Posted inUncategorized

Charlotte faces its moment of truth

Around 1996, when I was the business editor of the Charlotte Observer, I provoked the ire of the president of the chamber of commerce — as I so often do with such caudillos — by pointing out an inconvenient truth: the city’s economy was too dependent on two big banks. Charlotte was in the middle of a historic boom that turned a sleepy, mid-sized Southern city into the nation’s second-largest banking center.

An Oz-like skyline shoots up dramatically from the flat treeline of the Carolina Piedmont. Signs of fabulous wealth are everywhere, from the expensive cars on the street to the beautiful people shopping at Dean & Deluca. It’s an amazing testmony to what money can do — to what being positioned at the heart of the capital markets can do. And it’s mostly because of the two money center banks, what are now Bank of America and Wachovia, that are improbably headquartered there.

Then came the subprime and credit crises, partly authored by the smartest people in the room in Charlotte. Now, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "Charlotte is fretting over whether it can remain the last great U.S. banking center outside of New York." It should be fretting over more than that.

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Posted inPhoenix

Recalling Phil Gordon, and a corridor of lost opportunities

Some of the right-wing thugs that have the loudest voices in Arizona want to recall Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon for being too soft on illegal immigration. Gordon doesn’t have anything to worry about, even with the ridiculously small numbers needed to get an initiative started.

If anything, Gordon’s cautious temporizing over Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s war on the poor — before criticizing it before a Hispanic audience — should earn a recall effort from the 34 percent of Phoenicians who are Hispanic and mostly American citizens (and those are 2000 numbers). But of course one reason the thugs rule is the populations that outnumber them, whether moderate Anglos or Mexican-American citizens, lack their lunatic zeal and often don’t even vote.

As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the illegal immigration problem is because 1) Arizona is a border state; 2) has a low-end economy  dependent on low-wage illegal immigrant labor, and 3) is doing nothing to really address the issue. Gordon, however, is in the spotlight, in his second term as mayor, and it’s fair to ask a question of substance.

Has Phil Gordon failed as Phoenix mayor?

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Posted inPhoenix

Poor little rich Scottsdale

Some readers have asked me to comment on the latest dysfunction in Scottsdale, including the forced departure of City Manager Jan Dolan. I will, but with more than mixed feelings.

First, I went to high school in Scottsdale when it was a sweet small city and hadn’t been completely changed by money, transience, political extremism and the urban problems (without urban solutions) that plague all of Phoenix. Among its virtues was a small-town merchant class that was genuinely invested in a place of manageable size (Roosevelt to McDonald). My Scottsdale is gone forever, but the small city that it was in the 1970s nurtured much good in my young life.

Second, Scottsdale’s future is already baked in the cake. The thugs that want to recall the mayor for allegedly even thinking about light rail need not worry. They have "won." What you’ve got is what you’ve got, and the world will intrude. Of course their agenda is always more power and intimidation than accomplishing anything.

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Posted inUncategorized

Seattle’s mental gridlock over transportation

Angst and debate are allowed in Seattle. Unlike Phoenix, there’s little boosterism here (the city’s success is obvious), no pressure to just shut up and buy a house (with one of America’s best-educated populations, people are informed and involved), and the love and concern people have for Seattle is genuine (as opposed to, ‘at least it’s hot and sunny’).

Transportation angst is one of the big local sports, and yet not much gets done. Voters recently voted down a big package of roads and transit. And rightly so: it would have increased emissions by adding roads, as well as installed light rail in the wrong places. Plus, it would have taken 20 or more years to complete. Even the Sierra Club opposed it.

Still, any new measures will be long in coming, and I sensed some fundamental disconnects in the debate. Most of them go back to my basic premise that the next 30 years will be radically different from the past 30 years.

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Posted inPhoenix

What I didn’t write at the Arizona Republic

People kept telling me they couldn’t believe I got away with what I wrote as a columnist for the Arizona Republic. I identified and questioned the vast power of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. While most of the local media were mindless boosters, I discussed the serious challenges to the state’s economy (which are coming true) and indeed to its future as a quality place to live (ditto). How, hundreds of readers asked, did I keep my job?

In the end I didn’t, of course. But for nearly seven years, I offered one of the few alternatives to local cheerleading and media growthgasms. And I was the only one to keep a sustained focus on economic, social and environmental issues — and how they were all tied together.

And yet, dear readers, I pulled my punches nearly every time I wrote.

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