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Phoenix, Az is a very dry and dusty outpost city that just grew in population because of its weather after air conditioning was invented. It still hasn't lost its dry dusty "last outpost on the trail" type of feel. It is an absolute nowhere land way, way out there in the middle of the desert.
Eventually it had enough people to warrant putting up a Walmart and then eventually they had enough Walmarts to employ enough people to put up a Home Depot and then came Taco Bell and MCdonalds and a mall and eventually a whole Master planned community was born. Well this growing community and the home depot, Walmart, Taco Bell etc. as well as needing people to help build all the new houses and work at the restaurants attracted illegal aliens to come and get jobs there. The cycle just kept repeating itself until today. That in a nut shell is what Phoenix is.
The largest industry is just building more houses and home depots and Taco bells etc. Why would you need any hirise buildings for that??
So if you expect a dazzling skyline to come out of all this you won't be getting it any time soon. This just goes to show that you can build a city based on services without any core industry at all. Growth is the industry. The only problem is what do you do if the growth stops????? OOOOOOPS!!!!
Last edited by josehernandez017; 02-07-2009 at 09:57 AM..
Phoenix's is pretty sad for a city its size, even with the airport where it is. It still can have multiple buildings, right? It lacks in that.
It's a wonderful city in an absolutely spectacular state. It's just VERY different and most people can't handle it. Highrises are a very outdated and old-school way to measure cities.
It's a wonderful city in an absolutely spectacular state. It's just VERY different and most people can't handle it. Highrises are a very outdated and old-school way to measure cities.
I agree. I really enjoy Phoenix, its always had a "little L.A." feel to me. I can definitely understand why many people might not like it however.
The Phoenix skyline isn't nearly as sad as everyone makes it out to be. For one thing, half the time when people look at the skyline, they dont look at the whole thing. There are two downtown areas: a government, cutural and older southern downtown and a buisness section called midtown. The skyline is building up over time, considering that Phoenix went from being a little city to the 5th largest in the nation in about 15 years. How could the skyline possibly keep up? But there are still buildings going up and if you live in the central city, PHX is great and urban. The suburbs are boring, but how is that different than anywhere else?
The same thing goes for San Jose, plus they have to deal with competition for LA and SF. San Jose wasn't huge either until very recently and people compare these two, extremly young cities to places like NY, Philly and Chi. those cities have great skylines, but they've also been around basically since this country was founded.
Why do people start threads designed to bash cities anyway? This tread was completly designed so people could make fun of PHX and SJ. Why do people hate these cities so much? They both obviously offer a lot since thousands of people move there every year.
Plus, i think PHX has some pretty nice buildings. Check them out
Last edited by headphonesphoenix; 05-04-2009 at 01:50 PM..
A good city shoudn't be measured by its skyline. What I would like more is for greater density of midrises in both cities--something like what many European cities and a few American ones have (D.C., parts of Brooklyn). A vibrant, densely built doesn't require skyscrapers--unfortunately, neither city is particularly vibrant nor densely built.
The Phoenix skyline isn't nearly as sad as everyone makes it out to be. For one thing, half the time when people look at the skyline, they dont look at the whole thing. There are two downtown areas: a government, cutural and older southern downtown and a buisness section called midtown. The skyline is building up over time, considering that Phoenix went from being a little city to the 5th largest in the nation in about 15 years. How could the skyline possibly keep up? But there are still buildings going up and if you live in the central city, PHX is great and urban. The suburbs are boring, but how is that different than anywhere else?
The same thing goes for San Jose, plus they have to deal with competition for LA and SF. San Jose wasn't huge either until very recently and people compare these two, extremly young cities to places like NY, Philly and Chi. those cities have great skylines, but they've also been around basically since this country was founded.
Why do people start threads designed to bash cities anyway? This tread was completly designed so people could make fun of PHX and SJ. Why do people hate these cities so much? They both obviously offer a lot since thousands of people move there every year.
Plus, i think PHX has some pretty nice buildings. Check them out
Im from lil ol Albuquerque and the skyline didnt impress me one bit ,infact it was very disappointing and smaller than I had expected.
I could see how you would be unimpressed, coming from Albuquerque. Nothing against the town, but come on.
thats what Im saying, coming from Albuquerque you would think the 5th largest city in the country's skyline would impress me but it didnt and Im originally from a town of 11,000 people where are tallest building is a grain elevator.
Phoenix has the better skyline, but I'd probably rather live in San Jose - if for no other reason other than that I would not like to live in the desert.
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