Take a Trip to Sprawl City, U.S.A.

One of my interests is photography. I do not have artistic aspirations; my interest lies in documentation. I suppose it started back in college when I undertook a photographic survey of all the malls in Southern California as a class project (see it here).

At the end of the year I usually take a couple weeks off work in order to spend the holiday season in Phoenix, where I grew up. When I was home in December 2003 and January 2004, I decided to document some of the urban sprawl occuring there. I spent a few days driving around on the edges of town, taking pictures with my digital camera. My intent was to create a web site like the one I made for "All the Malls of Southern California," and I may get around to doing that someday, but in the meantime I've posted them at my space on Flickr.

"Phoenix Sprawl" photoset and slide show on Flickr (321 photos)

I know that many of you are not necessarily interested in seeing all 321 photos...this is where Flickr's awesome "tags" come in. All of the sprawl photos were "tagged" into different categories (e.g. construction, houses, bigboxretail, southphoenix, gilbert, etc.). You can use any combination of the tags to narrow the photos down into a smaller photoset and slide show - if you only want to see houses under construction in the suburb of Gilbert, you can. Try it out!

Here are 12 photos that are representative of the bunch, with commentary:

1) "Welcome to Phoenix" --- I chose to make this the "primary photo" of the Flickr photoset. This picture was taken on West Baseline Road in the Laveen area of southwest Phoenix, a rural area that has become increasingly suburban over the last 5 years. Note the "Zoning Hearing" sign at the right.

2) "Zoning Hearing" -- I took a lot of pictures of signs, especially "Zoning Hearing" signs like this one. Signs like this are the first indication that sprawl is underway - someone is trying to get the zoning changed on a vacant property so that he or she can build a subdivision, a shopping center, or some other development. This picture was taken on East Baseline Road in South Phoenix. South Phoenix is an interesting area; it remained largely rural for many years although it was only a few miles from Downtown Phoenix, Sky Harbor Airport, and Arizona State University, largely because it had a bad reputation as a "ghetto." About 10 years ago, some smart developers realized there was a lot of opportunity in South Phoenix and it has slowly but surely been losing its rural flavor ever since. Note the dying orange tree at the left of the sign.

3) "You've Been Warned" -- Another sign, this one on Queen Creek Road in the suburb of Chandler. This is what it says: "THIS PROPERTY HAS BEEN ZONED FOR OTHER THAN SINGLE FAMILY USE. CURRENT INFORMATION REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE CITY OF CHANDLER PLANNING SERVICES DIVISION, 480-782-3000" I saw a few signs like this; the purpose is to advise people buying single family residences in the area that this little farm will not necessarily turn into more of the same - it could become an office park, a Safeway, or God forbid, an apartment complex or a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

4) "Freedom of Choice" -- Areas experiencing sprawl are full of signs like these advertising nearby subdivisions with cute names like "Cottonfield Ranch" and "Bougainvillea." This photo is also from West Baseline Road in the Laveen area of southwest Phoenix. Note the Circle K in the background -- Circle K is headquartered in Phoenix, and there's a Circle K at almost every major intersection.

5) "Road to Nowhere" -- This is a photo of Paloma Parkway in north Phoenix, just off Carefree Highway. As you can see, it ends here. Sprawl requires that infrastructure (streets, sidewalks, street lights, etc.) be put in before the area is developed. While this may seem like a meaningless road to nowhere now, in 5 years it will be a busy thoroughfare serving thousands of people each day.

6) "Come and Play" -- This photo, taken at the Royal Ranch subdivision in the suburb of Surprise, shows another type of "infrastructure" that comes in before development: a playground. This playground in the middle of nowhere was downright spooky.

7) "Not The Olive Grove" -- Many subdivisions have ironic names, like this one in the suburb of Peoria named "The Olive Grove." It's doubtful that there was an olive grove at this location in the first place, and even if there was, it was ripped out for a subdivision that was named in its honor.

8) "Pretend We're Not in the Desert" -- This subdivision, Lagos Vistoso, is on Riggs Road in the suburb of Chandler. Subdivisions with little man-made lakes and waterfalls are very popular in greater Phoenix, which is extremely ironic when you consider that this is the Sonoran Desert!

9) "The Assembly Line" -- This is a photo of the Amber Hills subdivision in north Phoenix, near Carefree Highway and Interstate 17. It is interesting to me that all "neighborhoods" start out as "construction sites." Many "volume homebuilders" operate in Phoenix and they build homes in a way that would make Henry Ford proud.

10) "Welcome Home?" -- This is a photo taken in Anthem, a master-planned virtual "mini-city" being built by the Del Webb company, whose main claim to fame is Sun City, the first master-planned retirement community, also in Phoenix. Anthem, like Sun City, is classic "leap frog" development, meaning it's way out on the fringe of the metro area, several miles north of the Amber Hills subdivision seen in the last photograph. What I find interesting is the fact that people start moving into a "neighborhood" when it's still a "construction site." Someone is probably going to move into the completed house on the left before the house on the right is even finished. I figure people who move into a still-developing subdivision feel like "urban pioneers" but I wouldn't want to live in a place that isn't "finished" yet.

11) "Following Rooftops" -- One adage in Phoenix is that "retail follows rooftops," meaning that the first wave of sprawl is housing and the second wave is shopping centers. This photo shows the site of the "Gilbert Gateway Towne Center" on Power Road in the suburb of Gilbert. The developer of this center, Vestar, has built similar "power centers" full of big box retailers all over Phoenix during the last 15 years and has about a dozen more in the works right now. This center has all the usual suspects: Ross, Cost Plus, Michael's, Petsmart, Linens N Things, and SuperTarget (a Target with groceries, like a Wal-Mart Supercenter).

12) "Everything Sprawls" -- In Phoenix, sprawl is not limited to subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks, and the like; major sports facilities are part of sprawl too. This is a photo of the (then) recently completed Glendale Arena (home of the Phoenix Coyotes NHL team) off Glendale Avenue and 91st Avenue in the suburb of Glendale. This photo shows its still-rural context. In the 1990's, both the America West Arena (home of the Phoenix Suns NBA team) and the Bank One Ballpark (home of the Arizona Diamondbacks MLB team) were built next to each other in Downtown, which can be seen as a vote against sprawl by then-owner Jerry Colangelo. Times have changed; after a failed attempt to build an arena on the site of the old Los Arcos Mall in Scottsdale, Coyotes team owner Steve Ellman was lured to this site in Glendale adjacent to the recently completed Loop 101 Freeway. Now a new stadium for the Arizona Cardinals NFL team is being built next door! Sprawl wins!

Doing this sprawl project was a lot of fun for me. Driving and walking through several developing subdivisions gave me an eerie feeling, though: I realized the neighborhood in Tempe that I grew up in was once a "construction site" too. Tempe is now a well-established "built-out" suburb, but 30 years ago it was part of the sprawling fringe too. 30 years from now, the developing neighborhoods I photographed will be "old" like the one in which my mom lives in Tempe (her house was built in 1977, so it's historic by Phoenix standards!).

There are no signs of sprawl slowing down in metropolitan Phoenix. If anything, it speeds up exponentially each year. Currently, the metro area is home to about 3 million people, and it's projected to be home to 6 million people by 2025. There's still a lot of land to keep Phoenix sprawling for the foreseeable future. The growth of Phoenix - past, present, and future - is a fascinating topic (to me at least), perhaps I'll post more about it in the future.