The Perils of Relentless Growth

If one good thing came out of the recession of the early 1990s, it was a near halt to the frenzied construction and growth of the previous decade in the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. Now, the bad old days of the 1980s are back. Just when you thought it was again safe to pick up the Business section of the paper, an avalanche of real-estate development news is once again hitting the front page. Each week seems to herald the announcement of yet another mega-development in the outskirts of the urban areas. One of the recent examples, as reported by the Arizona Republic's in-house building-industry booster, is new construction slated for a 1900-acre development in Marana, a town so far in the boonies that it can barely be called "the Tucson area". More recently, the Bulldozer Blitzkrieg may be on the doorstep of Lake Pleasant where thousands of acres of pristine Sonoran Desert along Highway 74 may be covered with golf courses, houses, commercial development, and parking lots.

As many people know all too well, development in the outskirts destroys native Sonoran Desert habitat and contributes to urban sprawl in general. But there is more to that than we usually think. Here are a few opinions from a non-economist, written in actual English.

While downtown Phoenix has come a long way towards rejuvenation, it remains surrounded by a ring of decaying houses and vast, empty lots. Much of the wastelands once was neighborhoods of old houses that were bought out and bulldozed. A little farther out are newer areas that are now in decline; they are infested with graffiti, gangs, shootings and unregulated sign clutter. For a taste of the real city, go to Philadelphia or Berkeley where, for countless blocks, people leave their cars behind and crowd sidewalks lined with hundreds of stores and restaurants. Many residents live a short walk or bus ride away.

Why did this happen? Many developers are out in the boonies building new housing with the latest features and are using slick advertising to market them. People are enticed to move out there and put up their old houses for sale. The glut of new houses for the buying and old ones for sale depresses market values and sends the older neighborhoods into a tailspin. Yours truly is lucky to live in an older area with a homeowners' association, but even here, it seems to be an uphill (albeit largely successful) battle against deterioration caused by lowered values and the availability of rental houses (where there is less incentive for yard upkeep). Note that the development was begun in 1973 and finished in the mid-1980s, not exactly ancient history, and at the time was near the edge of the urban area but is now considered to be close to the core.

Which brings us to the concept of "disposable neighborhoods" that keeps the bulldozers roaring and the sawmills whining. Even as developers blitz the desert, they tout "secluded desert living" to attract buyers fed up with the annoyances of the deteriorating city. Although the desert habitat has been totally bladed to create quarter-acre lots with artificial landscaping, the new projects remain surrounded by saguaro-studded desert. Only after they have moved into the pioneer developments do the new homeowners realize, too late, that the desert outside their windows is privately owned and is being developed into houses just like their own. More houses, more cars, wider streets, convenience stores and gas stations, then that first stoplight... Just like the old place! In the meantime, the developers, long since gone, are even farther out in the desert building new areas for that elusive "secluded desert living". Thus the cycle begins anew as another disposable neighborhood begins to bite the dust. The cities accommodate the developers, annex ever more land and provide costly utilities and services to the distant new areas, often at the expense of older neighborhoods.

Water from the Central Arizona Pork-Barrel Project (aka CAP) has turned out to be so costly that farmers cannot afford to use it. Yet, the water has to keep flowing, otherwise Arizona may lose it to California. While this presents a golden opportunity to put pork to beneficial environmental uses such as rejuvenating riparian areas, others look at is as an excuse to bring in millions of more people into the state. One proposed development, The Villages at Desert Hills*, would ravage nine square miles of desert along the east side of I-17 south of New River and many miles from even the farthest built-up fringes of Phoenix; it would depend on the CAP for the proven 100-year water supply required by the state.

The Phoenix metro area is starting to resemble a 1000-year-old creosote bush that has grown into a ring of green around a dead-and-decayed center. The latest frontier for the developers now seems to be far-north Scottsdale where private lands inside the boundaries of Tonto National Forest have been annexed into the city, and places as far as Sun Valley west of the White Tank Mountains (a good way towards California) may eventually be marred by houses and the conveniences of our car-crazed culture.

