip…
And SLC proper’s blue is no more so than Phoenix’s…and there are a few more “blues” in and around Central Phoenix than would ever occur near Central SLC.
Cal, Moscow, have you been? Great nightlife, but scary town. I wouldn’t call it hip, but different. Where did you stay in Moscow, Cal?
Moscow, Idaho?
Not scary if you’re wired into the local Mafia.
“Dithering Catholics”? Interesting combination of words. Think I’ll reflect on that while I ride to coffee on my recumbent. Not to worry old desert lizards are not bothered by the rain.
Soleri, your sex scene was great, reminds me of some old Joseph Wambaugh stories.
LMFAO, wrong Moscow!
Cal, to dither:
to be uncertain or indecisive, to be in an agitated state, a state of indecision, a state of agitation.
I love running in the infrequent Phoenix rains; maybe I’ll see you out and about in a few. Although less enthusiastically now since your bike isn’t solar powered.
Which sex scene did you enjoy Cal? Ben Quayle is kind of handsome, though too skinny and lacking of musculature (and probably chest hair) for my taste!
Ok, take that back, he isn’t handsome but not too bad in this Vanity Fair spread:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sW65ilskOC8/TPA1ZUDbJNI/AAAAAAAAiM4/zJlHnE8V7Xw/s1600/BenQuayleVanityFairCalendar.jpg
…minus John Waters, Arpaio, etc in any scene! Ewwwww…
Ben Quayle? pSf, can’t see you going for dumb. As for Kyrsten, I appreciate beautiful and smart…but let us re-elevate this blog to its usual lofty intellectual perch.
Interesting that we trended from the Kookocracy to hip. I was never hip, so am not one to say. Obviously real world cities have hipness. In the U.S.: New York, LA, Miami…Who else? Others go through phases (e.g., the Kansas City of the Jazz Age). Places such as Seattle and Portland have their niches.
Central Phoenix was my ‘hood and I think one could work very hard and find a “scene.” By working hard, I mean things are so spread out. And the scene is positive and has definitely expanded. I hope it can weather the recession. What central Phoenix needs for more hipness or sophistication (my thing) or a real scene is density.
Scottsdale attracts some visiting hipsters, but is it hip? I’m not sure. Something about its apartheid/walls/etc. makes it not in my mind. Anybody can go to South Beach. The hip scene that exists in Scottsdale is mostly gated off, or glimpsed at some expensive restaurant in a tarted up shopping strip along Scottsdale Road.
Food for thought. Dig in.
It’s a diversion that circles back to the starting point. Arizona’s kookiness means kinkiness has to fill in the blank spaces where urban sophisticates usually vogue. I don’t think of the San Fernando Valley as hip but it is the porn capital of the world.
Phoenix doesn’t have to be San Francisco (minus the cable cars, the climate, the ocean, the bay, the Victoriana, the density, the transportation, the world-class tourist destination, the high wages, the financial center of the west coast, etc.). But it does have to be a place that resonates with its own value. Phoenix resonates cheapness, unfortunately.
Ultimately, there is no economic model that can rescue a real-estate hustle from its own bottom-feeding choices.
Jon, I think you are right. And Soleri I always seem to find some agreement with your comments. “The Valley (San Fernando) isn’t hip, but it has porn”…hmmmm, was that a Quayle and Dirty.com subliminal jab?
I do like your second paragraph, but not so much the last sentence. Of course, there is cheapness all around Phoenix, but that isn’t the essence of the city or the heart. The new crap is a lot of filling on the edges, excess weight that must be shed. What can rescue this “real-estate hustle from its own bottom-feeding choices”? The exact opposite of the status quo. A continued push for Central City relevance and density for one.
About Scottsdale’s hipness: I see lots of similarities with other cities’ night spots, including South Beach. It is no more restrictive than Manhattan club and restaurant “scenes”, nor Miami’s or L.A.’s. They are all expensive and money is a requirement for anyone wishing to drop some Benji’s when visiting. Often that is the wall keeping many out. Race means little in Scottsdale’s scene, but money speaks volumes.
Off topic, but I feel a need to confess! I like, on occasion, watching Dancing with the Stars…if any of you are familiar, the pro dancer, Maks (pronounced Max), is my type of guy!
Since I no longer confess my sins to a priest, figured I would ask for my “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” here…
Te absolvo.
Or if you are an old-fashioned Latinist, absolvo te
PSF, yes, we know what we have to do. We’ve been talking about it for decades. But during that time, we’ve devolved our economy to the point that even a new call center overjoys us. And the principle industry – homebuilding – has vaporized. I point this out not to be mean but to suggest if we don’t tell the truth in all its brutal and inescapable horror, we’ll simply end up making up stories about how great Phoenix is. This age-old strategy, however, only serves to make the task more difficult because we can’t even define the real problems.
Our political craziness is a direct result of very bad economic and land-use choices. Yes, we’ve always had crazies but we used to have the buffers from a strong business class along with civic engagement from a solid middle class. Now, fear and loathing rule because the buffers are gone and direct democracy is spooking us with its phosphorescent gaze.
I know a hipster – she’s the head of the art department at a local institution of higher learning – who doesn’t vote even though her department is now suffering from severe cutbacks in funding. She’s tragically hip, you might say. And when I ask her why she doesn’t vote she looks at me like I’m hopelessly naive.
As cynical as I am here, I do the basic things: I support the arts, I vote, I use mass transit, I support local retail, etc. I know I’m not the only one but sometimes I think I’m preaching the same sermon over and over and over to hipsters who care more about getting stoned and laid than living in a city worth caring about. I’ve known other preachers who give up after a while and move elsewhere. One of my best friends was a guy named Frank Contreras who owned Shortyz (where Matt’s Big Breakfast is now). He used to be called the mayor of downtown for all his relentless cheerleading and advocacy. He lives in Greenville, SC (!!!) now and loves it.
Best of luck to you if you take on that role. It’s thankless, for the most part, but you’ll make lots of friends. I’m coming from a void where optimism should live because for years I thought the tide was turning only to discover it was all a mirage. I’m impervious to uplifting songs and dances now. My time horizon is simply too short.
This discussion would benefit from a GPS, as it has veered off into the puckerbrush in my opinion. Didn’t it begin as an examination of whether the so-called “moderation” was for real? To me, this trumps the discussion of “hip” and might provide focus on whether there are checks and balances at work in the legislature as well as public opinion. A wise friend has always counseled that the pendulum usually swings back toward the center.
