Is a western/cowboy vibe important to you as a resident? (Phoenix: homes, school)

[JGMotorsport64]

Originally Posted by Maroon197

I still don't see how you are connecting the old west gimmicks with the NIMBY mentality. Scottsdale could be marketed as space city USA or the hot dog fanatic capital of the west, and the locals would still be fighting those developments just as they are now. The exact same mentality exists in Tucson where you have a city of 1 million people without a freeway system. There is this ridiculous belief that "if we don't build it, they won't come." Well, people are showing up by the hundreds of thousands anyway, except now everything is a nightmare with decreasing quality of life because the old folks won't approve any infrastructure improvements.

There’s a theory that freeways promote sprawl. Lack of freeways encourage a smaller and more centralized footprint. Tucson has one of the best cores in the State and I think it’s due to the fact that alternatives to vehicles have to exist due to the infrastructure.

Phoenix is a gigantic sprawl monster like Houston and it’s because of the freeways. You build a freeway, people move further away and increase their footprint. Even downtown Phoenix is sprawled out to make way for cars.

[Maroon197]

Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64

There’s a theory that freeways promote sprawl. Lack of freeways encourage a smaller and more centralized footprint. Tucson has one of the best cores in the State and I think it’s due to the fact that alternatives to vehicles have to exist due to the infrastructure.

.

Really? Try driving from Marana to Tanque Verde and tell me how compact and non-car-centric metro Tucson is. There's nothing more enjoyable than a solid hour of stop and go surface street driving.

Thanks to the freeways in Phoenix, you can drive from Queen Creek to Peoria in basically the same amount of time despite the extra 20 miles of distance.

[JGMotorsport64]

Originally Posted by Maroon197

Really? Try driving from Marana to Tanque Verde and tell me how compact and non-car-centric metro Tucson is. There's nothing more enjoyable than a solid hour of stop and go surface street driving.

Thanks to the freeways in Phoenix, you can drive from Queen Creek to Peoria in basically the same amount of time despite the extra 20 miles of distance.

How many people are making that trip tho. That’s the point.

Your queen creek to Peoria analogy is also the point. The freeways facilitate auto sprawl because of the distance you can travel. The lack of freeways encourage a small footprint and things being more compact

[Maroon197]

Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64

How many people are making that trip tho. That’s the point.

Your queen creek to Peoria analogy is also the point. The freeways facilitate auto sprawl because of the distance you can travel. The lack of freeways encourage a small footprint and things being more compact

Tucson is one of the most car centric cities in America. Many parts of the metro don't even have sidewalks, and pedestrians are forced to walk on the side of roads with speed limits 50+ mph. It's also huge and increasingly sprawling despite it's obscene lack of infrastructure. Marana. Oro Valley. Vail. Sahuarita. They're all booming and growing, and no one is going to accuse them of being dense, urban, walkable, or close to the central core. "If you don't build it, they won't come" has been proven false time after time, and yet for some reason older generations keep sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending they can live in a 1950s fantasy land.

[motormaker]

Several years ago my Sis and I was looking for a gift in Scottsdale. As we were leaving a rental car parked close to us and a mom, dad and 2 young kids got out.

All 4 had red and white long sleeved checked shirts. new jeans, boots and cowboy hats.

Sis just rolled her eyes and mouthed tourists.

[Ex New Yorker]

Originally Posted by Slater

In many quarters Arizona is known for it's pro-gun stance. So some folks assume that if you're from Arizona you must own a dozen AR-15's. OK, guilty

First five counties declared themselves as 2nd Amendment sanctuary's including Maricopa, Arizona's most populous county. Now the entire state has that status. Which is fine by me. As a member of the Arizona Citizens Defense League (AZCDL). I did my part in contacting my state and county legislators in support of that resolution. I even went to our county board meeting where there was overwhelming public support including our county sheriff. So yeah, I'd say that Arizona is known for it's pro-gun stance.

Before we moved people back east would tell us all of the horror stories about life in Arizona. The heat, the rattlesnakes, scorpions and tarantula's crawling all over the place etc. So far and after 11 years we've only come across two rattlesnakes. One that someone had killed out on Burro Creek Road and the other was crossing the road near the Roosevelt Dam at the end of the Apache Trail. So far we haven't come across any scorpions and maybe a half dozen tarantula's. We came across one king snake out on our local hiking trail and a few bull snakes. This and my wife and I spend a lot of our time out in the desert.