In addition to the migrations of residents, new people from out-of-state contribute further to sprawl. Our short-sighted economic and political "leaders" go out of their way to attract new jobs to Arizona. (Some of them even seem to support our Phoenix Suns simply because of television and other media exposure that they hope will translate to relocations into the state.) Problem is, too many of those jobs come with their original out-of-state employees, adding to the demand for more houses, cars, and roads (rather than benefiting people already living here.)

We need to promote judicious growth (in jobs and otherwise) that will satisfy the needs of the existing population. At present, with our streets congested with cars and our air often unfit to exercise in, we cannot afford more of the same. The proposed new freeways are not the solution; rather, they, especially the outer-loop segments, are part of the urban sprawl problem. While we cannot build a fence around the state, there is no need to go out of our way to invite people to pour in; at the very least not before we have a good public transportation system (including trains) to get cars off the roads. Anyone who has seethed at the rush-hour traffic that seems to permeate every major and minor street will tell you that we do not need any more growth of the present kind. Some areas of LA are now said to have 24-hour rush-"hour" traffic. In the meantime, look for more eighteen-wheeler trucks to clog our already-congested and dangerous freeways, including the Black Canyon, I-10, and even the scenic highway through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which would be "upgraded;" all this as a result of Arizona being designated a thoroughfare for commerce from Mexico as a result of the NAFTA agreement.

And let's not forget the regional airport boondoggle, once proposed to be built somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson but now relegated to the ash heap. This airport, larger than many cities containing the population of Arizona, would have attracted yet more sprawl around it. Its boosters likely would not have minded a megalopolis stretching from Wickenburg to Benson.

One exception to the rule seems to be the City of Tempe. There, a highly successful downtown area is surrounded by stable neighborhoods kept so through hard effort. The reason? Tempe is "landlocked" by other cities so that it cannot expand. Perhaps it cannot afford to let its neighborhoods deteriorate, as they cannot be replaced by new ones farther out. In contrast, Mesa's downtown is plagued by vacant storefronts and is surrounded by car dealerships, car-repair shops, scrap heaps and even a smelly meat-packing plant. The developers are miles away and were last seen biting away at the desert not far from the Salt River and Red Mountain.

Thus, every time a new development is announced, look at it as another whack at the value of your house and property. Also look for more cars on freeways and streets during rush "hour" as more people drive ever longer distances. A stop is needed now to all exterior growth until the thousands of acres of empty lots in the city, already next to existing utilities and bus service, are "infilled" with houses. New Jersey, of all places, did it by setting aside over a million acres of the Pine Barrens where development was highly restricted. Why can't we?

We need to learn to live in a stable economy that does not depend on endless growth for its well-being. At the very least, we need to avoid new urban sprawl while infill takes place in built-up areas simultaneously with a more intense mass-transit system that can handle the new residents. If we continue down the road we are presently on, look no further than Southern California to see where we are headed.

Credit should go to the City of Phoenix, which in the last couple of years has made it easier for developers to build in empty areas within the built-up city. A huge, pedestrian-friendly development was announced for a decaying area just north of downtown. Several high-quality apartment developments have been built slightly farther out from the downtown core. Thousands of acres of desert in far-north Phoenix are being considered for preservation, although the funding is still being worked out. Scottsdale's citizens voted for a tax to buy up the McDowell Mountains for another huge preserve; the same in Fountain Hills' portion of those mountains. Environmentalists are now working for an ballot initiative that will create Urban Growth Boundaries around cities, beyond which mass developments would be severely discouraged; details are still in the works.

A lot has been done. Bravo! Still, a lot more needs to be done to preserve what attracted us here in the first place.

February 1998.

*The Village at Desert Hills is now Del Webb's Anthem.