She doesn’t vote because it is ALL a mirage and it’s “absurd!” Only if we could call up the voices of Camus and Abbey might we understand the smoke and mirrors of this”absurdity” we call living.
Sincerest apologies morecleanair, but sometimes we wonder off into a social blogosphere of sorts. However, it is not without merit. There can be no moderation without a “hip” Central City.
Like Soleri’s post states, moderation in Arizona must comes from a dissenting voice from a liberal, moderate, minority camp (all together the better) that will buffer us from the kooks. So the latest veering discussion offers a course for the cause.
Soleri, I understand your sentiments completely. I only hope that my experience will be much different and that my contributions won’t be for naught. And I also have been witness to that gaze from non-voting “hipsters.”
It is something I have brought up too many times on Rogue. But it is a huge issue for Phoenix and Arizona. That is precisely a part of the “sleeping giant” I suspect will soon come to see the naivety in their non-voting ways.
If Mr. Contreras loves small, intimate Greenville – pronounced Greenvol 😉 – he’d probably have preferred Flagstaff over Phoenix. Though Flag is palpably more liberal than Greenville.
One more thing for tonight, as I am being summoned away from work and online distractions: Phoenix can learn a lot from Flagstaff. The hipsters, intellectuals, moderates, hippies, etc in Flagstaff vote (passionately) their interests.
Despite Flag being surrounded by a conservative and rural district, the voting populace of Flagstaff buffers itself from kookiness. Because of Flagstaff’s passionate voters, Coconino is the truest and bluest county in Arizona; more so than Pima. That can also be true of Phoenix on a gargantuan level.
I knew Frank somewhat, and I think he experienced something many of us faced — me, more than once. Phoenix breaks hearts.
I don’t want that to be the case with pSf and others in the Resistance. But be warned. Phoenix breaks hearts.
As to real moderation, that can only come if 1) Phoenix lures more non-white/right people who will be engaged; 2) The Democrats can get their act together; 3) The reactionaries disastrously over-reach, and 4) Someone can reconstitute the old Napolitano coalition, if it’s still there — and take it to the school boards, city councils, obscure governing bodies and Legislature.
Greenville is home to Bob Jones University, so it is very conservative. That said, it has a real city center that charms with its red brick buildings and street trees. You could possibly make a distinction between the kind of custodial conservatism you still find here and in older Southern cities and the Sunbelt conservatism, which tends toward ideological certitude because it’s no longer “conserving” anything real.
Flagstaff has a very small downtown, charming as it is. I’m a little surprised it’s as liberal as it is given the huge influx of Californians. Maybe NAU is enough of a stabilizing force to keep the newcomers focused on reality instead of low-tax panaceas from right field. I noticed their newly minted Tea Party congressman, Paul Gosar, isn’t so ideological that he won’t seek earmarks.
A competing identity would be helpful for moderation.
Regarding ‘hip’ there is a time-tested strategy for that: ‘liberate’ central low-cost areas, let the hipsters modify and do whatever they want. Which would, along the way, test how much freedom the ‘freedom lovers’ can take. If there is enough substance to colonize it could start the gentrification engine.
Caveat: Is there enough substance? And it’s too damn hot outside. Fried brains don’t work too well.
AWinter, I’ve seen that strategy work in cities like Denver’s LoDo. NYC is famous for doing it in Chelsea, Soho, Tribeca, and the East Village.
Phoenix can’t do it because it’s torn down just about everything that might accommodate the hipsters. You follow the forced evacuation of a Beatrice Moore to see how Phoenix chased the artists from their downtown nests so it could build sports venues and jails, and now a biomedical research campus.
Imagine an alternative reality where Phoenix didn’t tear itself down for the sake of big-city blandness. It still would have been inadequate to what we really need. Phoenix never had a large stock of warehouses and old industrial buildings along with priceless Victorians. Do I think Phoenix behaved worse than other cities in this regard? Not really. We were governed like every American city by goobers promising us the sky if we simply scraped away the artifacts of time. But the most salient fact remains Phoenix’s small size prior to WWII. When the post-war tsunami hit Phoenix, it didn’t need to take out much to leave us bereft of vintage buildings – the incubators of a local creative class.
As long as we’ve veered way off topic, let me second Soleri’s endorsement f U of A poet Richard Shelton. He’s brilliant, with some of the best lines this side of Robert Lowell’s “freelancing out along the razor’s edge.” Selected Poems and The Bus to Veracruz are both wonderful. He’s got a mix of spare, stark, Carveresque poems about life and metaphorical poems about the desert and nature.
One sample, from “Certain Choices”:
“My friend, who was a heroin addict, is dead and buried beneath the trash and broken bottles in a prison field.”
And another, from “Death Row”:
“have you been to the land of carnivorous birds
where brown leaves hang on all winter
rattling for release.”
Your homework is to find a used copy of Selected Peoms or The Bus to Veracruz on-line, and read it.
OK good home work assignment.
Anyone want to borrow my library of
e e cummings?
Some more rumors of moderation:
“Brewer said that the Senate’s cuts to education, local government and aid to the needy were ‘not in the best interest of Arizona.'” https://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/03/22/20110322brewer-opposes-arizona-budget.html#ixzz1HLMRQTTV
From all accounts, Brewer isn’t an evil or mean-spirited woman, but an ill-advised lady who is in over her head. I believe she is very much an accidental governor. Nonetheless, maybe the pushback by the larger Senate body gave her strenght that her office inherently holds (yet, she too weak to realize at first)…I think the above quote from Brewer is a huge reassement of things important to Arizona from within her office.
Back to hipsters, art, Phoenix, and AWinter’s idea…I differ slightly with Soleri here. There are plenty of spaces for artists, gentrification, and a creative class incubator; mostly The Grand Ave neighborhoods, Garfield, south F.Q. Story, and the warehouses around Jackson…even the smallish but intricately detailed buildings lining Washington and Jefferson from 7th Ave to the Capitol Mall complex.
Phoenix doesn’t need to follow the typical city course of artist habitation and neighborhood gentrification, in fact a new path would be unique and welcomed. Even new lofts, apartment buildings, etc in downtown (like Alta Lofts) offer free artist space and galleries. This can be expanded upon.
