Posted inPhoenix

Phoenix and Seattle

It's been more than two years since I left Phoenix for Seattle and readers have repeatedly asked me to compare and contrast the two. I've hesitated because they are not merely different places but different planets.

As a columnist for the Arizona Republic, I used Seattle as a yardstick for Phoenix in a pair of articles. They were about the same size metro areas, and in 1960, same size cities. Both were weather challenged. Both had sat in the shadows of bigger cities (LA for Phoenix, San Francisco for Seattle). In 1960, Seattle was heavily dependent on Boeing and otherwise held a number of declining industries, as well as a history of labor problems. Phoenix was rich with newly recruited tech companies and a fresh slate. Which city would you have bet on? Of course, Seattle turned out to be a world city and Phoenix a massive real-estate scheme. The second column attempted to explain some of Seattle's strengths that could be nurtured to help Phoenix (yeah, I was the one who was always gloomy, never offering solutions). These columns went into the dustbin of all such writing about Arizona and, as teaching tools, they were also very naive.

In reality, Seattle had so many strengths Phoenix never had or developed. This is why a real compare-and-contrast may be of limited value, as well as being seen as more Phoenix bashing.

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Posted inUncategorized

The real hole Seattle is digging with the viaduct

The Phoenixes, Tulsas and Fresnos of American can take heart. Sometimes even the most progressive cities make really dumb decisions. Seattle has been agonizing for years about what to do about the earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct, which runs through downtown along the waterfront. The decision: replace it with another viaduct, or two surface streets.

Somehow the obvious answer, putting the roadway into a tunnel, which would have opened up the waterfront of Elliott Bay to downtown, never made the cut. Whatever the excuse, it's a potent reminder that America has lost the ability to do great and visionary projects. This didn't happen even in the worst years of the Great Depression. The problem is not lack of funding, but lack of will and hope, another symptom of decadence.

For Seattle, the lost opportunity will be as monumental as another viaduct is ugly. The renderings always show fanciful outdoor dining tables under the spaghetti concrete spans of traffic. But we know what will really be underneath the new monstrosity. At least the old viaduct had a certain 1950s Naked City gritty beauty. The surface street option is bad in its own special way, adding to congestion and placing a barrier of traffic between the city and its waterfront. A people who have lost the ability to dream big are not capable of designing wide Parisian boulevards.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Lies, damned lies, and rail transit

At least two big rail transit measures are on the ballot around the country this November, maybe more. In Seattle, voters will be asked to approve light-rail expansion. And in California, there's a truly transformative measure to build a high-speed rail network.

Both will probably fail, both due to the financial crisis but, sadly, also to the pervasive myths and muddled thinking that keep America frozen with an increasingly unworkable 1965 transportation network. This post will attempt to take a few of these on:

  • Buses: Many people who claim to support transit advocate expanding bus service, saying buses are cheaper and more flexible. Unfortunately this is also the bait-and-switch position of anti-rail, anti-transit forces — they will initially support bus transit but then oppose actually funding it. In any event, while buses have their place, they are not enough for a balanced, multi-modal 21st century transportation system.
Buses get stuck in the same traffic congestion that snarls cars — and politicians will never create enough bus-only lanes to alleviate this. In downtown Seattle, a bus-riders heaven, buses are routinely clotted up even with bus lanes. Your bus is not only late, but it can be the fourth or fifth one back in a line stopped to take on passengers. Good luck getting there if you walk slowly. Buses with stairs are hard for many people to enter. And buses have a sigma in many communities. As I say, buses have a valuable place. But they can't replace rail for reliability, ease of entry, ease of riding, rider appeal and passenger-miles-per-unit of energy.
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Posted inUncategorized

Add cities to the list of victims of the Great Disruption

Some of America’s most prosperous cities are also among the casualties of what I’m calling the first stage of The Great Disruption — the current financial crisis.

Charlotte, a middling Southern town built into a city by two money center banks, will see its world changed radically whether Wachovia is bought by Wells Fargo or Citigroup. At least one-fifth of its jobs are in banking, and these are high-paid corporate jobs with benefits. Virtually every advance in Charlotte, particularly its revived downtown, came from the leadership of Wachovia and Bank of America. Now half of that will be gone, and the claim to being America’s second-largest banking center.

I make a prediction: Bank of America will soon move its headquarters to New York. The decision will likely be camouflaged in language of "dual headquarters" or some such corporate claptrap. But BofA’s best and brightest will feel an increasing need to be in what’s left of America’s financial capital. After all, the men who built these powerhouses as a powerful, personal gift to Charlotte are retired.

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Posted inUncategorized

In Seattle, another chance to shoot ourselves in the foot and reload?

Seattle is the most backward city on the West Coast when it comes to mass transit. That still puts it light-years ahead of most American cities. Its bus system is quite good, the first light-rail line opens next year and a street car now links downtown to the burgeoning South Lake Union district. Sounder commuter heavy rail runs from Tacoma north to Everett. In addition, the Cascades Amtrak service provides convenient service between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C., including Portland and Seattle. The ferry service is the best in America, despite recent underfunding.

