sustainability Archives - Rogue Columnist

For whom the bell tolls

California, facing its worst drought in modern times, gets all the press. Arizona, confronting many of the same issues, albeit less severely so far, flies under the radar.

I'm told that the latest meme of is Phoenix 3.0 — 1.0 being an agricultural economy, 2.0 being development and 3.0, now, is moving into the broad, sunlit uplands of a technology economy.

This is only boosterwash. Data centers and profaning the desert with solar "farms" is far from being at the headwaters of the tech economy. Where the innovation happens on a global scale. Where the world talent congregates for high-paid jobs. This is almost exclusively happening in blue states, in a few "technopolises" such as Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Boston and New York.

The headwaters of advanced industries don't go to states defined by their extreme politics, underfunded education, and cuts to universities.

The reality is that Arizona is desperately trying to restart the growth engine for one, two, maybe three more runs — with championship golf — before the edifice finally collapses. By then, the architects of the short hustle will be living off their profits somewhere else.

Jon Talton April 6, 201568

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: The weather

This is the time of year when we see smug pieces in Phoenix media trumpeting the fine weather and making fun of the blizzard or snow in the Midwest or Northeast.

It's an old con going back a century or more — although it was typically the subject of advertising (as seen in the above promotion from the 1950s) rather than of "news" stories.

How can I be so cynical as to call it a con? Two reasons.

First, America had a long tradition of the West being misrepresented as the land of milk and honey by railroads and land barons. In most cases, the reality was disappointing, sometimes disastrously so. In reality, the land was unforgiving, "civilization" was primitive, fraud and lawlessness were common, and many immigrants were ruined.

Second, Phoenix historically had about seven decent-to-nice months and five hellish ones. I say "historically" because that ratio is starting to invert, about which more later. But many snowy places have five rough months and seven that range from livable to quite pleasant. Summer in Minnesota is lovely. So it the Phoenix braggadocio about its "superior" weather has always baffled me.

It is true that many people seek the sun almost pathologically, like the doomed space crew in the 2007 film Sunshine. "You don't have to shovel sunshine!" is a motto that resonates, at least with the 4 million people who seem to be willing to put up with almost anything in Phoenix as long as they get hot weather. I admit my blind spot: As a Phoenician, nothing makes me more depressed than endless sunny days.

Jon Talton February 2, 201565

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Lies, damned lies and water

Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over — old adage.

So Doug Ducey and Fred DuVal have laid out their plans for addressing a water shortage in Arizona. DuVal, naturally, comes off as the sanest, including asking the state Department of Water Resources "to develop a detailed analysis of the Groundwater Management Act and provide specific recommendations for improving the law."

That's good. I don't trust ADWR or have confidence that the law is being adequately enforced or monitored.

DuVal is less convincing when he told the Arizona Republic that the state needs to "go big" on new water projects, including desalination. As regular readers know, the feds aren't going to invest in more waterworks. California and the Upper Basin states would also resist them with all their might (see here and here).

Ducey comes off full kook, including his insinuation that trees are to blame for drought. The last thing Phoenix needs to do is further degrade its historic oasis. Central Phoenix, especially, needs more trees to offset the heat island and climate change.

But nobody dared wake the elephant. You know, the one in the room

Jon Talton September 29, 201432

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix

The city in mind

As a native Westerner, my problem with "wide open spaces" is how many we've lost in my lifetime and how difficult it is to really live in what's left in a nation of 308 million. The constant move outward in metro Phoenix obliterates anything but the illusion. Today's wide vista out the window will be a Super Wal-Mart tomorrow. People who bought in Fountain Hills years ago — a development that annihilated one of the state's most lush saguaro forests, and it takes a saguaro ten years to grow an inch-and-a-half — are now partly surrounded by schlock. Same with Verrado, where the idiot David Brooks saw "the future." Prescott, a town with history and wonderful bones, is a planning and congestion disaster outside the old town. The same is true with Flagstaff, as with most small towns in America.

If you're rich and lucky enough to buy land adjacent to a National Park, maybe your panorama will have the illusion of the pristine, although we know the pollution, fire, sleazy land swaps and other stresses facing our public lands — and just wait for the GOP to privatize it. Move to the staked plains and you can find real emptiness, but good luck finding work. And if I want wide open spaces, do I profane them further with a new house, which by its very nature can't be "green," and total dependence on the automobile? Good luck finding a real, scalable, sustainable small town on a passenger train route.