There may not be Victorians, and a plethora of warehouses to emulate NYC or San Fran, but that might not be a bad thing. Something, like continuing the patronage of Roosevelt and its bungalows filled with artists, can set Phoenix apart. One thing the city can do to help this artist colony is repeal the “tax” levied on the vendors and artist. Especially during First Fridays.
Despite the tax, which is actually “vendor fees” and such, the monthly event has grown by thousands month after month. A new threshold, 50k visitors in one night, is not that far off.
Jon sets the bar pretty high when he indicates that real moderation only comes if
1) Phoenix lures more non-white/right people who will be engaged;
2) The Democrats can get their act together;
3) The reactionaries disastrously over-reach, and
4) Someone can reconstitute the old Napolitano coalition.
The good news is that the Pearce-led reactionaries ARE over-reaching in their zealous efforts to drive the illegals out of AZ. That could help trigger numbers 1-2-4. Optimist that I am, this seems to be a strategic inflection point!
PSF, if a “new path would be unique and welcomed”, why hasn’t it happened?
I can imagine stuff, too. As an example, someone takes 44 Monroe and turns them into artist studios. Then someone buys the Professional Building and turns it into Phoenix’s Chelsea Hotel. And then someone buys the Phoenix Suns and turns it into a nude volleyball team.
If it’s not happening, and there’s no evidence that here that it might, why even speculate? Phoenix has a very small bohemian/creative class for the obvious reason that there’s no particular reason to be in this forlorn urban desert. The dozen or so remaining bungalows in Roosevelt Row “set us apart” only because of their inconsequentiality.
I’ve been waiting for this Godot seemingly forever. He never comes.
Because the energy before now, to a large extent, was focused on the ever expanding suburbs and “CityNorth” and Desert Ridge, and Ahwatukee, and on and on. That energy is all but gone; a reinvestment in the Central City did not exist a few years ago, so a real downtown Phoenix focus lacked.
There was no light rail (for all intents and purposes, which barely started full service in 2009), there wasn’t a full downtown campus (and there still isn’t as it is in its initial growth phase), residential population has grown tremendously for Phoenix (the conversion of 44 Monroe can help start even more), etc. etc.
If the “original” ValTrans rail proposition had been approved in ’89, some of these things may have happened decades ago.
Here is some interesting history on ValTrans; would have been cool to have a skytrain similar to Vancouver, B.C.’s…but alas, some miscues derailed the plan:
“The real blow may have been in separating the issues into two votes. A single vote four years ago on a one-penny tax for an overall transportation plan, including freeways, trains and buses, would have stood a far better chance of approval by a public frustrated with traffic jams. But Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard and other major lobbyists for mass transit finally wound up signing off on the two-vote deal.” https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-04-05/news/valtrans-derailed/
PSF, I agree ValTrans was a missed opportunity. That said, we’ve been focused on downtown for a long, long time. And the net result of this obsessiveness is a kind of mutant creation that can’t move or breathe on its own. “Downtown is almost lifelike”, we whisper as we admire some new corporate sarcophagus.
Is all this “hipster/bohemian” chat OT?
No. Phoenix, and by extension all of Arizona, is paying a steep price for being Lubbock on steroids. As a result, we attract reactionaries who want to be left alone. We don’t attract great artists, poets, or musicians because this is not a place someone with an artistic temperament would want to be. And the predictable result is a vicious circle where we further lock into radical-right politics.
A metroplex of nearly 4 million will produce a lot of kids who want something other than Gilbert and a Wal-mart. I’ve seen them coming downtown for decades. They’re the hope of our city before the city finally kills that hope in the name of some new urban strategy.
If you really want to moderate Arizona’s politics, you’ll do what you can to support the arts, historic preservation, environmentalism, and slow-growth economic approaches. I know none of this has worked yet. Maybe we’re doomed in this way. But a city without a soul will never be a place that inspires us to do the right thing politically. Our bottom-feeding economy is just the flip side of political nihilism.
I don’t necessarily disagree with what you say Soleri, but I fail to see how downtown was any kind of focus in the past before 2008. I’m sure there were some of you screaming for some notice and hope, but it really didn’t exist. It had just barely begun.
There were always artists in Phoenix, and recently some very good ones and noticable musicality has emerged, but the focus, civic activity, and spotlight was tilted away from downtown.
Historically, during trying times, artistry is borne in spectacular fashion. That is possible, plausible, and expecant during our current trepidation; art seems to have a moderating, and perhaps even liberating, effect which can spread as a reaction to the discourse.
One reason why I emphasized ValTrans and light rail is because without a real transit system no amount of new buildings or arenas or housing will allow a truly dense city to emerge. We’d just be asking for more cars on small Central City streets which would quickly choke the life out of any future growth spurt and sustainable model.
One reason I believe the city started erecting barricades and directing traffic so “efficiently” out of downtown after major events, games, and concerts is because after said event there was nothing to do downtown, no homes to go to, no other route to take but behind the wheel. The City, downtown residents, and business owners have recently voiced opposition to this once strategic flow of traffic. Transit is essential to introducing staid Gilbert adults to some actual alternative existences within their metro; and more importantly their kids like you’ve mentioned.
Have them take the train from Mesa/Tempe to downtown (which is an actual growing contigent especially with the new East Valley LINK transit to light rail) and force them to interact, see different people, witness gays kiss and converse, make them uncomfortable. Eventually this can foster growing acceptance of a diverse population.
The defeat of ValTrans was a tragedy that helped lay the groundwork for much of today’s dystopia. Had it passed, it might — might — have channeled development in smarter ways, and kept downtown as the true hub of the metro area.
But the Real Estate Industrial Complex and many ag./desert landowners wanted freeways that would make their land valuable, and allow for the massive “master planned communities” that have done so much damage.
Can the damage be undone? Sure. But it will require a different populace than metro Phoenix has. Downtown and central Phoenix can create small islands of livability, but I don’t see the capital and leadership deployed to really make major change happen, as was the case with, say, Denver.
The road for sufficient capital and leadership is being paved. It does not happen overnight. New, homegrown industry does not blossom into a Fortune 500, 1000 in a few months or even years. The unfortunate drain of Central City headquarters now must be refilled. Luring offices back to Central Ave from say, Scottsdale Airpark, and random business parks spread throughout “The Valley” is more important than ever.
