Cultural Perceptions and Suburban Sprawl PDF

--------------~- INTRODUCTION CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS AND SUBURBAN SPRAWL Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical phi- losophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean...

--------------~- INTRODUCTION CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS AND SUBURBAN SPRAWL Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical phi- losophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt fiats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means noth- ing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. The refore, sublime. -EDWARDABBEY, 1988 In 1996 Cave Creek, Arizona, was a sleepy little town snuggled into the Sonoran Desert foothills. Unassuming homes in Cave Creek seemed to merge with sun-baked rock. Residents gener- ally avoided "scraping" the land and left the natural flora intact whenever possible. They refrained from introducing non- native bushes and trees like palms onto their property. Also, they supported zoning ordinances for low-density develop- ment, believing that the more spread-out their homes, the less damage done to the land. As a small rural town for the past fifty years, Cave Creek appeared as a slight dimple on the face of the vast Sonoran Desert. In contrast to Cave Creek rose downtown Phoenix, a mass of glass skyscrapers reflecting the big desert sky and glistening in 3  INTRODUCTION the shadows of the rugged mountains that surround "The Valley of the Sun." Located fifteen miles south of Cave Creek, Phoenix typifies the modem American city. The Greater Phoenix Cham- ber of Commerce (2005) describes Phoenix as "a sprawling met- ropolitan desert area that extends from trendy Scottsdale in the northeast, to Glendale and numerous expanding towns in the west." This modem metropolis has reinvented the meaning of "desert," converting uninhabitable wasteland to land of great prosperity and endless possibility. "Phoenix is a city on a roll" Mayor Skip Rimsza pronounced in his 2001 State of the City address. "Believe me, if you're the mayor, having a city that's on a roll is as good as it gets." In 1996, Phuenix was indeed rolling aluug, lraw,forming desert inLo housing Jcvdopmcnts at the ratl.: of one acre C'vcry hon r, 0r :ipproxi mate ly ten sqnare miles of Sonoran Desert CYcry ).;:.1.r. In a typical Phoenix development, each home, designed the same as every other home, has a small, well-manicured front lawn with some flowers and a cactus or two. Sometimes rocks, carefully arranged to resemble the desert, replace grass lawns. Miles of red tile roofing extend above the adobe walls that enclose planned communities. American flags fly high, indicat- ing the model home in each development. In the 1990s, development progressed steadily in all direc- tions because land farther away from the city limits was cheap and available. And one day, in line with patterns of suburban growth found all around Phoenix, a developer proposed to build a master-planned community north of Cave Creek on 2,154 acres called Spur Cross Ranch. Success was guaranteed with a 100-room resort hotel, 656 homes, and an 18-hole golf course sitting amidst some of the most magnificent desert remaining close to Phoenix. My visits to Spur Cross Ranch revealed a place of incompre- hensible beauty. The desert is alive, vibrant with colors that, depending on the time of year, range from the muted yellows and greens of sycamore and mesquite trees to the deep reds, 4  INTRODUCTION pinks, and purples of flowering cacti. Barbs of all shapes and sizes seem poised to strike·'any who dare pass through. They guard succulent plants-plants perfectly designed to endure endless arid days. Some, like the great saguar?, stand defiantly in the same place for hundreds of years, their immense arms reaching out to the sky. From jagged rocks evolve a spectacular assortment of plants, all of which support each other. Even the wind works with the land, shifting rocks slowly down toward the sea. A lizard does a few pushups in the shade. A butterfly glides by. Cave Creek twists around craggy brush and tumbles off jagged Elephant Butte. The desert humbles me, for there is no way to paint an I accurate portrait and the images continually shift from moment to moment, depending on the observer. Edward Abbey came I close to capturing some essence of the desert in his haunting accounts, yet even Abbey could not describe the magnificence I and so acknowle.dged: "Tbe desert lies beneath and soars beyond I any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime." I 5 I J  INTRODUCTION The proposed community in Spur Cross Ranch created quite a stir. Environmental activists accused the owners and developer of lining their own pockets at the expense of primeval saguaro forests, riparian areas, 1 and endangered species. Developers and' property rights advocates accused environmentalists of acting like tyrants, limiting freedom, and placing "little bunnies above human beings," as one Cave Creek developer said. Environmentalists nevertheless relentlessly opposed development and soon the effort to preserve Spur Cross Ranch gained national attention. However, it seemed unlikely that this small community (population 3,785), with its even smaller activist network, called "Friends of Spur Cross," could pose a real challenge to the great forces of develop- ment sweeping across the Southwest and particularly Phoenix. Every census since the 1940s has recorded increases in Sunbelt populations (Hertz et al. 1990).2 In the 1990s the South and the Southwest experienced the largest population increases, with the Phoenix metropolitan area ranking as the