Metropolitan Phoenix : place making and community building in the desert / Patricia Gober ; maps by Barbara Trapido-Lurie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gober, Patricia.

Contributor:

Trapido-Lurie, Barbara.

Series:

Metropolitan portraits

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Community development, Urban--Arizona--Phoenix.

Community development, Urban.

Phoenix Metropolitan Area (Ariz.)--Social conditions.

Phoenix Metropolitan Area (Ariz.).

Phoenix Metropolitan Area (Ariz.)--Economic conditions.

Phoenix (Ariz.)--History.

Phoenix (Ariz.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (244 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2006.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Inhabitants of Phoenix tend to think small but live big. They feel connected to individual neighborhoods and communities but drive farther to get to work, feel the effects of the regional heat island, and depend in part for their water on snow packs in Wyoming. In Metropolitan Phoenix, Patricia Gober explores the efforts to build a sustainable desert city in the face of environmental uncertainty, rapid growth, and increasing social diversity. Metropolitan Phoenix chronicles the burgeoning of this desert community, including the audacious decisions that created a metropolis of 3.6 million people in a harsh and demanding physical setting. From the prehistoric Hohokam, who constructed a thousand miles of irrigation canals, to the Euro-American farmers, who converted the dryland river valley into an agricultural paradise at the end of the nineteenth century, Gober stresses the sense of beginning again and building anew that has been deeply embedded in wave after wave of human migration to the region. In the early twentieth century, the so-called health seekers-asthmatics, arthritis and tuberculosis sufferers-arrived with the hope of leading more vigorous lives in the warm desert climate, while the postwar period drew veterans and their families to the region to work in emerging electronics and defense industries. Most recently, a new generation of elderly, seeking "active retirement," has settled into planned retirement communities on the perimeter of the city.Metropolitan Phoenix also tackles the future of the city. The passage of a recent transportation initiative, efforts to create a biotechnology incubator, and growing publicity about water shortages and school funding have placed Phoenix at a crossroads, forcing its citizens to grapple with the issues of social equity, environmental quality, and economic security. Gober argues that given Phoenix's dramatic population growth and enormous capacity for change, it can become a prototype for twenty-first-century urbanization, reconnecting with its desert setting and building a multifaceted sense of identity that encompasses the entire metropolitan community.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Foreword / Martin, Judith A.

Chapter one. Desert Urbanization

Chapter two. Building a Desert City

Chapter three. An Ever-Changing Social Dynamic

Chapter four. You Can Never Get Hurt in Dirt

Chapter five. Not Another LA!

Chapter six. Downtown Redevelopment: A Tale of Two Cities

Chapter seven. Thinking Small and Living Big

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-224) and index.

ISBN:

9780812238990

0812238990

9780812205824

0812205820

OCLC:

859161683