New solar industry, possible discoveries at the bio-med campus, new manufacturing in Central locations (stop building new plants in Mesa, Surprise, etc) should be a new goal. There is risk and possibility of failure, but to write of those possibilities before the present has even occurred is wrongheaded. We must acknowledge past failures but defining the future through such a small lens would also be irresponsible.
Other cities would never had bettered themselves with only such negative outlooks, but no doubt they existed in San Diego, in Seattle, in Denver, in New York (think 1992), etc etc…
CDT & Cal – re:Richard Shelton, look at his “Crossing the Yard”, 30-years as a prison volunteer. Shelton doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk. A true Arizona treasure.
Why do we find it necessary to replace great Sahuaros with man made cardboard edifices of huge non creative stifling proportions? And then fill them with scurry rats chasing vaporizing crumbs of mental masturbation. As much as I liked Teddy he was wrong. He should have declared Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah a wilderness. I may be an uneducated hick in Levis but the Phoenix art scene is not much. The real art exists in the landscapes void of man.
PSF, your history of downtown Phoenix has a gap, say the time between 1978 and 2008. I’ll grant you downtown today looks much better than it did 33 years ago. But 33 years ago Phoenix was still generating excitement. A lot of that had to do with central Phoenix’s still vibrant economy. Some it had to do with the strong surge in interest for historic preservation and near-downtown neighborhoods. And some of it was a political climate that was open and optimistic. I recall the shift of power from that time as Terry Goddard led the fight to a district council system. It was a momentous battle whose victory we were probably too happy about. The old guard, we soon discovered, was less the enemy than the remnant of a noble but faded civic culture.
After Goddard became mayor, the fight to urbanize Phoenix took several quixotic turns. His administration ushered in the urban village concept, borrowed from LA but with even unhappier results. Zoning attorneys already had unlocked the secret to lettng developers write urban policy. And the the weak mayor/strong city manager structure further enabled the dissipation of power away from the visionaries to the bureaucratic trenches. Still, this was a city still capable of dreaming big as the ValTrans and Rio Salado proposals showed. We had a mayor, a newspaper, and business class willing to gamble on behalf of Phoenix. The citizens, alas, were not so adventurous.
In the 1990s, we were still buoyant despite the economic downturn and even with local yokel Paul Johnson as mayor. Arizona Center appeared to be a big success. A bond issue (passed in 1988) led to the construction of a new central library and art museum. Goddard had swung for the bleachers with an international design competition for a new muncipal office complex. Unfortunately, it foundered on the rocks of a bad economy. By the late 90s, the city discovered $40 million lying unused in Water Department coffers and built the new city hall.
During this time, Jerry Colangelo became downtown’s premier headknocker. His legacy – the massive sports venues – still define downtown, for better or worse.
By the late 90s, Post Properties acquired land from the city for a 1,000 apartments at Roosevelt & Central. Gray & Olsen had optioned the NWC of McDowell & Central for a huge mixed use project that would have included nearly 400 apartments. These were game-changers that promised to knit together downtown and midtown. Unfortunately, Roosevelt Square was only half completed – Post had overestimated the number of downtown workers willing to pay $1000 a month for a small apartment. The Gray & Olsen project never happened. And subsequent plans disconnected the desirable from the feasible. That lot today remains our field of broken dreams.
The 1990s were hot but there were troubling signs, too. Park Central had essentially gone kaput. And graffiti seemed suddenly everywhere in central Phoenix. A surging Hispanic underclass was beginning to make its presence felt. Curiously, even AIDS started to hurt Phoenix. A large gay population that was busy gentrifying historic houses was decimated by the plague.
By the 00s, the real-estate bubble reignited hopes for a downtown boom. True, we got a couple of condo towers, and several other smaller projects. But the crash in 2007 revealed how fragile the economic terrain actually was. Most of these projects “sold out” to investers who then walked away once the economy turned south. The best news concerned light rail and ASU. These projects remain our ongoing hope for something transformative downtown.
The fact remains that central Phoenix is significantly weaker than it was three decades ago. Yes, downtown is larger but there’s very little real-world retail there or people on the sidewalks. Uptown, the signs are mixed to negative – much less retail, a growing number of vacant parcels, some popular new restaurants, and a class fracture where Hispanics live in apartments and whites live in houses. The most ominous signals are coming from the areas just outside downtown’s flickering halo. It’s there where you see the economic slippage where people struggle to stay afloat in a downsizing economy. It’s interesting to see how much of central Phoenix has actually declined in population over the past 10 years:
https://www.azcentral.com/news/census/
The political facts on the ground tell us who we are now: frightened, inward, and untrusting. I’m not sure if there’s a way to galvanize a citizenry trained to think that government spending is almost always wrong. The business class has moved or disappeared, and The Arizona Republic is a joke. Phoenix’s economy now can’t support many dreams and if there are some silver linings in the clouds overhead, they’re not telling us much if anything.
Let me add a little to Soleri’s excellent history.
1) The crash of 1991 decimated midtown and uptown office speculation, and the developers essentially never came back.
2) The loss of major corporate HQs: Valley Bank, Dial, Western Savings, Central Newspapers, etc. Never replaced. JPMorgan Chase quietly moved/cut most of the last of its few hundred employees out of the tower a few years ago. The bleeding of Central Corridor jobs was being ignored by City Hall in the ’00s. And the supposed eco-devo outfit, the Phoenix Community Alliance, wasn’t doing much more than cheerleading for tall buildings that would never happen.
3) Pushing out the old working-class retail downtown, which I’ve written on before.
4) The failure of the district system in not having some council members at large and/or making downtown part of every council member’s district.
5) Very slow to adopt historic reuse and mixed-used codes, etc.
6) The city-abetted teardowns of hundreds of buildings that had wonderful potential, and allowing land-banking that could have been stopped via tax policy.
Jon, the most reason the developers didn’t return to Central Avenue after the real-esate crash of 20 years ago was the success of Fife Symington’s Esplanade project. The old, quaint village of 24th St and Camelback Rd was anointed the new downtown by developers and their attorneys.
Of all our self-inflicted wounds, the adoption of the urban village system is the most puzzling. We had already seen what can happen when an alternative downtown – uptown Central Avenue – was allowed to compete with historic downtown. Somehow, the sky’s-the-limit crowd was unfazed but Goddard must have known what a disaster this was going to be.
