The Lessons Phoenix Can Teach Other Cities About Sustainable Development

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“If everything seems under control, you are not going fast enough.”

Mario Andretti

 

 

A new book suggests the desert metropolis has been getting a bad rap, and has lessons to offer other cities

BY PATRICK SISSON  @FREQRESPONSE  MAR 30, 2016, 11:00A

1 dowmntown PH

Downtown Phoenix

Grady Gammage isn’t happy with the way people talk about his city. A land use lawyer and senior scholar at Arizona State University, Gammage believes the stereotypes about Phoenix, that it’s a sprawling city without rules that wastes resources, just aren’t true. His new book, The Future of the Suburban City: Lessons From Sustaining Phoenix, challenges the idea that this is a city in the middle of the desert that shouldn’t exist. Rather, the fast-growing city’s evolution, originally based on autos, air conditioning and air travel, has lessons that apply to other large metro areas.

“I used suburban city in the title because it’s a pejorative term,” he says. “I’m OK with that, since I want readers to understand they shouldn’t think of it as a pejorative term. It’s just a different type of city.”

Curbed spoke with Gammage about his book and why Phoenix is more of an urban model than outsiders may believe.

2 The Central Arizona

The Central Arizona Project (CAP) is designed to bring approximately 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually to Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa Counties. (© Shutterstock: Tim Roberts Photography)

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Phoenix More Efficient With Water Than You Think

“What’s emblematic of the way people think about Phoenix is water. Since it doesn’t rain here, there shouldn’t be a city here. Guess what? We’ve known that for a thousand years. But we’ve worked very hard here to engineer these complex systems to bring water here—first the Native Americans, then local citizens, then the federal government. Many condemn Phoenix to no future because it doesn’t rain enough here. No city gets enough rain; we’ve always moved water from somewhere. Most cities just have water closer than Phoenix. Let’s not gloss over serious issues, but we’ve built our city around renewable water supplies. We’re in a much better place than California because we regulated groundwater use since 1980. They started last year. But people shouldn’t take it as a complete whitewash. Phoenix was a big farming town, and as it urbanized, it’s decreased its water use. But as we urbanize, we’ll need to make tough choices.”

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The Tempe Transportation Center is a LEED Platinum building that serves as the main transit hub for Tempe and contains municipal and private offices, a conference center, a restaurant, and a bike storage and repair facility. (Photo by author)

Wide Streets and a Big Grid Make Phoenix Poised to Take Advantage of New Transportation Technology

“Phoenix is well-positioned because most of the city is relatively flat, and because it was a farming town, it has a grid with big arterial boulevards. That’s a forgiving transportation network, and we waited a long time to build freeways. This grid will work very well in the era of autonomous vehicles, ride-sharing, and Uber. It gives us a lot of room to move around. Because it grew with single family homes and shopping centers, it grew with wide streets; it’s easier over time to narrow a street as opposed to widen it, which makes it easier to add bike lanes, or Bus Rapid Transit and light rail lines, to densify the city. Clearly, narrow streets are more charming. The big challenge for a city like Phoenix is figuring out how to make streets more comfortable for pedestrians.”

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Townhomes in Tempe and stacked condos in downtown Phoenix. (Photos by author)

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Development wIth Single-Family Homes Can Still Add Density

“While Phoenix is based predominantly on single-family homes, they’re built on relatively small lots. One acre lots are the lots of the very rich. The average home is on a fifth of an acre. We’re not a city that gets less dense as you move out from the downtown. New subdivisions are being built in a relatively dense environment. It’s possible to live in nice, single-family homes on small lots. The other thing is that we’ve figured out how to make those neighborhoods even more dense. Look at developments such as Verrado, a new urbanist development on the west edge of town that’s very dense. It’s not going to be a city where most people live in high rises, but it is doing mid-level density better and better. The fact is, 80 percent of people in Phoenix live in a denser situation than 80 percent of people in Portland.”

Worried About Those Wasteful Air Conditioners? What About Furnaces?

“There’s a perception that air conditioning in cities like Phoenix is energy inefficient. That’s a very Eurocentric, biased world view. The reality is that with the way that we heat and cool today, cooling is more efficient than heating. It consumes less power on balance. We still have built into our thinking that air conditioning is a luxury while heating is a necessity. I don’t think we should necessarily single out warm places for wasting energy. We’re also learning to be more efficient with air conditioning than we are with heating, and as we begin to convert to more and more solar energy, that will make air conditioning more efficient.”

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SEE IT ALL:

http://www.curbed.com/2016/3/30/11330838/phoenix-urban-development-planning-sustainable

FROM ME:

Phoenix Commercial Real Estate and Investment Real Estate: investors and Owner / Users need to really know the market today before making a move in Commercial Properties or Investment Properties in Phoenix / Tucson / Arizona, as the market has a lot of moving parts today. What is going on socio-economically, what is going on demographically, what is going on with location, with competing businesses, with public policy in general — all of these things affect the quality of selling or purchasing your Commercial Properties, Commercial Investment Properties and Commercial and large tracts of Residential Land in Phoenix / Tucson / Arizona.  Therefore, you need a broker, a CCIM (Certified Commercial Investment Member) who is a recognized expert in the commercial and investment real estate industry and who understands Commercial Properties and Investment Properties.

I am marketing my listings on Costar, Loop-net CCIM, Kasten Long Commercial Group.  I also sold  hundreds millions of dollars’ worth of  Investment Properties / Owner User Properties in Retail, Office Industrial, Multi-family and Land in Arizona and therefore I am working with  brokers, Investors and Developers. I am also a CCIM and through this origination ( www.ccim.com ) I have access to marketing not only in the United States, but also international.  Click here to find out what is a CCIM:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCIM

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2016 Official Arizona Visitors Guide

Visit Arizona

WHY PHOENIX ARIZONA : ???     

 check it out

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Timeline of Phoenix, Arizona history

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Phoenix,_Arizona_history

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Phoenix, Arizona

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona

 

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Facts of Arizona – year 1848 to 2013

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Kasten Long Commercial Group tracks all advertised apartment communities, including those advertised by other brokerages.  The interactive map  shows the location of each community (10+ units) and each location is color coded by the size (number of total units). 

Click here for Map of Apartments for Sale (10+units)

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Walter Unger CCIM, CCSS, CCLS

I am a successful Commercial / Investment Real Estate Broker in Arizona now for 20 years.  If you have any questions about Commercial / Investment Properties in Phoenix or Commercial /  Investment Properties in Arizona,  I will gladly sit down with you and share my expertise and my professional opinion with you. I am also in this to make money therefore it will be a win-win situation for all of us. 

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Walter Unger CCIM

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Kasten Long Commercial Group

2821 E. Camelback Rd. Suite 600

Phoenix , AZ 85016

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