Abstract
Examinations of phoenix tend to begin in the air. That is where Phoenix in Perspective starts its narrative. Works by Michael Sorkin and Alex Shoumatoff do likewise. Sorkin writes that “inky emptiness abuts the grid of lights, the desert lapping at the edges of town.” When Newsweek examined the phenomenon of the suburbs in May of 1995, it began with an aerial view of Phoenix as a way to capture the boundless sense of space. Flying into Phoenix graphically reveals a metropolis that sits as an island in the middle of an inhospitable sea of creosote, cactus, and venomous creatures.
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Notes
- 1.
Michael Sorkin, “Can Williams and Tsien’s Phoenix Art Museum Help This Sprawling Desert City Find Its Edge?,” Architectural Record 1 (1997): 83–97; see also: Alex Shoumatoff, Legends of the American Desert: Sojourns in the Greater Southwest (New York: Knopf, 1997).
- 2.
Jerry Adler, “Bye-Bye, Suburban Dream,” Newsweek, May 14, 1995.
- 3.
Robert Lang and Mark Muro, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper,” Brookings Institution, July 20, 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2008/07/20-mountainmegas-sarzynski, accessed October 29, 2015.
- 4.
The historical portions of this chapter are drawn from Phoenix in Perspective.
- 5.
Bradford Luckingham, Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1995).
- 6.
Quoted in: Witlold Rybozynski, City Life (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 109.
- 7.
Grady Gammage Jr., Phoenix in Perspective (Phoenix, AZ: Herberger Center for Design Excellence, 1999), 251–54.
- 8.
Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
- 9.
Infrastructure, for these purposes, means sewer, water, and other utilities. The term is also generally inclusive of streets.
- 10.
Clifford Edward Clark, The American Family Home, 1800–1960 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
- 11.
Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles, 71–72.
- 12.
Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles, 1–13.
- 13.
Michael D. Jones, Desert Wings: A History of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (Tempe, AZ: Jetblast Publications, 1997).
- 14.
Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: US Printing Office, 1951), 522.
- 15.
Arizona Republic, May 9 and December 8, 1955. See also: Luckingham, Phoenix, 161.
- 16.
John A. Casazza and Frank H. Spink, Shopping Center Development Handbook (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 1985).
- 17.
Arizona Republic, March 24, 1928.
- 18.
Rybczynski, City Life.
- 19.
See: Casazza and Spink, Shopping Center Development Handbook; and Rybczynski, City Life, 206.
- 20.
See, for example, 1957 aerial photos on display at the City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Office.
- 21.
David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Ballentine Books, 1994), 134.
- 22.
Ibid., 131.
- 23.
Clifford Edward Clark, The American Family Home (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
- 24.
Clark, The American Family Home.
- 25.
Gary G. Peterson, “Home off the Range: The Origins and Evolution of Ranch-Style Architecture in the United States,” Design Methods and Theories 23, no. 3 (1989): 1040–59.
- 26.
Peterson, “Home off the Range,” 1049.
- 27.
Clark, The American Family Home.
- 28.
“How to Start a One-Man Boom: The John Long Story,” House and Home, February 1957, 117–18.
- 29.
Clark, The American Family Home.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Rybozynski, City Life, 226–27.
- 32.
Wendall Cox, “America’s Desert Cities,” Huffington Post, September 26, 2014.
- 33.
Robert E. Lang, Andrea Sarzynski, and Mark Muro, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper,” Brookings Institute, July 2008.
- 34.
Luckingham, Phoenix, 193.
- 35.
Anthony Downs, New Visions for Metropolitan America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994).
- 36.
Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (Harpswell, ME: Anchor, 1992).
- 37.
In one controversial zoning case in 1981, the developers of the Phelps Dodge building at Central Avenue and Virginia Avenue actually hired international solar energy expert John Yellott to model the reflective impact of the building on an adjoining neighborhood. The design of the building incorporated protruding vertical fins between the windowpanes. The fins were designed to shade the building’s windows for the benefit of tenants but had the effect of breaking up the reflection of heat and light around the building as well and were dubbed “solar fins” as a result.
- 38.
National Multifamily Housing Council, “Quick Facts: Resident Demographics,” updated September 2015, http://nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708, accessed October 29, 2015.
- 39.
Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, “Where Are the Boomers Headed? Not Back to the City,” NewGeography.com, October 17, 2003, http://www.newgeography.com/content/003997-where-are-the-boomers-headed-not-back-to-the-city, accessed October 29, 2015.
- 40.
The 1960 census listed 102,652,882 single-family homes in the United States. In 2013, the estimate was 197,327,583.
- 41.
“Shifting Suburbia,” Forum for Urban Design and the Museum of Modern Art, March 8, 2012, http://ffud.org/foreclosed/.
- 42.
Joel Kotkin, “Don’t Bet Against the (Single-Family) House,” NewGeography.com, February 29, 2012.
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Gammage, G. (2016). Houses, Shopping Centers, and the Fabric of Suburbia. In: The Future of the Suburban City. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-624-0_5
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