I’m not writing off anything that you and Soleri have shared; however, history doesn’t stop writing itself. And I’m not of the breed that just says, ok, it sucks nothing to do here. Sorry gentlemen, but the beat goes on. True that much of the Central City (from that census map) looks to have “lost” population, but in reality it remained flat…if you look closer, downtown and midtown along Central Ave have added thousands and in relatively small and dense pockets.
Also, being a native Arizonan and a family with roots here before the 1910’s, I have members of my clan spread throughout governments and agencies and police forces in this state. Most have retired and the newer flock in private industry, but from stories they’ve told business projects between 1970’s and 2008 were rather week. And if they did have some growth potential the lack of transit wasn’t going to create any kind of vibrant Central City. It just doesn’t work that way.
Also, from the cops in my family, they have shown me pictures of Roosevelt, some of Willo, F.Q. Story, Evans-Churchill, etc of homes with boarded up windows and unkempt yards, porticoes falling off the foundations, and some houses and dwellings actually used as crackhead habitats and other lowly purposes. Portland St in Roosevelt was unrecognizable in the 70’s, 80’s, and much of the 90’s. That doesn’t spell much success of any kind occurring downtown in my book.
Much of the successful industry that made Phoenix the city it was in the 80’s weren’t based in the Central City and certainly not downtown; Honeywell, Motorola, Goodyear Tire Co., much of the defense industry, etc have always been outside the center of town. We now have a small power shift towards Central Ave. The Valley’s power firms, banks (though they are regional headquarters), education, research, restaurant (famous Scottsdale chefs, that says a little) have moved to downtown.
We must keep the people and local offices on the move toward the center. Our new technology industries (the solar industry has the ability to become as big as an oil conglomerate) and more educational institutions will follow the people. First Solar, though not in Central Phoenix, is strategically located in a “triangle” of research and local government cooperation. Although they decided to open a plant in Mesa they do have a fab in South Phoenix. Future plants should be concentrated near Sky Harbor and I have a feeling that is the future goal for renewable energy companies coming to Arizona.
Furthermore, the current political climate is stifling and not productive but Pearce and his flock will not last. There is a real sense of change in the air and at the Capitol. You feel it in the streets, within the business community, and where the businesses go the employees follow…
Sorry to take this discussion slightly off topic again, but I feel a special need to share. In a welcomed change in Muslim lands and American forces’ interactions therein, it was great to hear the story of the downed American F-15 pilot rescued by Libyan rebels. I find this particularly amazing and touching on a personal level.
I feel I should add, that no matter what I say or the progress that occurs downtown, I have a feeling that it will still not be enough for any of us. And that should be the case. Phoenix is a city with a large population; therefore, it should include a skyline, architectural gems, dense hoods, and great transit to reflect this demographic fact. So this conversation will continue and will evolve, it must…
PSF writes a fitting closer on this discussion when he notes:
“Furthermore, the current political climate is stifling and not productive but Pearce and his flock will not last. There is a real sense of change in the air and at the Capitol. You feel it in the streets, within the business community, and where the businesses go the employees follow…”
https://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=5208695#post5208695
Here’s a photo thread of Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The pics are too good to be true since the area has plenty of warts. I lived there in the 70s and recent trips pretty much show it holding its own.
About 100,000 live here. It’s close to downtown and its huge employment base. The rents range from low to high. The transit is good (not great) but you can live here without a car.
Why am I veering OT? To show the nature of Phoenix’s problem and why a weak urban center has both political and economic repercussions. Denver is a sprawling nightmare of a metroplex but the city proper has a distinctly urban edge. It’s why Colorado hasn’t completely fallen into Arizona’s trap of right-wing reaction. If Phoenix proper is light blue, Denver is deep blue and it helps keep Colorado sane.
Phoenix’s weakness is Arizona’s political curse. It’s a self-reinforcing phenomenon where disconnected and dissociated citizens vote from fear and resentment about “others”. A real city can tell the other side without propaganda or appeals to our reptilian brains. Until Phoenix finds a way to urbanize, Arizona will not change.
Soleri, I think you fail to understand that things are not static. We must create our own history in Phoenix and not be stuck in the city’s past apoplexy. The Central City was hemorrhaging but that is no longer the case. Phoenix doesn’t have a Capitol Hill, but that doesn’t mean a modern version cannot be created. Phoenix lost many of its mansion studded neighborhoods like Mooreland, so we must fill in the gaps with quality housing projects that keep the neighborhood fabric intact; like south Roosevelt.
Capitol Hill in Denver by the way does NOT have 100,000 people. Are you kidding, it would be denser than many areas of Manhattan with nearly 35k-40k per square mile! Not the case. Capitol Hill has a population of roughly 65,000 and an average density of 11,118.75. One zip code (smaller than a squre mile, has 19,466) is very dense, in fact it is Denver’s densest area and a rather small one.
Interesting fact; the square mile in Phoenix bordered by 7th Ave to the West, 16st St to the east, Roosevelt to the North, and Van Buren to the south has a density profile that surpasses anything in Seattle and Denver’s Capitol Hill. You can find this info on the census map in your link above. Outside of California (Chinatown, Koreatown) this is one of the densest areas in the Western U.S. Many census tracts in Central Phoenix are rather small and dense; this helps the cause for urbanization, especially around light rail. Bus service in this area of the city is great and competes with Tempe’s frequency and number of routes.
Here we have a new model for preserving historic buildings, small neighborhood stores in Garfield and Roosevelt, great transit access, FREE transit via downtown DASH, and we must continue the revival of this location. In this area young artists and students live next to new immigrants and old Hispanic families with long histories in Phoenix and that trend will continue. Traditionally, neighborhoods like these have terrible voter turnouts so their political input has been relatively silent for much of history; that will soon change. The younger people moving into the neighborhood are giving all residents a voice; just a short matter of time before areas like these become very politically active.
Staying on this thread sure beats working on my next newspaper column or, god forbid, book. Or even doing the new Rogue post.
I lived in Denver in the early 1990s, when John Hickenlooper, now Colorado governor and former Denver mayor, was just the owner behind the bar at Wyncoop brewpub.