For these reasons, as well as growing up in central Phoenix and for the eye-opening years I spent living in real cities, I choose to make my stand in the city. And it's a major focus of this blog. Most Americans don't "get" cities; they don't have urban values. Most want their imitation English country estates crowded together as lookalike tract houses in suburbia. The problems with this are manifold. First, the nation's population has doubled since Levittowns were first laid down. Thus, most suburbs suffer from urban problems without urban solutions. Second, they are artifacts of a moment in history defined by cheap gasoline, now passing away. Third, sprawl destroys vast tracts of valuable agricultural land, rural areas and wilderness, with numerous environmental strains. Fourth, for all the heavy subsidies to make suburbia work (freeways, flood control, etc.), it's a highly inefficient spatial arrangement. Suburbia is not merely boring and filled with anomie (American Beauty, etc.), it is now the epicenter of the housing crash, with attendant debt, poverty and very high carrying costs.

Jon Talton March 31, 201124

Phoenix 101: History

A Phoenician’s take on Tucson

The Ronstadt house on Sixth Avenue in Tucson.

Early in the 20th century, Phoenix surpassed Tucson in population and never looked back. The old joke: Tucson hates Phoenix and Phoenix doesn't pay any attention to Tucson, which makes the Old Pueblo hate Phoenix even more. I don't claim to be a Tucson expert, but a reader new to the city asked to learn more. So what follows is a Phoenician's idiosyncratic take on Arizona's second city.

Tucson is much older than Phoenix, having been founded by the Spanish (led by an Irishman in the pay of the Spanish crown) in 1775, a tenuous foothold in Apache country. It was a part of Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 (otherwise, the border would have been as close as Goodyear — how'd that sit with the white-right Midwesterners?). Thus, Tucson always wore its Hispanic side with ease and pride. Tucson got the first main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1880s and for decades was the most populous city in the territory and young state. It was also a bastion of the Democratic Party, long after the state as a whole turned Republican. This was Mo Udall, Dennis DeConcini and Raul Castro country.

Growing up as a child of the Cold War, I knew Tucson would be a first-strike target in a "counterforce" nuclear exchange, because of the Titan II missile silos that surrounded the city. My first visits were on the train. My mother and I would board the remains of the once-grand Imperial, now a mail train with one coach, at Union Station, and travel south. We would spend the day in downtown Tucson and take the still crack Sunset Limited back home that evening. Early memories: The Santa Catalinas towered over the city in a way no mountains did Phoenix. Tucson was dry, a desert city, so different from the (then) lush oasis of Phoenix. Downtown was busy and vibrant, but no more so than Phoenix. I wasn't impressed.

Jon Talton January 3, 201139

Uncategorized

Peak oil and its deniers

UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong has a running feature on his blog called, "Why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?" Amen, brother. But even the best newspapers have blind spots, and that has especially unfortunate consequences when those dark zones concern some of the biggest issues of the day. The New York Times is already terrified of climate-change stories and won't plumb seriously into the soft empire we've created and its crushing costs. One of its biggest deficiencies is coverage of energy, especially the oil industry. Hence, we were served a story on Sunday about peak oil that failed to define the term and consigned the people in the story to the survivalist fringe. This from a newspaper that also publishes a deferential story about the retrograde nihilist Rand Paul and shrinks from nailing the tea party for its racist supporters, incoherent positions and — especially — shadow control by big corporate money.

Peak oil doesn't mean "we're about to run out of oil." Even defining it as "demand outstripping supply" is incomplete. Peak oil means the world has reached a point where half of the planet's oil has been burned up (see, "climate change"). The remainder will be increasingly hard to reach and more expensive to refine. America hit its national peak in the early 1970s. The North Sea has passed peak. Several of the world's giant "elephant fields" are near or past peak. This is a simple fact of geology about which there's no disagreement among most experts (the outlier: the oft-quoted and highly-paid-by-industry Daniel Yergin). Peak oil was being used in ads by major oil companies and speeches by their CEOs in the mid-2000s. As with climate change, the debate is over details; in this case, when will peak hit and what will be its effects?

Not for nothing did America fare well in World War II because it was a petro superpower and the world's leading oil exporter. Neither Hitler nor the Japanese Empire had much in the way of oil resources. Hitler failed to make the Caucasus oilfields an immediate priority in his attack on the Soviet Union, a geopolitical example of when cops say, "Thank god for stupid criminals." Now, more than three decades after hitting peak, America still produces oil, especially in Texas, Alaska, California and Louisiana. We're even still one of the world's larger oil producers, but that is way outstripped by our appetite.

Jon Talton June 7, 201022

Phoenix

Valley downtowns 2.0?

