Concern about growth grew in '70s Arizona

By David Brown

Not that Arizona stopped worshipping the Growth God: Immigrators kept setting their cruise controls for Arizona - new families needing housing, shopping centers, and jobs. Big money was being made; manufacturing, construction, tourism and service industries were on steroids, and government coffers were sparkling with the new gold. A glorious future glimmered.

In 1972, Phoenix, the bird rising from the ashes of the Hohokam culture, had grown into the third largest city in the nation, geographically: 247.9 square miles. By 1980, Phoenix was even larger: 329.1 square miles. Only 100 years before, this was a square-mile townsite with 300 pioneers farming 2,000 acres on the shores of a flooding river.

By 1980, Phoenix had grown to 789,704 inhabitants - the ninth most populous city in the nation, up from 20th in 1970 (584,300). Maricopa County had moved from 975,000 in 1970 to 1,510,000 in 1980. Twenty years later, it would grow into the country's fastest growing county.

Tucson also was expanding - to 330,537 old Puebloans. One hundred years before, when the Southern Pacific railroad pulled in, the town was the Arizona Territory's largest at a booming 7,000.

Satellites were soaring, too, in the '70s: Mesa: 152,453 (almost doubling in the decade); Glendale: 97,172 (almost tripling); Tempe: 106,743 (a 40-percent increase); and Scottsdale, 29,673 (more than doubling). Compare: In 1950, sleepy Scottsdale had just 2,032 people.

Problems at the Pass

Still, by the '70s, holes in the dike had opened, cracks were snaking in the foundation. For one, the lack of growth-commensurate infrastructure in the desert boomtowns was becoming more apparent - even to the most laissez faire "movers and shakers." Citizens had committed to the automobile but there was no freeway commitment by government. People were dispersing outward, farther from their employment and the original townsites - but no effective mass transit was scheduled. The first problem was beginning, finally, to turn heads. The second, 30 years later, still finds heads in the sand.

Moreover, the desert cities were moving toward the surrounding mountains - with alacrity. Growth was colliding with the lifestyle philosophy that had drawn people to the Valley after World War II: The mountains signaled recreation, open space, symbolizing the desert lifestyle people aspired to when they had left their gray-sky Rust Belts and windswept Midwest homes. Now, the mountains figured to become high-end residential lots, resorts and golf courses.

What Do You Do with This Thing Called Growth?

Some Tucsonans opposed it: But they were rebuffed by government and the bulldozer of history: Development in the desert was more important than deportment with the desert. "This was considered the initial rallying point for the formation of a no-growth or limited-growth philosophy in Tucson as the prospect of exploding community expansion fueled intense public debate," write Anne M. Nequette and R. Brooks Jeffery in their recently published A Guide to the Architecture of Tucson (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001: p. 32).

While some less desirable land stayed undeveloped, the more valuable land, especially near or on the mountains, was being bladed, shoveled, bulldozed. Even in the boom 1960s, this was disturbing: The city of Phoenix purchased the land above 1,800 feet on Camelback Mountain to prevent its being filled with high-value homes and low-value public space.

By 1973, it was clear the other mountain areas, including South Mountain and the North Mountains, were in danger. That year, Phoenicians approved $23.5 million in bonds to protect the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. Seven years later, the city owned 75 percent of the land. As a result, today the protected areas are growth oases: Here Phoenicians who choose to can breathe - can hike, jog, enjoy trail rides, show their children how the Valley looked 100, 200, 300 years ago.
Scottsdale has been particularly focused on protecting its McDowell Mountains in recent years - although the hillsides have already been scarred by homes and retail that could have been built at a lower elevation.

Throughout Phoenix, leapfrog development continued on apace. By 1980, 40 percent of the empty land in Phoenix was vacant. (Bradford Luckingham: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis [Tucson: University of Arizona Press, p. 193]). Mayor Margaret Hance was concerned, as were citizen groups, but the city continued to push centrifugally, inexorably, outward. A bright point was the development in 1979 of the Phoenix Concept Plan (Village Concept): Nine urban villages, each with an employment-retail center, were designed, in part, to support the infilling of vacant lands. This microfocus has, in varying degrees, helped.