Capitol Hill still had the old tenderloin along Colfax but it was rapidly gentrifying. Its stock of buildings included mansions of mining barons (and the governor’s mansion) as well as a wealth of late 19th and early 20th century apartments. It was and is denser than anything in Phoenix, and I know both cities. But Denver had far more going for it: Affluent neighborhoods adjacent to downtown, including the Country Club and Cherry Creek areas; these flowed directly into other affluent neighborhoods with great housing stock, such as Cheesman Park and Washington Park, many with walkable urban business districts right up on the street; a largely intact downtown with lots of private sector jobs; City Beautiful Movement abundance, especially in the City Hall-State Capitol expanse; beautiful city parks; top-notch museums, and a large creative class passionately committed to the city of Denver.
Interestingly, the best thing that happened to Denver was the 1974 Poundstone Amendment which prevented it from further annexation. It forced the city to make do with the land it had. Like Seattle, Denver was good at reinvention. Thus, as the railroad industry was consolidated, the city was left with huge swaths of empty rail yards downtown. It redeveloped these with all the stadiums and hockey/basketball arena, plus an amusement park. This flows seamlessly into arts districts in grand old industrial buildings and brick commercial buildings. Coors Field was built with respect for the streetscape around it; it’s not a big airplane hanger.
Denver came very close to tearing down many of its treasures. Instead, it redeveloped Larimer Square and saved the huge multi-story brick and masonry warehouses of Lower Downtown (LoDo), which became a mecca for the creative class. Financial services consolidation took away the “Wall Street of the West” on 17th Street, but not the grand buildings, which house new offices today. Union Station was saved and will now be a multi-modal hub for intercity, commuter and light rail. Denver started building light rail in the 1990s. I could go on and on.
People made a big difference. Denver had stewards with means. Thus, the old Cherry Creek Shopping Center, a fading Park Central-like place, was redeveloped into a glittering shopping district with everything from major department stores to local boutiques, right down beautiful Speer Boulevard from downtown. Denver attracted talent and capital. It had and has a real economy. All this and the metro was still beset will horrid sprawl, Highlands Ranch being the worst example. And, yes, the city keeps the state from being deep red (Colorado Springs is a national center of reaction).
Lessons for Phoenix? I wish we hadn’t torn down the Capitol Mall buildings and so many others. Wish I could SimCity Arcadia and North Central right next to downtown. On and on, but Denver was a big city when Phoenix was a farm town. Bad timing, bad decisions.
There are many best practices to be learned. But Phoenix will have to reconstitute a center city in a new and different way if it is to succeed. Gilbert won’t cut it. One key question is if Phx can attract enough pSfs, and then some with capital.
PSF, your alternative reality is not going to do Phoenix any favors. When you posit a “interesting fact” that a square mile in downtown Phoenix has a “density profile” surpassing anything in Denver or Seattle, who are we to believe?
I went back to the census data for the area you described. There are 4,869 people living there. That’s not dense. Of course, anyone with two eyes could readily see that this area is not densely populated. You could if you weren’t a troll making absurd assertions on the internet.
I don’t want to get into a flame war with you. I take it as a given that we both want Phoenix to densify and urbanize. But your method here is to simply deny reality in order to make the task seem much less daunting. Denial is what got us into this situation in the first place. If you think waving your magic wand and making Phoenix a much denser city than genuine cities like Denver and Seattle will somehow “make it real”, then you’re wasting everyone’s time here. You’re also wasting your energy because Phoenix doesn’t need cheerleaders. It needs truthtellers. We already have the Downtown Phoenix Partnership that takes it as its task to sprinkle pixie dust over our struggling downtown. They do a good job without making up stuff. Check them out. https://www.downtownphoenix.com/about
Great conversation thread – Thank you Jon Talton for providing a great forum and stimulating posts that spark these discussions.
I agree, Phoenix has major liabilities, from a weak economic base to hundreds of square miles of sprawl and growing rightwing extremism.
Regarding the “hip” question, I traveled extensively between 1999 -2005, mainly staying in European and Latin American youth hostels. Each time I told people where I was from, those who were even aware that a city called Phoenix, Arizona existed, asked – almost uniformly – something akin to “You must be a good golfer”. The first time I heard this I thought maybe a bit of sarcasm was playing out but after more than a few I quickly realized that Golf, a game popular among elderly white men and potent TV-administered insomnia antidote, was the image Phoenix portrayed to the world’s young people.
The discipline of my profession is to constantly think 30 years into the future – with a degree of optimism. Even Detroit planners, many of whom are creating plans for contraction – believe the future will be better than the present. Even if that means just being “less terrible”. (and yes, Detroit has some assets that Phoenix could only dream of – as with Denver) So, with that bias on the table I’ll point out a few of Phoenix’s assets (or potential assets).
As has been said: solar industrial growth and light rail, absolutely.
As Awinter hinted at: cheap rents. If strategic property could be preserved as redevelopment occurred our “artist infrastructure” could be maintained. Top “livability” cities like Vancouver, NYC and Chicago have struggled to address Jane Jacobs’ truism “When a place gets boring, even the rich leave”. If we could ever pull off a fraction of the greatness of these cities, we could learn from this lesson.
The world’s largest urban canal system (think canal urbanism)
Gateway to Mexican Riviera.
Affordable housing and property
Urban Mountain reserves and Sonoran riparian zone (truly world-class natural beauty) integration into the urban environment.
Latino culture – food, music, art, architecture, lifestyle, language etc. Phoenix is now majority non-white for the “first” time in history (modern era). Imagine if we could make strategic educational investments and make Phoenix the Latino-American capital of intellectual sophistication. Perhaps my head is in the clouds but Los Angeles and Miami have made major progress that we could replicate.
Modernist architectural assets. Yes, many of these are also liabilities. However, modernism that is retrofitted to be pedestrian-scaled has made parts of Los Angeles “cool” in a distinct way that really no other city created by traditional urbanism can ever be. Imagine Will Bruder and Andres Duany as a gay couple raising a protégé. What would that look like?
PhxPlanners, Phoenix “cool” exists in small pockets in midtown and (alas) in old Scottsdale. There are some good architects like Bruder working here. And there’s the broken economic and political machinery itself insuring that we’ll have to keep our dreams small for the foreseeable future. So, what would that gay protégé look like?
It’s a good question because, irony aside, there is a gay component to any central Phoenix renaissance. The Melrose district, which comes closer than any other here to approach the cool of LA’s Melrose Ave exudes a gay vibe. The problem is that Phoenix is not LA, does not have the same stock of vintage buildings, does not have the critical mass of gay/bohemian/creative-class types, and is surrounded by a hostile, don’t-tread-on-me fortress of right-wing burghers.
