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July 25, 2007

Comments

Raymond

well i say, there are some very bad drivers in AZ.

war_shu_duck

Here is a plan I believe will cut traffic accidents in Arizona by 20% or more. Rather than using taxpayer dollars to give illegal aliens child car seats they sell at Park and Swap instead of place their children in. We should take that money and put left turn signals at all the necessary intersections.

I found it very intimidating and dangerous when I first moved here taking a left into on coming traffic. Its my belief that these turn signals at all the necessary intersections (like most civilized places have) would really help to cut down on traffic accidents in the valley.

anon

Phoenix

Into the ashes

Jul 26th 2007 | PHOENIX
From The Economist print edition


A city that once won prizes is now a crime-ridden mess

MICHAEL ZISTATSIS, a restaurateur in downtown Phoenix, used to be excited by the prospects that only a gentrifying city, more foot traffic and wealthy new locals can bring. His business had been growing steadily for years. But now things have changed. City planners decreed that there should be a light railway linking Phoenix to neighbouring cities such as Scottsdale. The construction work, which is currently ripping up miles of downtown Phoenix, makes walking and parking almost impossible; so few feel motivated to shop or dine there. Proprietors like Mr Zistatsis, whose clientele has dropped by 30% since 2005, feel distinctly miffed. And they are not the only ones losing faith in Phoenix, a victim of ill-managed city planning.

Phoenix was once hailed as a model city. It grew fast. Its streets were new and shiny, and housing was cheap. Beginning in 1950, the National Civic League voted Phoenix an “All-American City” four times. In 1993 an international competition rated Phoenix, along with Christchurch, New Zealand, the world's best-governed city. Forbes recently ranked it as America's second-best job market, thanks to its buoyant property market and rapid urban growth. In the past five years metropolitan Phoenix's population has grown by almost a fifth, to over 4m.

But in the past few years the awards have mostly dried up and things have started to go wrong. Burglary, theft and car crime are among the highest in the country. Newcomers who left Los Angeles to avoid smog and commuter traffic find that both are little better in Phoenix, and the area scores embarrassingly low in national education ratings. In October the Morgan Quitno Press, a research group, credited Arizona with the worst public education in the country, thanks to overcrowded classrooms, poor test scores and low salaries for teachers. Why the decline?

Kristin Koptiuch, an associate professor of anthropology at Arizona State University (ASU), thinks one problem is that minorities are being locked out of government and city planning, which then saps the area of the ethnic neighbourhoods that give structure to Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Phoenix's Native-American art shops and taco restaurants offer pockets of variety, but generic food chains such as International House of Pancakes and Pizza Hut still dominate. The property market is white-dominated too, Ms Koptiuch says, with its suburbs policed by homeowners' associations which insist on a certain uniformity of style. Latinos make up one-third of Phoenix's population, but from the outside appearance of the place you wouldn't know it.

Scott Decker, director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at ASU, cites methamphetamines smuggled in from Mexico as a prime cause of rising crime. But the larger problem is that rapid urban growth has overwhelmed existing prisons, courts, defence lawyers and police. Phoenix's newcomers are largely “snowbirds” (people avoiding the cold weather up north), sports fans and Californians; their frequent absences and lack of knowledge of their own area make their properties easy prey. “Policing Phoenix has become very hard,” Mr Decker notes.

Locals also moan that Phoenicians are becoming more antisocial. Patricia Gober, the author of a book called “Metropolitan Phoenix: Place Making and Community Building in the Desert”, says this is because everyone has come from somewhere else. Without a shared history, she says, people feel no sense of place. Throw in scorching summers and a lack of public spaces, and the environment becomes antagonistic.

City planners are aware of all this and are trying to help. They promise the light-rail construction work will end soon (which should please Mr Zistatsis), are campaigning against meth, and are planning ten new schools for international study. But Phoenix's growing pains seem unlikely to end any time soon.

Wolf

Into the ashes...
This is exactly the liberal drivel destroying this state and country!
Nothing of relevance was addressed in this article, always the same old politically correct, "multicultural" garbage which is chocking this society to dead.
Just keep on making excuses and blame the "white" Americans ruining this country!

war_shu_duck

Regarding Into the Ashes:

As I understand Kristin Koptiuch's comments if we just hand more taco stands this would be a wonderful place to live? The answer is so simple how could I have missed it. Following her path of logic I think we can build a bridge to the future through rap music and importing poverty from around the globe. Only if we could tear down the current white christian male power structure that created this country, then and only then can we would live in harmony?lol Is this the message I am to get from her? I also found her remarks about h.o.a's and hispanics amusing. Is she saying that hispanics can't comply with the rules of h.o.a's? Or is she saying h.o.a's dont allow hispanics?

Since prof. Koptiuch says minorities have been shut out of the city planning process how does she explain the asian cultural center (also known as Chinatown) off 44th street and the 202? I might add its filled with thriving businesses. With that thought in mind I have to ask where is Mexico-town or Afro-American-town? Am I to believe its all the white devils fault these places don't exist? Or could it possibly be that these peoples lack the ambition and drive to create their own business district? Hmmm

The only intelligent point I find in the article is that the Phoenix metro area doesn't have enough public spaces. When one goes downtown you get the feel that "they" dont want you to get to comfortable. There are few places to sit down and next to no drinking fountains. Is this out of a lack of public funds? Or out of fear that some homeless person might enjoy themselves so its just best to make everyone suffer to prevent that from happening?Hmmm

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