Phoenix

When you wonder why this blog is such a downer to some readers, consider what I must read. For example, The Phoenix Business Journal last week published a story headlined, "Phoenix Cracks Forbes' Top 10 Potential Boom Cities." I am suspicious of these kind of lists, which can be shallow and misleading, although they are wildly popular. And Forbes is not exactly without an agenda. Still, I dutifully followed the link. Imagine my non-surprise when it turned out to be a post by Joel Kotkin, the four-square apologist for Sun Belt suburbia. He claimed to have crunched data to determine which "cities are best positioned to grow and prosper in the coming decade." Austin and Raleigh led the list. He goes on:

Our other two top ten, No. 9 Phoenix, Ariz., and No. 10 Orlando, Fla., have not done well in the recession, but both still have more jobs now than in 2000. Their demographics remain surprisingly robust. Despite some anti-immigrant agitation by local politicians, immigrants still seem to be flocking to both of these states. Known better as retirement havens, their ranks of children and families have surged over the past decade. Warm weather, pro-business environments and, most critically, a large supply of affordable housing should allow these regions to grow, if not in the overheated fashion of the past, at rates both steadier and more sustainable.

Thus enlightened, I set out on the due diligence and critical thinking that should be the basics of good journalism, but are seen as "negative" in booster culture.

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood… — Daniel Burnham

Hard as it is to believe for someone my age, it's been 50 years since construction began on the Space Needle, the iconic symbol of Seattle and the centerpiece of the 1962 World's Fair. Seattle leaders elbowed out much better-known cities, including New York, to gain international accreditation of the event, which was a coming out party to the world for the Emerald City. The site is now Seattle Center, a cultural mecca in the central core right down the monorail from downtown. It was actually Seattle's second world's fair and had initially been developed to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, whose grounds became the University of Washington campus. Another one of my adopted hometowns, San Diego, also held two world's fairs, in 1915 and 1935 — their legacy was magnificent Balboa Park.

My real hometown never did one world's fair, even though it passed the population mark to be a big city more than half a century ago. It may be just as well. Unlike Seattle or San Diego (or even Knoxville, Tenn.), Phoenix would have built something out in the middle of nowhere and, unlike Seattle lucking out with the timeless Space Needle, suffered the worst of modern architecture. Maybe the dusty streets for an empty subdivision would have been left behind. Indeed, I was approached by a group of well-meaning folks in the mid-2000s to promote a world's fair in the former gravel beds of the Salt River. That it was far from downtown never seemed to have occured to them.

Still, this is another sign of Phoenix's astounding lack of ambition. It plays in the majors. It just doesn't want to admit it. I recall hearing from someone who moved to Phoenix and tried, within his modest means, to push forward a project of civic betterment. He was taken aside and told, "People move to the Valley to be left alone. That's the way they like it. You either have to live with that or move." He moved.

As the world knows, five people were gunned down last Thursday in and near Yuma before the 73-year-old killer took his own life. Yet another person was left in critical condition. The mainspring of the violence was a nasty divorce, but, even though overall crime is falling, the tendency to reach for a gun is if anything on the rise. Especially in Arizona. This latest bloodbath comes a mere five months after nineteen people were shot, six fatally, during an assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at a suburban Tucson shopping center.

The Arizona Republic wrote the predictable lines about the "killing spree that shocked the tight-knit farming community of Wellton, outside of Yuma" where the ex-husband killed the ex-wife. This, of course, is not true. Wellton, where the onetime northern main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad diverged for Phoenix from the southern main, was indeed once tight-knit and a farming community. The northern main has been out of commission for years because the state wouldn't help upgrade it to ensure continued Amtrak service to Phoenix and Phoenix has so few rail-bound exports now. The farming is mostly large-scale and industrial, much of it moving there after having been pushed out of the Salt River Valley. Wellton is now an extension of the Interstate 8 sprawl that trickles out from Yuma.

Yuma is rich in Arizona history; not just the territorial prison, but the 19th century steamboats that plied the Colorado River, the railhead into the territory from California, and the long political rein of state Sen. Harold Giss, one of the most powerful men in Arizona in the mid-20th century. It is also one of the bleakest locations in America outside of West Texas — near the end of a great river "tamed" to death and so hot it makes Phoenix seem like Seattle by comparison. Yet it has become a retirement magnet, especially for those with less money. Sun, it has. It is also a very poor place, close to Mexico to feed the farm economy with labor, and consistently suffers some of the worst unemployment, income levels, educational attainment and child poverty. It has about 200,000 people in a place with a carrying capacity for one-tenth that number. As elsewhere, sprawl and population growth have annihilated "tight-knit" and "community." Much less civic culture, a "we" society and the brain mechanisms that preserve the always-fragile wall between civilization and nihilism.

