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Old 11-13-2006, 08:12 PM
 
436 posts, read 676,301 times
Reputation: 243

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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/the_angry_geographer/images/anthem.gif (broken link)

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/the_angry_geographer/images/anthemoutlets.jpg (broken link)

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/the_angry_geographer/images/suburbia.jpg (broken link)

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.
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Old 11-13-2006, 10:40 PM
 
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
1,112 posts, read 3,980,173 times
Reputation: 1233
I love the article - So true.
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Old 11-14-2006, 12:19 AM
 
1,477 posts, read 4,393,350 times
Reputation: 522
God….get me out of this place!!!
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Old 11-14-2006, 08:09 AM
 
34 posts, read 40,142 times
Reputation: 14
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!
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Old 12-22-2010, 11:21 AM
 
1 posts, read 6,415 times
Reputation: 12
Cool I don't know where have you been but.....

I moved to Arizona about 17 years ago from the mid-west. More specifically Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am fairly familiar with the "RUST BELT" and it would be an understatement for me to say that I do not miss it one bit.

Now addressing the comments made on this forum I can only say that to say that the Anthem is 90% of Phoenix is the equivalent of saying that "GARY Indiana has 90% of the state population. Only someone with limited knowledge of the are would make such an assertion. When I came to Arizona I had a chance to buy a house at the Athem, but after doing my research I advised myself against it and bought a house in Scottsdale. When people ask me about Arizona I always tell them about the 120 degrees summers, the dust storms, the rattle snakes, the killer bees, the scorpions and the black widows. Why? Because I do not want mid-westerners to come here with many of their bad habits, and their crazy plants and grass wanting to change the desert to what they left in the first place. If you like the mid-west so much I am willing to help you pack and send you back to wherever you came from. Hospitality is a big thing in Arizona, but if you do not like what you see. do not let the door hit your butt in the way out. I do not miss the cold winters or the cold people from the mid-west. When the winter season starts and I see the snow birds come in, I cringe because I know they bring a lot of things we just do not want in Arizona. As the saying goes....ARIZONA LOVE HER OR LEAVE HER, NO OTHER WAY AROUND IT.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brian_2 View Post
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/the_angry_geographer/images/anthem.gif (broken link) (broken link)

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/the_angry_geographer/images/anthemoutlets.jpg (broken link) (broken link)

http://angrygeographer.typepad.com/the_angry_geographer/images/suburbia.jpg (broken link) (broken link)

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.
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Old 12-22-2010, 11:43 AM
 
Location: Sonoran Desert
38,955 posts, read 50,875,947 times
Reputation: 28134
Just after Anthem was built, thugs from Del Webb kidnapped families from their urban paradises in the east and forcefully transported them to Arizona and made them live in single family homes far from the city environment they loved. The same thing happened all over the Phoenix area with millions taken from the urban east and hauled cross-country to suburban tracts they hate and would love to escape so they can return to their beloved inner city apartment towers. It is truly a modern-day trail of tears.
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Old 12-22-2010, 01:42 PM
 
Location: Northern Arizona
329 posts, read 1,272,438 times
Reputation: 279
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponderosa View Post
Just after Anthem was built, thugs from Del Webb kidnapped families from their urban paradises in the east and forcefully transported them to Arizona and made them live in single family homes far from the city environment they loved. The same thing happened all over the Phoenix area with millions taken from the urban east and hauled cross-country to suburban tracts they hate and would love to escape so they can return to their beloved inner city apartment towers. It is truly a modern-day trail of tears.
Too funny!!
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Old 12-22-2010, 03:35 PM
 
Location: Arizona
1,034 posts, read 4,380,900 times
Reputation: 1382
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdscew1948 View Post
Now addressing the comments made on this forum I can only say that to say that the Anthem is 90% of Phoenix is the equivalent of saying that "GARY Indiana has 90% of the state population. Only someone with limited knowledge of the are would make such an assertion.
Correction. The article states"...Maricopa County (which contains about 90% of the Phoenix metropolitan area)."

The article doesn't state that Anthem makes up 90% of Phoenix.

Either way, Anthem is not for me.
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Old 12-24-2010, 04:09 PM
 
175 posts, read 370,941 times
Reputation: 294
"To this aspiring planner's eye, Anthem is the biggest mistake ever perpetrated on the American cityscape. Here's why.
COMPLETE PHYSICAL ISOLATION."

Wow...That's what attracted me to Anthem. Everyone isn't interested in living close to the "downtown" American cityscape. I've spent some time there, bought a house there, and I think it's a great place for families who are okay with living almost 35 miles from downtown Phoenix.
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Old 01-18-2011, 08:23 AM
 
13 posts, read 69,983 times
Reputation: 21
My dad grew up in the Downtown Detroit. After the riots in the 60's he and all his neighbors left and moved to Oakland County, Birminingham, Bloomfield Hills, etc, equivalent distance from Phx to Anthem. Back then it was nothing but farm land, and one of the first Del Webb communities, yes he bought a Pulte home over 40 years ago.....Today...its the only place to live in S.E. Michigan. My question to the Anthem naysayers is why do I need Phoenix? If I'm not dependant on the city for work, why do I need traffice congestion, smog, crime, etc. etc. Yes, I do get the lack of culture and non-chain restaraunts argument, but my thesis is that the Anthem/Sonoran Foothills area is only going to grow and will be the Oakland County of tomorrow. I think it's well on its way. To me, Anthem/Sonoran Foothills is all about Safety, Kids, Clean Air, Proxy to Flag for Skiing and good all around family fun without the stressors of the big town...I can put up with the cookie cutter homogenized stuff for the sake of my kids having a great childhood...Currently we are displaced and residing in Tampa, FL...trying to make it change soon....
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