The previous post on downtown Phoenix generated many comments about other downtowns in the metro area, so let's take a tour.

Some common denominators are found. None of these cites have a real urban downtown. Most also suffer to some degree from land banking, which produces blight and prevents the infill that would create critical mass. Many are far from the residences of better-off folks, so there's little incentive for them to patronize downtown. Most suffer from the dreadful sameness of development in the region, with "master-planned communities" separating themselves from their nominal cities while malls and office "parks" draw off retail and commercial businesses from a central business district. Most are located in what were little farm towns during the golden age of American architecture and civic design, so they lack good bones. A few are attempts at New Urbanist town centers — but that doesn't make them real downtowns, from the lack of diversity to the lack of connectivity. All except for downtown Tempe lack convenient transit/light rail. Despite all the studies and consultants, few city leaders seem to understand urban or even get out much. Beating Fresno is taken as a great achievement. All suffer from lack of serious business-driven investment, depending instead on real estate-driven speculation. Almost all lack the public spaces, much less inviting and inspiring public spaces, essential to real downtowns.

Given its huge population, Mesa should have the region's second real downtown. Unfortunately the city's short-sighted, haphazard development grab in the '80s and '90s, combined with no significant, sustained focus on downtown, leaves it lacking. The arts center was a good start, and Mesa at least didn't tear down its Main Street core (it did allow its lovely Southern Pacific depot to rot, then burn down). Mayor Scott Smith wants a major Mesa Community College presence there — another good start. But the lure of the Gateway land scheme will keep drawing away energy and investment — the Cubs stadium being the latest example (Smith tells me the Cubs wouldn't go for a downtown ballpark near light rail — enjoy $10-a-gallon gasoline). The lack of LDS power to enhance downtown and its connection to the Arizona Temple is bizarre. Meanwhile, Mesa courts dullness and conformity (hiding away its significant poor, Latino population). So its lack of coolness also keeps it from making the most of what it has.

Jon Talton January 28, 20105

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Sun City

The curvilinear streets and golf courses of Sun City.

Fifty years ago, Del Webb began Sun City. It was just south of Grand Avenue and the Santa Fe railroad amid the flat farm fields of Maricopa County and near the tiny railroad sidings at Surprise and El Mirage. I first saw it from the train — there was no Sun City station, for this was a development built for the automobile. For most Phoenicians, it was a curiosity — or a joke. Pat McMahon's misanthropic, demented Aunt Maud character on Wallace & Ladmo was from Sun City. Photos of oldsters riding around in their golf carts provoked much mirth. When an older lady asked my grandmother if she was going to move out there, this daughter of the frontier was aghast. "Why would I want to be stuck out there with all those old people?" she asked. The older lady was shocked.

Yet Sun City would prove to be one of the most influential events in the history of modern Phoenix, setting in train a series of business, demographic and social changes that have proven to be very mixed blessings. Before Sun City, Phoenix was something like a real city. Tourism and snowbirds were part of the mix. But so was a huge agricultural economy, along with a large — for its population larger than today — and growing number of technology, aerospace and defense businesses. Resorts were limited. The artist colonies in Scottsdale and Carefree were more important than retirees. After Sun City all this would change.

Del Webb had been building in Phoenix for decades before Sun City. Go to the iconic Phoenix Towers at Cypress and Central and you'll see his name on the building, erected in 1956. Downtown sidewalks from years before had it etched in the concrete (although here Webb competed against "Frenchy" Vieux). He grew rich in the New Deal. In World War II, he built military facilities, as well as the concentration camp — there's no polite way to put it — at Poston to hold interned Japanese-American citizens and other Japanese living in America. By the time he envisioned Sun City, he was no longer "ole Del," but a very rich man, friend of celebrities, part-owner of the New York Yankees — and, among Phoenicians in-the-know, trailed by the odor of associations with organized crime and war profiteering.

Jon Talton January 18, 20105

Politics: National

Turning and turning

We are told repeatedly by our rulers in business, politics and the media that the big hurdle to addressing climate change and health care is cost. Somehow war without end, the global effects of climate change and the towering costs of health care even as more Americans do without it are "free." And so it goes.

This is how we live now. There was indeed one conservative in last fall's presidential election and he now sits in the White House. Barack Obama fits the Burkean mold of slow change, respectful of tradition and custom, seeking to preserve the best of existing arrangements. Unfortunately, thirty years of right-wing revolution (represented by Mr. Obama's opponent, the wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III) have driven these laudable benchmarks so far to the extreme that Mr. Obama's innate restraint is exactly the wrong temperament for this pivotal moment in history.

