[author's note: So as promised, this is the start of a five-part blog post series that evaluates how policy decisions made at the state and local levels will ultimately affect family decisions. True, I've lived in Phoenix all my life, but is this truly a place that is suitable for creating and raising a family? Read on...]
I have some feeling that this is going to be a difficult series of blog posts to write. You see, to many people, I’m known as “Mr. Phoenix.” It’s not a title I really wanted to have nor is it a title I can say I’m particularly proud of. The idea is that I know a lot about this city and a lot of the historical institutions – in the governance sense of the word – that guide this city. Like most everything, I don’t agree with them all of the time, but I am reminded that “discourse, dissent, and disagreement are the cornerstones of democracy.”
Rewind a couple of weeks: dear friend and colleague Sam Richard wrote an honest appraisal of people leaving Phoenix over for the Downtown Phoenix Journal, and that sparked off quite a debate in the comments. In conversations I had with Sam while at work, we decided that Phoenix focuses too much on bringing people here and not worrying about keeping them here. It’s like recruitment without retention. We seem to focus too much on things like office towers and sports stadia (read: growth) because they are politically sexy. Schools, hospitals, public safety, and human infrastructure (read: sustaining)? Not so much.
Also back a couple of weeks was the topping-off ceremony for the first tower of Cityscape, the supposed new crown jewel for Downtown Phoenix. Leaders – including Mayor Gordon and Governor Brewer – touted the project as a destination for Downtown Phoenix for shopping, dining, and office space. A high-value address for Phoenix and the Southwest, if you will. But I ask: is our memory so short term that we have forgotten what’s already here? For shopping, have we already forgotten about the Arizona Center or Roosevelt Row? For dining, what about the unique restaurants already here?
And for office space, with office vacancy rates as high as they are, why build new buildings? Why focus on creating new things when existing infrastructure – in this case office space – is already there and waiting? Another building that’s just about to finish construction – One Central Park East – is hinging on having no tenants by the time it opens later this year. And what about other buildings in Downtown Phoenix? Or along the light rail?
I bring all that up as one in a series of arguments that Phoenix focuses on creating new things at the expense of that which is already here. Growing, not sustaining. And we’ve seen what happens when we put all our economic eggs into the growth basket.
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The guiding question behind this series of posts will be this: Is Phoenix a place that is suitable to raise – and sustain – a family? As I’ve explored in brief above and will explore in detail in later posts to this series, Phoenix seems to be the nation’s suburb: focusing on institutions that will bring people here and not keep them here. It seems to figure that it will always draw new blood to replace those whom it disenfranchises. But the problem to this is that employers look at institutions that will keep people here – the human services infrastructure, if you will – in their decision-making processes on if they want to move here.
All food for thought. And a pretty good preface to this complex series.
See you tomorrow.
-Edward Jensen