But Seattle residents feel profoundly inferior to Portland, with its world-class light rail system, and Vancouver, with its SkyTrain. And its a sign of how much progress has been made in California that all the service I mention above is a fraction of what’s available in LA, San Francisco or San Diego. Yet Seattle is also the gang that couldn’t shoot straight when it comes to many transit projects.

A roads-and-transit measure was defeated last year. Now an all-transit measure may come to the November ballot, and already newspapers, powerful suburban developers and even the generally pro-transit King County executive Ron Sims are opposing it. Seattle’s misadventures with transit have lessons that apply to other cities, and will be more important in years ahead when a lifestyle based on long, individual auto trips becomes less viable.

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Posted inUncategorized

Should the homeless always be with us?

Seattle is so generous to the homeless that it’s known as "Freeattle." So it’s not surprising that in this lovely, liberal city there would be protests over recent sweeps to remove homeless camps from greenbelts and underpasses. The city claims the camps are unsanitary and unsafe. The protesters say there are not enough shelters.

To be sure, the homeless here are not as obnoxious as in San Francisco. Even the People’s Republic of Berkeley has had second thoughts about doing nothing to address panhandling and defecating on sidewalks. Phoenix, which offers a harsh minimum of services, eased somewhat in recent years by a services campus pushed by some business leaders, still attracts a huge homeless population.

My personal reaction to this has changed in recent years. Based on my street experience as an ambulance medic, I knew panhandlers would just go buy drugs or booze. So I never gave money. Once I started reading the Bible with more diligence, I changed my behavior. Now I always give money. This is just me. And it doesn’t represent a societal answer.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The Republic looks at a tale of three cities

The Arizona Republic’s Chad Graham traveled to Austin and Seattle to report on some lessons recession-slammed Phoenix might learn. Numerous Rogue Columnist readers have asked for my reactions. Chad is a fine journalist and a friend. His story fits into a continuum of sometime efforts by the newspaper to educate the public and policy makers about the real world — this goes back at least to the 1980s. These efforts are ignored as population growth resumes and the nation’s last big factory town returns to churning out suburban tract houses.

The editors tip their hands by, I would assume, inserting this sentence to make defensive "Valley residents" feel better: "Phoenix will never have a gateway seaport to Asia that hums with
activity. Seattle will never have the potential solar power of Phoenix." The sad reality is that the center of solar research, entrepreneurship and use is cloudy Germany. Phoenix literally started the solar power movement in the 1950s and let it get away — therein lies the tale of the town.

Graham’s important point is that Seattle and Austin "have learned the lesson that Phoenix is now being taught: Economic
downturns hit harder when you are overly reliant on one industry."

Rather than go through the story, or even rehash my years of "controversial" efforts to raise these issues, I’d rather make a few key points among dozens that could be discussed. My perspective is as a Phoenician who has lived in Seattle for nearly a year and has seen both close up.

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Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

Class, power and downtown development

Back when I was a college right-winger (and in those days we were few and had no pretty girls), I wrote fierce papers demonstrating the murderous fraud that was Karl Marx. A professor gently cautioned me that even if I disagreed with Marx, he offered another way of "seeing through history." He was right, of course. Marx's ideas led to some of the most bloody deeds in history. But his emphasis on class (and this was not original to him) is indeed useful.

I think about this as I watch downtown revivals and their failures. A city such as Seattle preserved most of its core buildings, many businesses and the downtown evolved organically and with all sorts of people. Phoenix and Charlotte, on the other hand, clear-cut most of their downtowns and started from scratch. If you arrived in Phoenix after 1980, you'd think the downtown was always vacant lots, government buildings and a few towers. Of course, Phoenix had a thriving downtown into the 1960s. Charlotte was similar.

Their results have been vastly different. But the class and power undertones are unmistakable and they have shaped the fate of each downtown and city.

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Posted inUncategorized

Are Sooners chasing a dream past its prime?

Oklahoma City is the latest place to pin its hopes of becoming a "big league city" on a taxpayer financed arena to land a professional sports team. The team is the Seattle Supersonics, acquired by an Oklahoma ownership group that has barely concealed its intentions to move the team, especially after Seattle balked at another taxpayer-financed renovation of Key Arena.

These are two cities passing each other in the night.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The recession this time

Another recession, and for many Americans the post-2001 recovery and expansion felt like one long tough slog. It would have felt worse had they been living within their means, but liar-loan mortgages, bottomless credit cards and cheap stuff from China allowed them to think they were rolling in the good times, just like the hedge-fund managers and CEOs.

Another recession, and it won’t be like 2001, when a fraud-driven bubble burst, or 1991, when the savings-and-loan scandal sank the economy. It will have fraud, bursting bubbles and unsustainable finance, to be sure. But it may be far worse than anything we have experienced since 1982, maybe longer.

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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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