On health care, one wonders if his heart was ever in it. This has been a colossal failure of the Democratic Party. The New Deal was not the product of a single, 2,000-plus page bill, but of scores of pieces of legislation over years. It delivered nearly instant relief to the nation's suffering, in both substance and confidence-building, helping to ensure continued Democratic majorities to keep it going. Under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, we have a massive dog's breakfast that will come to no good, and be undone by the Republicans because its good elements will take too long to kick in. Why, for example, not one bill that outlawed the savage practice of denying insurance based on pre-existing conditions, or charging outlandish premiums for it — and having it implemented the moment the president signed the legislation? Another could have instantly required pharmaceutical companies to bid for Medicare drugs, lowering costs at the stroke of a pen. Yet another would have eliminated antitrust protections for the big insurers. And another still would have been a public option, if not Medicare for all — and let the filibuster happen and its instigators pay the fearsome price in the next election.

Jon Talton December 7, 20094

Phoenix

The vision thing

It's good to know that one sector in Phoenix has escaped the recession: the "visioning" industry. Meetings led by consultants and officials can still be held to get "public input" that will lead to…nothing. I remember such a farce that the "city" of Buckeye paid god-knows-how-much-for in the mid-2000s: Respondents most wanted commuter rail to Phoenix. Where are the trains?

The city of Phoenix's Planning Department has been going around to the assorted "urban villages" of this 500-square-mile collection of real-estate ventures asking citizens to "imagine Phoenix the best it can be in 2050." This is all part of updating the holy General Plan, which supposedly guides all development. As the city presentation puts it, "a General Plan is a comprehensive guide for all physical aspects of a city, but also addresses issues such as building neighborhoods and creating community." Like that General Plan of the 1970s that said Bell Road would absolutely, positively be the permanent northern boundary of Phoenix.

If I'm reading the information from the Downtown Voices Coalition correctly, the attendees at the central Phoenix meeting wanted higher density to support mixed use, downtown and transit. Alas, Ahwatukee's top vision for 2050 was "safety," although it wants light rail. The swells of Camelback East want something called "the village concept" (inbred people with pitchforks hiding a local monster?) — no mention of a downtown at all, certainly not light rail (it might bring "those people"). Far-off Desert View wants most a "small town, large city" feel. Maryvale at least ranks downtown and "proper public transit."

So much for imagining a great city.

Jon Talton November 2, 200915

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Mesa

The Southern Pacific depot in downtown Mesa, circa 1963, when six passenger trains a day still served the station.

I got a rare treat in the mid-'60s for a poor kid from the 'hood: Getting to see Willie Mays play in a game of the Giants vs. the Dodgers. It was spring training and we drove to the little ballpark in Mesa. The game was great. Unfortunately, we were in the family 1959 Ford Galaxie, a source of never ending trouble and built, as my mother never tired of saying, during Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's tenure as Ford president. That night the only gear that would work was reverse — and we drove all the way home to Phoenix going backwards.

It's low-hanging fruit to grab this memory as a metaphor for what has happened to Arizona's third most populous city. A city so populous, indeed, that it is larger than St. Louis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis or Pittsburgh — and has nothing to show for it. No major university (an iffy branch of ASU miles from downtown doesn't count); no major corporate headquarters; no great museums; no magical neighborhoods. City Hall looks like a low-end office building. Even the area around the Arizona Temple, Mesa's one majestic asset, has been allowed to crater. The miles of enchanting citrus groves have almost all been bulldozed (and when I asked in 2006 if there was any preservation effort for the remainder, a top city official looked at me blankly).

It's a sad, and in many way surprising outcome. But operating by Arizona's rule of "when in a hole, keep digging," Mesa shows every sign of continuing the practices that got it in what is a morass even by Phoenix standards. The Cubs are playing the city for fools, threatening to leave, shopping spring training sites around the area, including some on the rez. Mesa's response could be to plan an intimate ballpark downtown on the light-rail line. It would enhance critical mass for a walkable urban space that Mesa lacks. It would be much more pleasant that the newer spring-training parks with their endless parking lagoons amid dehumanizing sprawl. It would help prepare Mesa to prosper in the higher-cost energy future.

Not surprisingly, Mesa is scouting two sites in the middle of nowhere, but on the all mighty freeway. When in a hole, keep digging.

