Anthem (Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale: housing, employment, entertainment)

[brian_2]

From the angry geographer comes this, and I couldn't agree more about the place.

Band-Aid Urbanism: Phoenix
"The Master-Planned Community"

The city's oldest section of freeway, I-17, runs due north from downtown Phoenix. It was built in the 1960s (here in Phoenix, structures built before 1990 are a rarity, and anything built before 1980 is downright historic). Follow it through twenty-five miles of sprawl, then seven miles of barren desert, and exit at Anthem Way to reach Anthem.
Anthem, Arizona, an as-yet unincorporated part of Maricopa County (which contains about 90% of the Phoenix metropolitan area), consists entirely of a master-planned community created by none other than Del Webb. The name "Del Webb" will be familiar to most West Coast and Chicagoland readers, primarily as the builder of the Sun City family of mega-retirement communities (three of which are located in the Phoenix metropolitan area). Home to over 20,000 people, Anthem is marketed to families rather than retirees, and contains a varied housing stock, ranging from single-story stucco homes with two-car garages to two-story stucco homes with two-car garages. Streets are laid out in the Levittown-style loops-and-lollipops plan, full of slight curves and cul-de-sacs, and have vaguely Americana-esque names like Lewis and Clark Trail, Republic Way, and Steinbeck Drive.
Sounds like a joke, right? Sounds like the setting for the putative Jean Baudrillard novel, Adventures in the Hyperreal? Sadly, it's not. It's real, and it's growing. Del Webb has even started building another one of these atrocities southeast of Phoenix, halfway to Tucson. To this aspiring planner's eye, Anthem is the biggest mistake ever perpetrated on the American cityscape. Here's why.
COMPLETE PHYSICAL ISOLATION.
Anthem is far away from just about everything. The community's entrance is almost 35 miles from downtown Phoenix, and even farther away from the metropolitan area's main employment and entertainment centers of Scottsdale, Tempe, and Chandler. The nearest public bus stop is ten miles south. Light rail? Ha. Anthem may, in fact, be the least accessible suburban community in the entire United States. There is only one way out of the community: I-17. I'm not kidding. Anthem was designed without a single connection to the Phoenix grid system, or to any surface street whatsoever. Want to see a Diamondbacks game? I-17. Eat at a restaurant not owned by the Del Webb Corporation? I-17. Beat the inbound traffic on I-17? I-17. Del Webb's marketing literature for Anthem seems to stress some nebulous notion of "community," calling it "the grandest opportunity of all." What they don't tell you is that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LEAVE.
Ease of escape notwithstanding, Anthem is a pretty poor excuse for a community on the inside. Rows and rows of identical stucco homes with protruding two-car garages sit side-by-side on streets with downright eerie names ("I live at the corner of Integrity and Exploration."). The cul-de-sacs are unavoidable. Public space (here a misnomer, because the community is owned by a corporation in an unincorporated area) consists primarly of a "community center" with a small park and swimming pool, and all other non-residential space is taken up by chain stores and an outlet mall. Everything, of course, is surrounded by acres of blacktop.

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/t...ges/anthem.gif

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/t...hemoutlets.jpg

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/t...s/suburbia.jpg

Is this self-contained hypersuburb the future of American urban development? As the Sunbelt migration continues, and places like Anthem keep growing, it unfortunately may be.
However, there is an alternative path. Real urban space can still be created from the ground up, but Phoenix has failed in every effort to do so. That's not to say that the entire country is barking up the wrong tree; there are indeed exceptions--examples to be emulated.

[CodyW]

I love the article - So true.

[irwin]

God….get me out of this place!!!

[RBH Automotive]

Whatever happened to peoples ability to see past advertising and their own front window? Anybody here stll familiar with the THOUGHT of buying some land, building a home, god forbid making a driveway? Seems communities like this are almost poetic justice for those so stumbled by convenience that they can't survive outside of the local mass transit circuit.

Seems the enterprising type could open a tire store acrossed the street, and with a well placed bag-o-nails at the only entrance and exit, make a fortune!