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You arent going to get massive amounts of people to give up their cars. Sorry, not happening. Even if you did it would be for Uber/Lyft, which doesnt really.solve the problem. No one wants to ride on buses and light rail full of homeless people shooting up and peeing on the floor.
This whole "give up your car and live in a high rise" is a liberal fantasy we dont need here. Move to NYC or Chicsgo if that's how you want to live. High rises end up being prohibitively expensive for every day people, so you just end up with a bunch of rich snobs living in a high rise district.
Everything doesn't need to be politicized. There are plenty of liberals who don't live high rises and who don't care how others live.
I don't think overdevelopment is the main issue with Phoenix, or at least it isn't a specific enough term to describe the problem. It's over saturation of bad construction projects that will hurt Phoenix. By that, I'm talking about the overabundance of retail shops and office spaces with "for sale" or "for lease" signs, quick shifts in population dynamics with easily available housing in a "nicer" area, apartment construction based on speculation of demand from population increases and assumptions about trends among millennials and home buying in today's world, etc. Really the big problem is real estate speculation, which has hurt Phoenix in the past, and continues to hurt it today.
that address some of these issues from 1 point of view and former AZ Republic Jon columnist Jon Talton wrote a column about sprawl in AZ and where he believes the AZ economy is heading
I read the MIT author's article. She made some good points, but she shows her ignorance when she accuses Trump of calling immigrants "animals." Any informed person knows he was specifically referring to the brutal MS-13 gang members, not "immigrants" in general.
Of course it is over-developed. Read what the long-time locals say.
As a long-time local, it's overdeveloped and oversaturated with single family homes. It's time to build for other lifestyles and provide different options for people. If I want a more urban lifestyle, I should be able to have that option in a metropolitan area of approximately 5 million people. You'd think in a city that populous, that lifestyle would exist, no? It does in 99% of the world.
This isn't some podunk town in the boonies people want it to be. You can't have all the amenities of suburban and rural living and be in a big city unless you have the cash to pay for it, which millionaires love to do (Arcadia, much of Paradise Valley, etc). If you are like most people and not even the higher eschalons of the upper-middle class or higher, and are pretty limited by your budget, artificially restricting supply in the core of town will make it more difficult for you to achieve a suburban lifestyle on the fringes. It benefits everyone to densify neighborhoods where it makes sense.
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Many parts of town are densifying where it "doesn't make sense" currently (Biltmore area with terrible transit accessibility, South Scottsdale, Kierland) because people want to live in these neighborhoods because of what they offer but since the cities keep shooting down mass transit (I'm looking at you, Scottsdale) then yes these will be terrible places to commute in. In my ideal world, transit would be put in before real estate to prevent the situation, but this is a classic "did the chicken come before the egg" scenario because many people won't be interested in putting in transit in an area until the traffic becomes too excessive. They mention that the transit project will cost too much based on expected fare revenue and won't want to fund it. But 10 years later, and commutes double or even triple, and the city wants to widen the roads at the cost of eminent domain and demolishing sometimes hundreds of businesses, it would have been cheaper to put in some kind of mass transit ahead of time when people started to buy up properties and up zone everything (because zoning changes and construction do take some time, no?).
People treat traffic in the "now" and not "what will it be"... you'd think with how people speculate with real estate they'd do the same for commute times. Didn't you know shorter commute times to employment hubs may help your property values?
In my ideal world, transit would be put in before real estate to prevent the situation, but this is a classic "did the chicken come before the egg" scenario because many people won't be interested in putting in transit in an area until the traffic becomes too excessive. They mention that the transit project will cost too much based on expected fare revenue and won't want to fund it. But 10 years later, and commutes double or even triple, and the city wants to widen the roads at the cost of eminent domain and demolishing sometimes hundreds of businesses, it would have been cheaper to put in some kind of mass transit ahead of time when people started to buy up properties and up zone everything (because zoning changes and construction do take some time, no?).
It's as much about politics as it is about finance. Scottsdale has repeatedly said no to light rail, with cost being only one of many factors at work. In that city, the debate is really about how quickly the community wants to urbanize and develop. Letting trains into Scottsdale is often perceived as a concession to densities that some Scottsdale residents don't want -- not to mention the inevitable arguments about crime. The Biltmore and Kierland areas of Phoenix are represented on the city council by avowed foes of rail transit who argue that all rail money should be diverted to street maintenance. Without their support, light rail in unlikely to become a priority for those areas.
It's as much about politics as it is about finance. Scottsdale has repeatedly said no to light rail, with cost being only one of many factors at work. In that city, the debate is really about how quickly the community wants to urbanize and develop. Letting trains into Scottsdale is often perceived as a concession to densities that some Scottsdale residents don't want -- not to mention the inevitable arguments about crime. The Biltmore and Kierland areas of Phoenix are represented on the city council by avowed foes of rail transit who argue that all rail money should be diverted to street maintenance. Without their support, light rail in unlikely to become a priority for those areas.
Scottsdale really only needs light rail in Old Town, with a connection to Tempe down Scottsdale road (or nearby Scottsdale road), and then an east-west route (to alleviate traffic off the current light rail line) through the Arcadia region to get to Downtown. Ideally it would be Camelback Road to serve the Biltmore and Scottsdale Fashion Square, but Arcadia would never allow it to happen. Indian School or Thomas might be easier to build as far as getting something passed. Kierland will eventually, in the future.