So it has come down to this. Arizona will mark the centennial of its statehood in 2012 by leaning on schoolchildren to "shine" the territorial capitol dome (always on the cheap, Arizona never built a real state capitol building). It will do a $7 million "streetscape renovation project" on Washington between downtown and the capitol. "Plans call for that stretch of roadway to be 'transformed' with wider, more-decorative sidewalks and crosswalks, enhanced street and pedestrian lighting, benches, shade canopies, bike lanes and displays that feature historical and cultural information about Arizona's 15 counties," the Arizona Republic reported. Something will honor the indigenous tribes whose land we stole, without putting it that way, of course. I can imagine the outcome: Gravel, concrete and shadeless palo verde trees in a no-man's-land of vacant lots and soulless state office buildings. Too bad the leafy neighborhood of Victorian houses and territorial-era apartments that once stood there couldn't have been saved, and no reinvestment in this precious historic area happened. The truly historic mining museum was kicked out for some nebulous "five Cs" museum. And that's it.

The only silver lining to this cavalcade of underachievement and failure that I can find is that the state avoided some brutal piece of post-modern celebrity architecture in a new capitol building. Otherwise, how sad. And don't blame the Great Recession: Any effort to significantly commemorate Arizona's 100th birthday would have had to be started years ago, during the so-called boom. There was no more appetite for it then, either. Public virtues, community virtues, civilizational aspirations: Don't look for them here. It's not that the state lacks the means; at 6.4 million people it is the third most populous state in the West. It just lacks the interest.

Consider West Virginia, carved out of the Old Dominion by the Civil War. It finally dedicated a classic, lovely state capitol building, designed by Cass Gilbert, in 1932 during the depth of the Great Depression. This is a poor, isolated state. Are you telling me growthgasm Arizona couldn't do as well? Instead, we got the horrendous executive office tower in the mid-1970s, which visually obliterates the copper dome of the old capitol and looks very much like a jail. Perhaps that helps explain the series of legal troubles that ensnared Arizona governors. Or consider Chicago's Millennium Park, a magnificent public space. Conservative Cincinnati marked its bicentennial by beginning to reclaim its riverfront with parks and the Serpentine Wall along the Ohio River. For Arizona and Phoenix — nothing. The city lacks even one heroic or historic statue in a public space downtown (even Oklahoma City, younger than Phoenix, has at least one). This despite all the wealth and capital that poured into the state, decade after decade, going into community-destroying sprawl and little else.

That's the question Matt Taibbi would ask, as he did in his famous diatribe against Wall Street. For the more sober purposes of this blog, the question is, Why is Joe Arpaio still in office? The latest reason is Chief Deputy David Hendershott being forced from office with allegations of misconduct, including using the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office anti-corruption unit to smear foes and featherbedding the jobs of his friends. The deputy chief was ousted, too. (And all this from an investigation by the friendly Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeau). As Arpaio adamantly says he will not resign, the question of his lax oversight of his chief deputy/sycophant becomes very much like one that should be directed to the banksters: Were you corrupt or stupid? Which one? There's no other answer, especially for a man who presents himself as so smart, so in charge, so much America's Toughest Sheriff.

The abuses of Arpaio go back many years. No wonder his office is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and a federal grand jury. Real police officers have no use for Arpaio, referring to him as the "Badged Ego." He co-opted most of the media years ago, including the Arizona Republic, where crusading is not part of the Gannett business model. Eugene C. Pulliam would have run him out of office and out of the state long ago. Still, the Republic has done a creditable job on the Hendershott investigation, if not exactly jumping on allegations that those in the law enforcement community had known about for years. Most of the media were played like a cheap fiddle with the chain gang, the tent jail, pink underwear and the "sweeps." One exception is New Times, which has fearlessly investigated Arpaio for more than 15 years. The casual violations of civil rights, cronyism, lack of attention to actually doing the job and high costs to taxpayers are not in question.

Why is Joe Arpaio still in office, particularly when voters twice had the choice of a lawman beyond reproach, Dan Sabin? It says much about the condition of today's Phoenix and Maricopa County.