Those friends who read my blog will remember a few rants where I've talked about Phoenix not being much of a real city. While I don't mean that literally, of course, I continue to be frustrated about how far behind Phoenix when we compare it to other Western cities.
Any city on the West Coast, Salt Lake City, and Denver are just a few places that spring immediately to mind. Let's also not leave out Albuquerque, which ranks a lot higher on the coolness scale for a lot of young people than our city does, even though they are not as progressive as we are in some ways. There's even a better vibe in many of the metropolises in Texas.
There were a handful of articles that sparked my interest around all of this today. First, a post by Mark Shinkonis up on Downtown Phoenix Journal talks about younger people moving to downtown:
Things are changing. This time looking for a renter using only craig's list I'm getting far younger people coming to look at the place. (Last time I looked for renters was in 2006.) There's definitely a buzz starting among the 20 somethings about downtown being a cool place to live. I expect that buzz will continue to grow. Hopefully rentals will continue to stay affordable in neighborhoods like mine.While I don't have any scientific evidence I can pull out of my back pocket on this, I'd say that if kids are saying a place is cool, that's the first thing you need to begin to achieve a critical mass of urban energy to really attract residents, businesses, and investment in general into a new area.
Energy Crisis Consequences
You also may remember that I've mentioned how much I diligently Jon Talton over on Rogue Columnist - highly recommend to anybody who has an interest in the intersection of politics and Phoenix urban issues, especially highlighting some of the ways Arizona tends to (badly) do business.
Talton pointed the way to a "Weekend Must Read" in the Washington Post about the consequences of this "Peak Oil" phenomenon. (I've not done much research on the facts, so I'm not in a position to judge it, but I have two friends who follow the issue who completely agree with this interpretation of the available data.) Read the short Washington Post essay here. When mainstream media outlets start mentioning things like this, it moves from the level of conspiracy theory or doomsday internet yowling to something that somebody wants on our radar screens.
As I've been riding my bike around a lot lately, I've thought more and more about what our Phoenix metro area will look like. In many ways, our whole city is built on having cheap and abundant energy. Some people think nothing of driving 25 miles round-trip to work. Others who simply "drive a lot" will put 50 miles on their cars each day. One friend told me that he recently paid $90 to fill up the gas tank of his beautiful car with premium-grade gasoline.
Also, Greater Phoenix wouldn't be what it is today without lots of air conditioning, which takes a tremendous amount of energy. This is a city that exploded in population because of air conditioning. We were only given the potential to be the 5th largest city in America because of these things. (And some would say we got there because we continue to pave over our desert in ever-expanding circles of real estate development.)
If the price of gas goes up to $12 per gallon - which isn't completely out of the question - what are we going to do? Will we be able to adapt fast enough? Will we be forced to get rid of our air-conditioners and migrate en masse to Northern Arizona to spend the summer? What will our lives look like here?
Adaptive Citizenry + Backward-looking, Slow Government = A Unique City
We're not going to be able to build mass transit options fast enough here, so Phoenix will be in a difficult position in the medium-term. What are we going to do for the next 10 or 15 years while we struggle to catch up with what we should have put into place 20 years ago?
If we're smart and adaptable, we'll begin to buy bikes for ourselves. Small, neighborhood businesses and local food growers and distributions systems will begin to concentrate their supplies in clusters of retail establishments throughout the metro area. Our present government won't have the foresight to do things like rip up big box stores and parking lots themselves in any short order to help ameliorate the heat island effect, so the best solutions will come from individuals working out their own solutions through community-based networks. Our lives will change tremendously in this process, but I think we'll have a much higher quality of life at the end of it.
But most importantly - because we have not built in this infrastructure - we could become truly unique in American cities with how we respond to this energy crisis. Government can't move fast enough to help fix it, so the transit plans they offer will follow what the citizenry has begun to implement on it's own. Our local planning agencies will see where development areas are springing up and work to connect those nodes with a revamped transportation network - probably consisting of light rail and increased bus service, perhaps with neighborhood circulator vans transporting people from the outlying neighborhoods to these hubs.
Chances are, the hubs will not be shopping malls - at least not how we think of them. We may see these shopping malls be completely redesigned to focus around pedestrians, mass transit, bicycles, and walkable spaces surrounded by many apartment complexes. These very well may become the nodes in the system.
The best thing that our cities can do is eliminate any bans or special contracts awarded to taxi companies or bus services. Imagine if private companies could run their own jitneys - they would be able to figure out the market of where individuals needed to go and respond in ways that the city bus service could never do. People would be able to get rid of their cars if they had an option that was nearly as convenient - and certainly vans moving from one destination node to the other could do this.
It's the transportation pieces that will need to be dealt with first - and they won't be dealt with by slow-moving bureaucratic committees. It won't work with our short-sighted Legislature or even our comparatively progressive Phoenix City Council. The best thing they can do for us is to get out of the way . . . at least for now . . . and begin to enact ordinances and policies that dismantle our car-based society.
UPDATE: After finishing this, I came across a story on the City Journal about how private nonprofit efforts are helping New Orleans rebuild after the city government pretty much threw up their hands. Take a look: The Big Easy Rebuilds, Bottom Up
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