Abstract
Just as the Death and Life of Great American Cities offers seminal insights into the evolutionary growth and vitality of cities, so Jared Diamond’s book Collapse illuminates why various societies have failed in human history. Diamond catalogs the factors that can stress a society to the point of extinction: (1) relationships with trading partners go awry, (2) the society is beset by enemies, (3) climate changes threaten a particular locale, (4) local resources are depleted beyond the point of sustainability, and (5) a place fails to respond adequately to the other four factors. The most critical factor is the last. In the history of Phoenix, the Hohokam apparently failed to adapt to the challenges they faced.
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Notes
- 1.
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, revised ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).
- 2.
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
- 3.
William Frey, Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2014). An interactive cultural gap calculator is available at http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2015/diversity.
- 4.
Center for the Future of Arizona, “The Arizona We Want,” Gallup Poll, 2009, http://www.thearizonawewant.org/assets/pdf/The_Arizona_We_Want.pdf, accessed October 29, 2015.
- 5.
Ken Silverstein, “Tea Party in the Sonora,” Harper’s, July 2010.
- 6.
See, e.g.: James Flanigan, Smile Southern California, You’re the Center of the Universe (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford General Books, 2009).
- 7.
Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Holt, 2005).
- 8.
Thomas E. Sheridan, Arizona: A History (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1995).
- 9.
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
- 10.
Shelly v. Kraemer, 334 US 1 (1948).
- 11.
See, e.g.: Shalimar v. D.O.C. Enterprises, 688 P2d 682 (Az. App, 1984).
- 12.
Bailey v. Myers, 76 P3d 898 (Az. App, 2003).
- 13.
Kelo v. City of New London, 545 US 469 (2005).
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© 2016 Grady Gammage Jr.
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Gammage, G. (2016). Politics, Resilience, and Survival. In: The Future of the Suburban City. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-624-0_7
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