Jon Talton October 12, 20099

Uncategorized

Learning from the Lone Star State

If anyone thought the Sun Belt was in danger from the Great Disruption, they can find swaggering solace in The Economist's panting, sheet-clawing passion over Texas, in an article headlined Lone Star Rising. The teaser says, "Thanks to low taxes and light regulation, Texas is booming. But demography will bring profound changes."

The Economist's journalism is often some of the best around, and even its editorials can challenge the psychotic screamathon that has become American "conservatism." But it can't completely escape its Tory establishment roots, or its intellectual grounding in the conventional wisdom, BGD — Before the Great Disruption. I don't doubt that America, and probably Britain, will exhaust themselves trying to resuscitate the old order. That will render it no less dead than the ubiquitous armadillos decorating the highways of Texas.

American right-wingers are no doubt sending the article to the faithful — and using it to further cow the Democrats, if such a thing is possible. But a close reading of even this article — and a better understanding of Texas — shows that the Lone Star State's success has relatively little to do with "low taxes and light regulation." I speak as one who covered organized crime and the oil industry there, and whose family roots go back to the bloody pre-Civil War Texas frontier.

Jon Talton July 30, 20093

Phoenix

Cities and ‘markets’

Bashas' filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is a sad and telling marker for Arizona. You can forget about that downtown Phoenix store. And you can probably forget about Bashas', one of the state's last large, locally based and locally rooted companies.

Today's grocery company was founded in 1932, in the Great Depression, although its Arizona origins go deeper. That it may succumb in the Great Disruption is a tragic, but perhaps fitting bookend. I think of all the times I was out amidst the worst examples of unsustainable, desert-profaning sprawl, be it Gold Canyon, Hunt Highway or the insipid Verrado that was prematurely anointed the future by David Brooks of the New York Times. There would be a Bashas'. As the sprawl Ponzi scheme has collapsed, its not surprising that it takes down another vulnerable player.

This take-down is sadder than most. Bashas' has a great story: immigrant success, ties to Chandler when it was a real town, and keeping its base there even as the anodyne subdivisions encroached. Eddie and Nadine Basha have been civic leaders in a place where they are more rare than shade in mid-summer. This is an unforgiving business with razor-thin margins. If greater Phoenix ends up losing its only locally owned grocery chain — as, say, A.J.'s is sold off — it will only deepen the deep-bore mineshaft that is the hole the place is in.

Jon Talton July 13, 20098

Uncategorized

Obama gets aboard high-speed rail

President Obama has pledged $13 billion to begin high-speed rail in America. I don't want to be a cynic and ask, does anyone believe we'll see this in our lifetimes (or at all, as American continues its whacko-driven, debt-laden decline)? I'll say the action is a good start. And the sensibility — actually acknowledging the importance of rail to the 21st century — is first rate.

It's important to note a few essentials to understanding the situation. 1) Rail is essential to a sustainable future, using less fuel and having a smaller negative environmental impact that airlines or freeways. 2) It's essential to improving productivity and competitiveness, as workers and semis are stuck in gridlock, and face steadily rising fuel costs anyway. 3) Modern rail systems are thriving around the world, and China sees this as essential to its leapfrog to world supremacy — note to Americans who don't get out much: We're the country that's behind, far behind. 4) The nation's only passenger rail system, Amtrak, has been starved of funding for years, so it has much catching up to do, just on refitting equipment, etc.

With Obama's plan, the devil will be in the details, of course. Yet we're still not thinking holistically about the issue — and we'd better get our act together toot sweet.

Jon Talton April 17, 20094

Phoenix

Phoenix and Mesa dementia

As the Great Disruption rolls across the globe, changing everything, Arizona slips ever deeper into unreality. And that's saying something. Mesa's notoriously anti-everything voters approved — by 84 percent — using tax incentives to lure what the Republic calls "two massive upscale resort projects." Meanwhile, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is due to "outline an ambitious strategy to make Phoenix the first carbon-neutral city – and the greenest – in the entire country." And what will the strategy, to be unveiled in today's State of the City speech, include? Providing bicycle rentals. Installing solar panels on city buildings. "Developing Phoenix's canal system for recreation and business use similar to the Tempe Town Lake area."

Where to begin? What's most remarkable is how Arizona is willfully ignoring three mortal perils: water, global warming and the rising possibility that it could have one of the world's failed states on its southern border. Oh, the relatively lesser perils remain as well: the growing underclass, the horrible schools, linear slums, income inequality, inadequate infrastructure, serious environmental damage and the health consequences that follow, etc. There's little realization that the props that held up the old growth machine are gone, done, over. I know: Let's build "two massive upscale resort projects!"

Jon Talton March 11, 200910