I do a lot of urban archaeology here, identifying the places ought to be of interest to people. My thought is that if we could truly appreciate an Al Beadle or Blaine Drake, we would have something other than the Phoenix Suns to make us feel good about ourselves. Of course, it doesn’t have to be architects and their legacies. It could be an undersppreciated poet or artist, too. For Phoenix, the curse is the newness that assumes the only interesting things here are in north Scottsdale.
The gay protégé should also be an environmentalist because the Sonoran Desert is crucial to any positive identity we can create here. And that person ought, ideally, be Hispanic since only cultural diversity can truly make us “cool”.
There’s a whole lotta crap in this sprawling car town we love so bitterly. I’m not sure we have a time horizon long enough to retrofit it for survival, let alone coolness. But if there’s a lifeboat with sequins and rhinestones, let it be ours. We’ve tried everything else.
Soleri, all I have left is, Aaaaaaamen girl(now if I only snapped my fingers with a twist)! Great post, and I hope that you will be able to see a different Phoenix emerging soon. I agree with your cultural layout for the metro and Phoenix, so now, let’s hand out some rhinestones!
We’re #40!
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2011/03/23/arizona-40th-in-per-capita-income.html?ed=2011-03-23&s=article_du
This is pretty bleak news if you’re some Goldwater Institute “analyst” all proud of yourself for helping turn Arizona into the Mississippi of the Southwest. Even Michigan is ahead of us!
Actually Soleri, we moved up four places from the last ranking. We were in 44th place. Michigan has ranked higher for a while…Detroit has managed to crumble while the rest of the population in Michigan lives with much better circumstances.
https://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm
The previous ranking was number #42, so this represents a small improvement. Arizona was in 30s through most of the decade.
Let me weigh in here as an economics columnist.
The PCPI is even worse than it appears because Arizona is a highly urbanized, populous state and the worst performer among this cohort. Among Western competitors: Washington ranks 10th, Colorado 14th.
The same will be true when PCPI comes out for cities and metros. Phoenix will continue to rank below its real peers. Sadly, Arizona ranked at the national average and was improving until the 1980s.
PCPI is a critical measure of how people are really faring.
I await Bob Robb’s lying spin (usually it’s something like taking percentage growth in PCPI, which is purely an artifice of population growth; or saying PCPI doesn’t matter.
Usually the spin is that cost of living is much, much lower in Arizona compared to Washington, Colorado, California, Massachussetts, etc, which is true…but would still be nice to have a population making Seattle cash living on a Phoenician budget; think $180,000 home/condo as opposed to $400,000.
Soleri, from your column, we both are wrong. Previsouly Arizona was 43rd, not 44th or 42nd…so the state moved up 3 spots in the ranking. Still, better than previous standing. A truly horrifying reality would be one in which the state moved down the list further or remained stagnant.
The “more affordable” argument is largely a canard if one researches deeply and applies some critical thinking. Beyond housing, everything in Phoenix costs about the same as in any similarly sized metro area, and in some cases more.
Housing is cheaper now, but that certainly wasn’t the case in the early- and mid-00s. Phoenix easily compared with Seattle, Denver, Dallas, on a property-for-property basis. Sure, Phoenix had crapola subdivisions far from anywhere starting at $150k, but so did metro Seattle, Denver, etc. (You get what you pay for). And the big difference was the quality of jobs. Phoenix simply didn’t have the number of high-paying jobs offered in peer cities. So it could be argued in those days that Phoenix was in many ways less affordable, or at best a wash. Indeed, the realty sales folks worried about high PHX prices as a deterrent. I went to more than one meeting to discuss the “affordability problem.”
A couple of qualifiers: Sure, PHX was more affordable than San Diego or the Bay Area, but the first is a special case and the second not a peer. Also, during the boom “Inland Empire” Californians did indeed unload their houses for huge profits and come to live in, say, Goodyear. They first loved the “low cost of living,” i.e. cheaper housing and not having to drive to Orange County or LA for work. Soon, however, they realized they either couldn’t find comparable work at all, or the pay was terribly low. I talked to many such mammals.
Since the crash, the “affordability” argument is a bit more scrambled. If you’re lucky enough to have a good job, Phoenix is more affordable than Seattle because of the collapse in housing prices. But there’s the rub. The biggest roadblock to a revival of central Phoenix, keeping the historic districts in the hands of owners who will be good stewards, and even filling existing empty houses and condos is well-paying jobs.
True, and that is why I called the affordability thing a spin. Yet, it is interesting to note that the sharp rise in prices after 2003 until 2007 was a short-lived one. Even during the times of “high” prices in the mid 2000’s, the average home in Phoenix and Arizona was in the mid to low $200,000’s; still far below Seattle’s and Washington’s prices.
Having a economy heavily dependent on retail is one reason wages are kept low; and which makes the current jobs being created today in Arizona extremely important. Most of the jobs announced this year have starting wages averaging over $48,000. More of these types of jobs are needed.
Stirring the pot. “Arrival cities”
https://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/23/arrival_cities
PSF, Arizona’s 40th place ranking in PCPI is horrifying. It would be different if there were longer-term commitments to wealth creation through investment. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Indeed, the opposite case applies. You can cherry-pick instances of new solar jobs and extrapolate a broad trend from that. Of course, you’re fudging crucial details to make this ray of light look like the blazing sun. For Arizona, the critical issue is the lack of any coherent and well-designed plan to enhance economic growth. There is a plan – tax cuts – but it won’t result in the paradise you reflexively imagine the future to be.
Here’s evidence of countercyclical optimism, however: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-24/detroit-outgrows-silicon-valley-in-tech-as-ford-binges-on-hires.html
Interesting article; Ford is hiring so Detroit is “bouncing back.” Only 29.99% unemployment rate to tackle and its all greener grass…
True that AZ’s 40th place ranking is bad, but you don’t jump from 43rd to 25th in a year…that evolution will occur over time. That a shift (in the right direction) occurred at all and during a time of horrible employment outlook for Arizona is good news…that trend, however slight, has continued from 2010 into 2011.
I know I’m probably “extrapolating a broad trend” from a quick visual analysis on a day to day basis, but CityScape has been rather busy. Restaurants seem to have lots of traffic and the shops have customers (this is during the day and night). Too early to proclaim success but seems to be on that trajectory and the Hotel Palomar is still under construction.