Beat Sprawl: Build Arcosanti

Sparked by the energy crisis of the '70s and the environmentalism of the '60s, concerned citizens suggested other methods to battle the hegemony of the automobile and urban sprawl. In 1970, Italian architect and visionary Paolo Soleri, a former student of Frank Lloyd Wright, began building Arcosanti, an experimental town 70 miles north of metropolitan Phoenix in the hills east of Prescott. An architectural work in progress, Arcosanti, when complete, will house 5,000 people.
Large compact structures and solar greenhouses will occupy 25 acres of a 4,060-acre preserve, keeping the countryside in proximity to urban dwellers. Arcosanti is designed according to arcology (architecture + ecology): In an arcology, the built and the living environments interact as organs would in a highly evolved being. Whether evolved beings will live like this depends, perhaps, on your prognosis - and the availability of low-priced fuel.

You Can Go, Downtown . . . Please

While the cities were encroaching on the mountains and Soleri was building in the mountains, no one was approaching the downtowns. Everyone was going uptown and midtown - and to Metro Center. The largest mall in the Southwest, the first regional mall in Arizona, Metro Center, opened in 1973 on 312 acres with parking for 7,600 cars. Other firsts: Developed by forward-thinking Westcor Partners and designed by Fairburn Associates, Metro Center was the first mall in the country with five anchor stores and the first two-story enclosed mall.

Westcor knew that enclosed shopping malls would become the cloneable downtowns of the contemporary Southwest city. Malls would provide all the traditional downtown benefits: retail, dining, pedestrian-friendly areas, family events - but with the benefit of climate control (after all, five months of the year desert temperatures exceed 100 degrees), lots of parking, and relative safety.

While Metro Center became the core of northwest Phoenix, malls elsewhere anchored other urban villages such as Paradise Valley Mall, a Westcor project that opened in 1979 in northeast Phoenix. Also in 1979, the 1.06 million-square-foot Fiesta Mall in Mesa opened, with four department stores, 145 specialty stores, and 25 restaurants and eateries. The value of the surrounding land in the quiet once-farming community quickly exploded: Hotels went up as well as office buildings, retail businesses, apartment complexes, and homes. All this was positive for Mesa - with the exception of making its already foundering downtown sink deeper. With some signs of resurrection, it's still struggling today.

Downtowns Harken to Petula's Song

Tucson was tearing down its downtown in the early '70s, then beginning to rebuild it in the later '70s. The Tucson Community Center went up, the La Placita shopping and office complex, the Tucson Museum of Art, and other buildings. Up north, Phoenix was also trying to mold its downtown into a focal place for tourists' and residents' dollars. Leading this were a series of developments including the state's still-tallest building, the 40-story Valley National Bank Center (1972), with a shopping and restaurant plaza below-ground (This is now the Bank One Center.). In addition, in 1972, the Phoenix Civic Plaza opened - to lure convention dollars, yens, francs, and marks. To support this center (and to keep the bed and food money in Phoenix) the third Hotel Adams opened in 1975 (now the Crowne Plaza) as well as the 26-floor Hyatt Regency in 1976 (with an elevator on the outside and a circulating restaurant on the topside). In 1974, Patriots Square debuted, providing a plaza-like setting in the Spanish tradition - a re-affirmation that downtowns must be people places.

Fortunately, Phoenicians finally noticed that they were building everywhere and getting nowhere quickly in the '70s. On Nov. 5, 1972, they voted to build the Inner Loop - the east-west Papago Freeway connecting Black Canyon Freeway, Interstate 17, to the proposed Squaw Peak Freeway, which would become a north-south link (now SR 51). The freeway, which would eventually include the state's longest tunnel, was essential to getting people to and from a downtown that everyone agreed needed redevelopment. By 1980, Phoenix had 32 miles of freeway - including the Superstition Freeway, now U.S. 60, to Dobson Road in Mesa (July 1977).

Developments Develop

Nearby, McCormick Ranch became Scottsdale's first master-planned community (1970), establishing a pattern for the city's northerly push. The following year, Ahwatukee began in Phoenix as well as, in Tempe, the Lakes, in which manmade lakes figure as the primary design element for the first time in Arizona, and Sun Lakes, south of Chandler. In 1973, Dobson Ranch, also with lakes, began selling homes in Mesa: By 1990, more than 10,000 people lived in the city's first master-planned community.