airport

For as long as anyone can remember, the Arizona Republic has been part of the big booster engine in Phoenix. Lately, under pressure from falling revenue and corporate owners, the paper’s bosses have demanded that the news “say something positive about the area.” So it wasn’t surprising to see a Feb. 18th article pimping the Williams-Gateway hinterlands, nominally a part of Mesa, as a “brand new city” on the way.

Jim Tinson, identified by the article as a Yale-educated, New York-based architect and urban planner working on the project, said “This is an opportunity of international significance.” The idea is to create an “aerotropolis,” with the city surrounding the “maturing” Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.

The article goes on, “Planners stress that the current economic downturn and housing slump would not affect the overall long-term vision, which they expect to unfold over decades and through multiple economic cycles.”

Of course, the planners have no stake in telling unpleasant truths to the power that pays them.