fifth fastest growing city and fourteenth largest metropolitan area (population 2.6 million) in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2000: Tables 2-4). By 2006, Phoenix had added more new residents than any other city in the United States, increasing by 44,456, or 3.1 percent (Christie 2006), with a total population of 1.5 million (U.S. Census, 2006). The movement to preserve Spur Cross Ranch faced all of the typical obstacles in challenging the developers, who, as one leader of Friends of Spur Cross put it, "have more juice than God." Strong political alliances coupled with huge bu~gets pro- vide certain advantages to developers that remain unmatched by grassroots organizations. Nevertheless, collective and sustained community action effectively stopped the powerful forces that were chiving the development. In November 2000, 77.4 percent of Cave Creek voters backed the first property tax in the town's history, costing the average homeowner about $132 per year for twenty years to preserve Spur Cross Ranch. In 1996, when just a scattering of homes speckled the Cave Creek foothills, I tried to learn how this modest town managed 6 - INTRODUCTION to challenge and ultimately stop development. However, by 2000 I was noticing something different: the Sonoran Desert foothills were now being developed. By 2001, the foothills were filled with homes and today the untamed desert that once character- ized Cave Creek is but a shadow of its former self, existing largely in plots of «on-scraped" land in neighbors' yards. In the late nineties, Cave Creek stood as a model of a small c.omm\lRiey that had f ~ bis..moncy ~ l a n d won. The.u.ngroomed desert of Cave. Creek contrasted sharply with the concrete order that characterizes Phoenix. Today, although Cave. Creek e-ontinues to deverop tlifferent1y from the surround- mg area, ~ a trace of the des~11 remui ~1s·. Why has much of the desert in and around Cave Creek disap~ared? Wlu'J deseite_,eub- lic policy efforts focuse~ lang_~~t!l re~?.!111.:..and de~lE well-organized grassroots efforts promoting land trusts to e_ur- cr;;"'iidpreserve land,isthisla'ild--;~E.@y~;f~ The rapid changes to the Sonoran Desert foothills are but one example of the type of development, popularly known as "subur- ~ sprawl," that we see shaping millions of acres of forest,~ land, and open space across this country. Suburban sprawl is the pattern of ever-increasing low-density development into undevel- oped land and the consequent expansion of 111etro litan _are~. Subcrban.sp~l is characterized by cookie-cutter subclivi- siefts., strip malls, pollution, danwge to rural and natural area!!, and a legion of higliways often jmnmed with traffic. Architec Vernon Swaback graphically defined.sprawl as "the uglification of eommunities by way of haphazard, hopscotch, unplannefl,.mip. ribbon, or leapfrog development in low dellSity. &in~use. patt.er:o.s. spread in a monolithic fashion without relief of open ~ (1997:37). The federal government reports that between 1992 and 2002 land was developed at a rate· of 2 ·million acres per year (National Re- sources Inventory 2002); this translates to the development of 228 acres per hour. Of this, 1.2 million acres is farmland that is lost to sprawling development each year, affecting crucial environmental 7.  INTRODUCTION safeguards like water-quality protection, aquifer recharge, floodwa- ter detention, and riparian and upland habitat (Stuart 2003). The hid- den price of sprawl entails fiscal pressures on towns and cities to build the necessary infrastructure to service these outlying areas, diverting business money away from inner city areas, and threats to the ecological integrity4 oflazge expanses of land. Proponents of sprawl point out that urbanized areas account for only 5 percent of the United States' land base. Their arguments against Smart Growth legislation and other initiatives to curb sprawl maintain that such efforts are ideological, draconian, threatening to American property rights values, or, in the words of a Phoenix developer, the product of "zealous environmentalists out to impose their views on the rest of the world." Yet Americans cite suburban sprawl as one of their top concerns (Pew Center 2000). "Sprawl is now a bread-and-butter community issue, like crime," says Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. Whlle-snppo1:ting eoneems- abmlt the nq,id ~ o f suburban d.e.Ye.1Ql2~Mt. l.am..lailical f to ou.rb sprawl, nhservi ngan-irori_ rha1lha e on wt~ Tbnw8h "~hle. d devalop.. me.R~·: ~~~., and so t'orth, rural land.fnses g~t eit i.is · in Cave eeetc~ fri7:omn-. De 1 mti.tioos Lv t:u. st,ra I tffiiotl9h 1"f!IJIQHM~iael~a\~~Bt. ijffle d~ rt remains. And -~ respon£ible o r ~. ~ the ~ t i o a of land bas dra- matic ~ Q P ~ ~... ~~- A brief review of some of the ecological problems precipitated by development in the desert illustrates why it is vital that we criti- cally examine our building practices there. URBANIZATION IN THE DESERT Cave Creek is situated near the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert, which stretches from the southern half of Arizona, runs 8  INTRODUCTION throughout most of Sonora, Mexico, and slopes south into the Baja Peninsula. Covering about 120,000 square miles, the Sono- ran Desert is rich with wildlife living in delicate balance with one another. It serves as home to fifty mammalian species, including coyotes,javelinas, mountain lions, deer, and bats. The gila monster, rattlesnake, scorpion, centipede, black widow, and tarantula also gravitate here. More than eighty-five species of birds live in the northern region, including such southwestern notables as the roadrunner, quail, cactus wren, owl, red-tailed hawk, vulture, and blue heron (Foothills Community Founda- tion 1990). The desert floor is covered with saguaro cactus, Jid prickly pear cactus, cholla cactus, barrel cactus, ocotillo, palo Jr verde trees, mesquite trees, sycamore trees, and ironwood trees. As urbanization of the desert spreads, many unique species of plants and animals face the threat of extinction. 