[gsm113]

I've watched with fascination as the Scottsdale Quarter/Kierland area has exploded in the last few years with midrise apartments and a more urban atmosphere. There are still a couple going up near Optima and I'm sure more on the way as soon as CrackerJax is torn down. I see the same thing happening in parts of Tempe around ASU and downtown Phx. Traffic certainly has increased but apart from that I see this growth as an overall net positive, the natural evolution of cities. Perhaps the old town Nimbys view it differently.

On another note a few years ago I was interested in buying a house near old town, but walked away when I found out it was a land lease property. As it was explained to me, we would be buying the house but leasing the land underneath it at ~$700 per month with renegotiated lease terms every few decades. I also learned that much of the land around there is owned by one family. I wonder how much opposition to new development is due to this ownership structure.

Edit to answer the original question: work out fakery is a perfect description of the the Scottsdale cowboy image.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64

There’s a theory that freeways promote sprawl. Lack of freeways encourage a smaller and more centralized footprint. Tucson has one of the best cores in the State and I think it’s due to the fact that alternatives to vehicles have to exist due to the infrastructure.

Phoenix is a gigantic sprawl monster like Houston and it’s because of the freeways. You build a freeway, people move further away and increase their footprint. Even downtown Phoenix is sprawled out to make way for cars.

That's all it is: a theory. No facts behind it whatsoever. From the 1950s through 1970s when the rest of the country was building the interstate highway system, and many large cities were building their own freeway network, Phoenix resisted freeways because many residents didn't want it to become another L.A. What happened was the Phoenix area continued to grow & sprawl outward anyway, and traffic became increasingly congested due to the lack of freeways. This is why people finally became more supportive of freeways, and why Proposition 300 was approved by the voters in 1985.

Phoenix and Houston are very sprawling, but it's not all due to freeways. Both cities have allowed an enormous amount of land to be annexed into the city limits. This land has mostly been been used for suburban type developments, which really should be part of a separate municipality instead of the core city. Sprawl was sure to happen in Phoenix or practically any other western metro area regardless if freeways were built or not.

Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64

How many people are making that trip tho. That’s the point.

The freeways facilitate auto sprawl because of the distance you can travel. The lack of freeways encourage a small footprint and things being more compact

Look at all the development that has taken place around Queen Creek & San Tan Valley in the last decade. It wasn't because of freeways because there are no freeways conveniently serving that area. The way Phoenix & its surroundings have developed is: build the homes & businesses first, then improve the roads & build the freeways long afterward. Tucson is the same way, except they're still very NIMBYish about freeways. Driving around Tucson takes much longer than it should because it's largely crosstown street traffic with numerous stoplights.

Originally Posted by Mattya

The nimby residents fight every development, but specifically latch onto the “character” of the neighborhood. The old west buildings in place that are mostly a single story. Plenty of these nimbys don’t want any development over 1 story, no high density developments, no glass buildings, no concrete buildings. It wouldn’t be much different if the theme was different. The problem is the fighting of all change because of it.

That's exactly why I despise NIMBYs inside & out. They seem to want to remain in a time warp where everything remains the same (regardless if it's severely outdated). As I said before, the old west theme in Scottsdale serves mainly as a historic tourist attraction, but little else. Scottsdale as a whole is much more cosmopolitan than it used to be, and there should be more modernized, upward development replacing much of the old west stuff, but the idiotic NIMBYs don't want their so called views & tranquility spoiled. They serve no valuable purpose, and should be living in small towns where threats of massive development are virtually non existent.

[Voebe]

Originally Posted by Bondurant

How are you determining that Scottsdale is "worked up" and data do you have that suggests residents aren't frequenting Old Town?

I've been to city government meetings, read their materials, read newspaper articles, read candidate materials before the last election, and know from personal experience that most people there are tourists and no one I know locally goes there regularly to shop. A few of the bars and restaurants pull in some locals. That's about it. Anyone can see that most of the shops are tourist-oriented.

Why is it that I get the feeling that you didn't really want an answer - you just wanted to undermine my comment, without your offering any evidence to counter me?

[JGMotorsport64]

Originally Posted by Voebe

I've been to city government meetings, read their materials, read newspaper articles, read candidate materials before the last election, and know from personal experience that most people there are tourists and no one I know locally goes there regularly to shop. A few of the bars and restaurants pull in some locals. That's about it. Anyone can see that most of the shops are tourist-oriented.

Why is it that I get the feeling that you didn't really want an answer - you just wanted to undermine my comment, without your offering any evidence to counter me?

It’s one of the night life hubs in the City. It’s full of locals. The old lady trinket stores are tourist traps, but Old Town as a whole is very busy and frequented by locals.