“True that AZ’s 40th place ranking is bad, but you don’t jump from 43rd to 25th in a year…that evolution will occur over time.”
And how will this “evolution” occur? Will laissez fairies put quarters under our pillows while we sleep at night?
From this morning’s Information Center:
https://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/03/25/20110325arizona-flat-income-tax-hike.html
This is unlikely to pass this year but our Galtian Goobers on 17th Avenue have an idea in mind. It’s called drowning the government in the bathtub. And absent government involvement, there is no plan that can take Arizona from a low-tax, low-investment, low-end state to something dynamic and competitive. A séance with Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman might make the spiritualists of Paradise Valley happy but it’s not going to change Arizona from a back-office backwater.
Ultimately, you need something other than your plucky, never-say-die optimism. You need money, discipline, clarity, and resolve. These things just don’t magically appear despite our pixelated dreaming on the internet. They’re hard because they must necessarily take place in the real world as opposed to cyberspace.
Now, it’s interesting that your assertions and those of the nut-case right are pretty much the same. That is, you don’t need government so much as belief. And belief-based economics (aka, voodoo) is like belief-based science in that it doesn’t depend on anything other than soi-disant assertions to be valid.
Talton, who predicted this entire catastrophe, ought to be of some interest to you. He writes a blog called Rogue Columnist where he meticulously documents the reasons why we face such an uphill climb. I suggest reading it someday when your denial is at low ebb.
Plenty of best practices and points of debate in Rogue’s City Desk:
https://.typepad.com/rogue_columnist/the-city-desk-urban-issue.html
Soleri, I think you need some hugs. It’s not really just “believing” something can happen; this isn’t an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, man. No matter the evidence suggesting any type of positive news, you’d likely rant on about negatively. At this point, it’s best not to continue beating a dead horse with you on certain issues. If positive trends continue that is all the proof needed and people are working hard toward recruiting companies capable of providing better employment opportunities for Phoenicians and Arizonans; what are you doing?
PSF, I don’t do this for sport. I do it for basic intellectual honesty, which is why you need better than “I said it, therefore it must be true” kind of arguments. I’ve often called you a troll for this reason. Talton’s blog doesn’t need cheerleaders, of course, and contrarian viewpoints ought to be welcome. But your contrarianism isn’t anything deeper than childlike obstinacy. In a metroplex of 4 million, you will find good news just like you’ll find bad news in dynamic cities. But simply seizing on the good news and calling it a trend is not a real argument. It’s the kind of conversation stopper you get from pr flacks. It’s also the kind of activity for which ministries of propaganda were invented.
I was thinking about you today and how obnoxious I often consider your comments to be. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that I would dislike you if I ever met you. But it’s unnerving to have my own comments subjected to your vapid review as if some chirpy “LOL” is a devastating critique. I can – and ought – to simply overlook it and ignore you. There’s no reason, of course to let these comments upset me.
But you are capable of good arguments when you’re not playing the contrarian role too hard. While I don’t have any sense of you as a vehicle for deep and vast knowledge, and your pretenses to such are borderline pathological, you are interested in cities, which is the basic requirement for conversation here.
As to my own failure to recruit companies, etc., allow me to duck the accusation and cite as a positive example instead a civic booster with a great record, Ben Bethel. Perhaps you know him. Long before he opened the Clarendon Hotel, he was one of the first downtown voices on the internet cheerleading Phoenix. He parlayed some luck in real estate at the Embassy condos to leverage the purchase price for the hotel. He’s done a great job making it hip and keeping hope alive in central Phoenix. I mention all this because his project is skating on very thin ice.
Bethel is exactly the kind of guy we need even though I thought his cheerleading was more suitable to real estate than actual development. But he bridged the gap, as it were, and he put his money where his loquacious mouth is. If he fails here, I’m not sure if there are any other dreamers with his capabilities waiting in the wings.
I’m not talented like Bethel, so for me the subject is not a matter of pain so much as resignation. We all do what we can. Talton does what he does extraordinarily well. You’re on his blog, doing what you do well: playing a passive-aggressive character because that’s your thrill. I’ll play this contretemps by ear. Maybe in the interest of an amicable online community, I’ll simply ignore your (mostly) inane provocations. But if I do “attack” you, understand that’s a modest price for playing contrarian to the best, most thoughtful, and most knowledgeable writer on Phoenix, Jon Talton.
Soleri, I know some old men, like you, they usually are bitter and love demeaning. Fortunately, I do mostly find it a “learning” experience so never hard feelings on my end.
PSF, and I know guys like you that play so hard at being smart that they really have no clue who they are. I want to tell them it’s okay, that simply being who you are is a much better position than pretending and bullshitting. If you’re a poseur, you can’t learn. If you know that you don’t know, you’re open and receptive. How sad to be young and closed.
Internet (geriatric) bullying; I guess some never grow up. Thanks for turning this important discussion into nonsense. I guess neither of us are as intelligent as we “play” to be…
That’s enough. Stay on topic and keep personal comments to yourselves. If we wanted this type of dialogue we could just go to AZCentral.
https://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/travel/27hours-seattle.html
My condo is between 8 and 9 on the map.
Here’s the second part to that Capitol Hill photo thread: https://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=5217932&posted=1#post5217932
Once again, these pictures sanitize the area for the sake of pleasing pictures. When I lived in Denver, I was always aware of the mixed nature of Capitol Hill. There were some genuine eyesores along with the incredibly beautiful gems.
Capitol Hill’s success as an urban neighborhood relates directly to this quality. Denver’s wannabe Martha Stewarts would sooner live in tonier areas like Washington Park or Cherry Creek. This means gentification has been less a tsunami than a gentle ripple on the water. Capitol Hill is valued but it’s not, for the most part, chi chi. And it’s this quality that keeps downtown Denver integrated with the residential areas around it.
If Phoenix were to grow denser, it would be a good idea to think about the innumerable ways people relate to the built environment around them. Trees matter, of course. But so do buildings that hug the street. Probably nothing is more damaging than parking lots in front of buildings. Even Denver has this issue on Colfax Blvd, the old tourist highway prior to I-70 and Capitol Hill’s northern boundary. Eventually, Phoenix will have to reclaim the city from the real estate lobby and property-rights zealots. I have no idea how we’ll do it but Phoenix won’t become a functionally urbane city until that happens.
Did Romney’s Bain Plunder Howard Hughes?