To newcomers from older parts of the country, the open space of the West is alluring. The ability to see a far-away horizon holds out the promise land for all -- of single-family houses and yards. In Phoenix, building out that promise has resulted in a metropolitan area that sprawls 60 miles from east to west. But paradoxically, as the region seeks to develop itself as a focal point of the knowledge economy, the very thing that has made the region attractive also creates enormous challenge.

"Distance," says Wellington Reiter, dean of the Arizona State University College of Design, "has the unintended consequence of conspiring against the development of a rich tapestry of city building." And it is a rich tapestry that characterizes the urban centers most heavily populated with scientists, software engineers, artists, and entrepreneurs that comprise the so-called "creative class."  

"Somehow, some way, we are going to have to overcome distance and convince people that we've woven together an interesting 21st century version of a city where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole," Reiter said. "We've created a network, instead of the more typical urban core with suburbs ... a network that must function in a new way. That's our only hope -- convincing people that's the case and, in fact, making it the case."

Making it the case, Reiter said, means transforming the Valley's image around the globe, across the nation and even among the locals, from one of a collection of cities loosely tied together by location into a "constellation of shared interests, assets, and connectivity. This is a design project of extraordinary scale and complexity, one that is as much about will as it is infrastructure."

Reiter was a speaker at the 42nd Annual Economic Forecast Luncheon presented by Chase/Bank One and the W. P. Carey School of Business.

 

A major urban area's personality can be established on just a few blocks or landmarks -- Times Square, the Loop, Hollywood and Vine. The individual cities that form the Valley don't have those kinds of identifying markers. In that case, Reiter said, the institutions and locales of the individual cities should be collected and packaged around an idea that establishes the region's personality, such as the Silicon Valley in California or the Research Triangle in North Carolina. In the Valley's case it could be a well-established high-tech industry and its fledgling bio-tech sector.

"Of course, each of the many sub-centers in the Valley should be encouraged to differentiate and distinguish themselves, as their individual strength only adds to the whole," Reiter said. "However, as the metro area is unlikely to contract, coordination and collaboration of unparalleled proportions will be required to generate a sense of proximity, both real and virtual. It is about density -- not just measured by inhabitants per acre or square mile -- but by ideas."

That type of coordination and collaboration traditionally has been in short supply among the Valley's many municipalities. It's proven to be a boon for corporations as they pit the cities against each other in order to wrangle greater economic incentives for stadiums, discount superstores and malls.  

Reiter warned that if the cities don't work together, "we'll have the best collection of [junior varsity] teams in the country. But I don't think that's a strategy for success." 

Because there are simply not enough resources to go around, Reiter said not every city in the Valley will be able to have a "stellar, fully-equipped" downtown area.   That means the various cities will have to put aside their quarrels, gain some humility and agree that there can be only one leader and make it work for the whole region.

"I don't see how downtown Phoenix doesn't play that role with its proximity to the airport, the ballpark, the convention center, the hotels," he said. "There are not enough resources to go around, so we have to be strategic in how we deploy them, and every city should somehow see itself benefiting from a significant urban center that represents the whole, and it probably needs to be Phoenix."

While Scottsdale has the resorts and the shopping and Tempe has ASU and a youth culture, Phoenix holds the best card of all -- name recognition. After all, it's not called the Glendale Metropolitan Area. Over the past decade, Phoenix has taken some major and costly steps to establish its downtown area. It's filled with business high-rises, hotels, a sports arena and a Major League Baseball stadium. Despite all that, the Phoenix downtown area just hasn't been able to catch fire. Sporting events, concerts and conventions haven't proven to be enough.

"Even those nights [with events], downtown isn't hopping," he said. "People get sucked right into the stadium and then spit right back out. The downtown, because it has no housing, really -- certainly not in proportion to what it wants to be -- doesn't have a 24/7 population that is on the streets, some of whom are going to ball games. It's quite the opposite."

Right now, Phoenix is a working downtown that rolls up the carpets come five o'clock. In order to make it a dynamic downtown, Reiter said, Phoenix has to start thinking about the people -- who breathe life into urban centers.  

"We're building this city in reverse," he said. "Most cities would have been built up first and later in their careers would figure out where to put the stadiums. We did it the other way around to try to convince ourselves, and others, that we were a grownup town. We thought we needed stadiums, so we built them and now they sit there with nothing else around them. Instead of finding a place for the stadiums in a crowded downtown core, we must now figure out how to fill in around them."

Phoenix has built apartments and condos in both the uptown and downtown areas, but the city has done very little else to lure residents. To reel in the people who will make downtown Phoenix come to life both night and day, Reiter envisions a light rail system, more housing developments and the services that urbanites in major cities take for granted: groceries, dry cleaners, schools, clothing stores and more.

"That's a real chicken-and-egg situation," he said. "People will say, 'Well, I'd live there, but there is no grocery store or drugstore nearby, there's not a real park where I'd walk my dog or a school for my kids.' Living downtown turns out to be attractive mostly to professional singles and couples with no kids who can afford to drive to buy food. So which comes first, the amenities that make life in downtown possible, or the people who live there to take advantage of them?"

Reiter believes that the new ASU campus will provide one of the necessary jump-starts Phoenix needs to develop a downtown area that the rest of the Valley can build around. An expanded ASU presence with a new campus and a medical school will bring thousands of new people into the area -- and if the city plans accordingly, not just for the day.

"There is a logic to the city investing in a project that will bring 15,000 students into the downtown area. I think it has to do with their education and  participating in businesses, buying food, clothes, maybe even living in the area," he said.  Reiter added that ASU's expansion is giving confidence to developers and retailers who are hoping that this time, maybe -- just maybe -- downtown Phoenix will become a "real" urban center.

"People sense in the air that something is about to happen," Reiter said. "I hope this happens before the next economic cycle. We should have more cranes in the air if downtown is going to become the place we believe it can be."