12/28/2023 0 Comments Project haven phoenixThe city was developer-friendly, automobile-centric, and air conditioning could be found in just about every building. That well-loved street car? Torn out in 1948.īetween 19, Phoenix saw massive growth throughout the built environment. Unfortunately, as our population was booming, our urbanism was shrinking. 99, with 106,818 residents in 17 square miles. By 1950, Phoenix entered the list of the 100 most populous cities, at No. Servicemen, having fallen in love with the valley while training here, wanted to move back after the war and could easily do so with the massive city boundary expansion that was happening. Because many of those in the Phoenix 40 were land owners or investors, they had quite a bit of interest in increased development, giving Phoenix a “pro-growth” bias that has persisted through today. The Phoenix 40 was small, exclusionary group of elite businessmen who virtually controlled the political and economic scene statewide through generous financial support and favorable media exposure for the politicians they handpicked. ![]() That is, until you look into the Phoenix 40. It’s easy to forget that Phoenix was, for quite a while after settlement, the Wild West. NOW, LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT POST-WORLD WAR II EXPANSION AND THE BABY BOOMER BOOM. Despite the lack of traditional downtown skyscrapers, the core was dense, had mixed primary uses, and was serviced by a reliable and well-loved streetcar that was able to accommodate much of the population despite its small geographical footprint. Because Phoenix was so young at the onset of these timeframes, our downtown core didn’t have the framework of older, larger cities, but the concentration of activity in the region made it a typical downtown in a small city. The Sante Fe and Union Pacific railroads serviced the produce warehouses just south of the downtown core, which was a bustling commercial and governmental center. During this time, Phoenix’s major industry was agriculture, and much of the business around it was concentrated in downtown Phoenix. ![]() From too little capital in the 1930’s to too little material in the 1940’s, urban development was hardly possible. We’ve since outpaced Denver and other major metros like it (that’ll be important later in this brief), but we didn’t have the opportunity to build great bones.Īs with the rest of the country, the Great Depression and World War II halted most development. ![]() ![]() Additionally, our massive amounts of land and burgeoning sprawl dispersed development, and density never became part of our building culture. Phoenix saw a few of these buildings go up ( Luhrs Tower and the Professional Building to name a couple), but given our size, we were capital poor and short on labor. During this “golden age of city building,” cities in the North East became meccas of gothic revival, late victorian, and art deco architectural marvels they had the population and capital to support that kind of development before the Great Depression and World War II completely changed the landscape of the nation. To be fair, Arizona didn’t establish statehood until after the second industrial revolution which was a critical time for urban development. By 1930, while Denver, one of the closest “big” cities, had a population of about 288,000 Phoenix had just over 48,000 residents. We all know that Phoenix is a relatively young city.
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