Kierland can't develop like Biltmore 2.0 and be in one really inaccessible part of town (with only the 101 to really serve it) without major commuting issues period. My family lives in the vicinity and the traffic was bad even before the Optima towers and all the new stuff they are planning there, and I remember what Scottsdale road was like in that region 10 years ago. It wasn't pleasant even then and it's getting worse now. Allowing Kierland to exist at all (i.e. tall office towers, major shopping centers, lots of office-industrial complexes surrounding the airpark--not the residential portions of it I'm criticizing here) where it is shouldn't have been approved to begin with as far as zoning. It'll cost a fortune of our taxpayer dimes to fund the road infrastructure out there for employment hubs and it will never be enough to handle rush hours because it's just not a central location. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that major employment hub + one freeway = traffic disaster. So I don't take pity on the residents nearby when this area was zoned to be a major area many, many, many moons ago and they moved to the area after it had already been zoned this way and we had already become a major city by the time Kierland was even conceived. If you want the quiet lifestyle, use that speculation power that you do for real estate wealth building and apply it to the surrounding cities as well. If quiet lifestyles were what you wanted, I would suspect West Valley would have been a better investment in the long-term, I don't hear much about offices and high rises getting put up out there.
With all that being said, Phoenix is still overdeveloping in the wrong ways. Kierland being one of them (as I said, traffic with no good public transit system as it doesn't make sense to do it that way), those buildings would be better off in places like Downtown Tempe and Downtown Phoenix. And guess what? They are building high-density developments there already too. So why are they still building them in Kierland? Because there is a ton of demand for that lifestyle and those types of buildings. And developers are going for the few pockets where they are allowed via zoning. So the market for higher density development is artificially being restricted, meanwhile lower density development is artificially being forced (remember what the housing market crash did to our economy?) past the normal rate it would grow.
Kierland can't develop like Biltmore 2.0 and be in one really inaccessible part of town (with only the 101 to really serve it) without major commuting issues period. My family lives in the vicinity and the traffic was bad even before the Optima towers and all the new stuff they are planning there, and I remember what Scottsdale road was like in that region 10 years ago. It wasn't pleasant even then and it's getting worse now. Allowing Kierland to exist at all (i.e. tall office towers, major shopping centers, lots of office-industrial complexes surrounding the airpark--not the residential portions of it I'm criticizing here) where it is shouldn't have been approved to begin with as far as zoning. It'll cost a fortune of our taxpayer dimes to fund the road infrastructure out there for employment hubs and it will never be enough to handle rush hours because it's just not a central location. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that major employment hub + one freeway = traffic disaster. So I don't take pity on the residents nearby when this area was zoned to be a major area many, many, many moons ago and they moved to the area after it had already been zoned this way and we had already become a major city by the time Kierland was even conceived. If you want the quiet lifestyle, use that speculation power that you do for real estate wealth building and apply it to the surrounding cities as well. If quiet lifestyles were what you wanted, I would suspect West Valley would have been a better investment in the long-term, I don't hear much about offices and high rises getting put up out there.
With all that being said, Phoenix is still overdeveloping in the wrong ways. Kierland being one of them (as I said, traffic with no good public transit system as it doesn't make sense to do it that way), those buildings would be better off in places like Downtown Tempe and Downtown Phoenix. And guess what? They are building high-density developments there already too. So why are they still building them in Kierland? Because there is a ton of demand for that lifestyle and those types of buildings. And developers are going for the few pockets where they are allowed via zoning. So the market for higher density development is artificially being restricted, meanwhile lower density development is artificially being forced (remember what the housing market crash did to our economy?) past the normal rate it would grow.
Just so you know, Kierland is an INFILL development, not just another sprawling master planned suburban community. The cities of Phoenix and Scottsdale were already expanding & building outward when the notion of Kierland was conceived, and the land that would become Kierland was nothing but a huge swath of vacant land in the middle of all this leapfrog development. You should be glad Kierland exists and is shaping up to be somewhat of an urbanized district in a sea of low density sameness. Also, the road infrastructure is already in place. If traffic is a problem, then so be it. Urbanized areas aren't exactly designed to be quiet and peaceful.
If you want to go on the attack of sprawling development with a lack of infrastructure, go after San Tan Valley, Maricopa, Anthem, Buckeye, Estrella, or even Westgate, which are basically on the edge of nowhere. Infill developments like Kierland are very much welcome, as is upward development. BTW, there are no "tall" towers in the Kierland area, just a few midrise condos & office buildings. Perhaps your definition of "tall" and "high density" is different than mine. I consider anything over 30 stories to be tall, and these are the kinds of structures downtown/midtown Phoenix & downtown Tempe should be building. I also don't see anything wrong with putting up 20 or 30 story buildings in Old Town Scottsdale. What has taken place in Kierland is just right for the area, and it meets the demand, so I don't see the need in complaining.
Kierland was the Herberger Property in the 80s. Greenway Rd. did not exist between 64th St. and Scottsdale Rd. Phoenix’s General Plan called for Greenway to extend on its alignment to Scottsdale Rd where it would hook up to Scottsdale’s Greenway-Hayden Loop. NEVCO, a NIMBY organization, supported a General Plan Amendment that dead ended Greenway into the air park at Butheris. Despite the fact that Glendale, Phoenix and Scottsdale had spent millions on developing Greenway as a residential parkway, NEVCO didn’t want traffic in their neighborhood. They were successful in screwing up Greenway but in the process had to give the developers several zoning concessions including the height for the hotel. I guess you could call it infill but in many ways it was the edge of town.
I think a big part of why Phoenix metro has grown out instead of up is that people move to the west for wide open spaces. You build up, you lose that feeling and things start to feel closed in. You feel like you've lost part of your personal space. While some may like an urban jungle like NYC, others still want to be able to see the horizon.
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