5 The Sonoran Desert is of particular concern in this regard because it houses one of the most diverse arrays of desert plants and animal species on the planet (Lincoln Institute 2003). The case o( the saguaro cactus-a symbol of the American West~xemplifies the delicate balance maintained by the desert ecosystem. The saguaro depends on and supports a wide variety of plants and animals. As development inc;eases, saguaro num- bers dwindle. Efforts to save the saguaro through transplanting do not take into account how that affects its mutually dependent relationship with other animals and plants, all of which are threatened by continued development. Deserts also play a crucial role in the world's weather sys- tems, acting like giant radiators. About a third of the earth's land- mass is arid. Deserts characteristically receive less than ten inches of rainfall per year, ha~e sparse cloud coverage, and are largely located within tropical zones, close to the equator, where they receive nearly direct sunlight. These conditions produce land that absorbs energy during the day. Then, without an insu- lating cloud cover, the desert surface cools rapidly at night (Goodall et al. 1979:347). Thus, deserts absorb and release 9  INTRODUCTION radiation, serving to help regulate the temperature of the planet. Furthennore, deserts arc among the most fragile ecosystems on the planet precisely because they experience extremes of heat and aridity. Changes to the desert are usually permanent; for example, horse carriage tracks from more than one hundred years ago remain intact on the Sonoran Desert floor. Off-road vehicles have been especially destructive, uprooting sparse veg- etation and digging deep ruts that may permanently mar the desert while causing heavy erosion. Destruction of arid land ultimately poses a severe global threat. At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro "desertifi cati on" was defined as "degradation in arid, 1)cmi-a.riJ and dry sub-humid areas resulting from va.ri0u1) fadon,, ind uiling climatic vanalions and hu man activitie~" (1992:46). Desertification affects 70 percent of all dry lands, thus affecting approximately a quarter of the total landmass of the world. Desertification reduces the ability of the land to sup- port life and threatens the abundance and uniqueness of plant and animal life in the desert. Degradation of the dese1t may erode, salinize, or impoverish soil, and limited water supplies are threat- ened by overuse and pollution. One can only imagine the vast eco- logical repercussions of building highways, homes, businesses, and golf courses on this tenuous desert land. RESEARCHING SUBURBIA Having grown up in a suburb of Manhattan, I am familiar with the rhythms and structures of suburban life. It wasn't until adult- hood, when I flew over the Sonoran Desert for the first time, that I began to understand something that I had always taken for granted: suburbia has not always existed. Growing up in New York and then living in Boston for eight years provided a one- dimensional understanding of land and development. That is, all land was developed. The land rolls in and around the small towns and large cities of the Northeast coast. Vast tracts of undevel- 10  INTRODUCTION oped land. if they exist, are hidden from everyday life. In con- trast, the Southwest appears as an empty canvas interrupted by the latticed patterns of suburbia in the making. As Arizona became my home, I witnessed the rapid pace of suburban devel- opment. Undeveloped land filled up with tract homes and master-planned communities within months. Within a year, homes covered hills that once appeared as islands covered in saguaro cacti. This hasty development was truly remarkable to me. I felt as though I was experiencing a film on fast-forward- what was undeveloped was, in the next moment, transformed. I was first inspired to visit Phoenix and the surrounding areas after doing research on development in the Sonoran Desert. Reading about the desert while sitting in coffeehouses, libraries, and my small apartment in Boston was a disorienting experi- ence. Nature and land looked one way from my Boston view and yet my reading materials offered me another view. In particular, I wondered how those living through dramatic changes in the desert experienced those changes. Since I had only lived in urbanized areas, I wondered what it was like for those living in once rural areas to experience dramatic shifts in land use and development. As a sociologist, I designed a study to examine perceptions of the land and development (see Appendix A), and I moved to Arizona. I interviewed members of the Cave Creek community and Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community because those communities stood as clear examples of once rural regions experiencing rapid development. I also spent time in dozens of master-planned communities throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area. While J attempt to articulate a range of conununity members' \ idea: about sprawl, hind, and dev lopnien(I also take the posi- ~ tion of an outsider who h::is p:rnenLw.h~R.Oe.w. roads are built. ,.--Environmental factors necessarily play some role in how we l J design our buildings and communities. Differing environmental I conditions influence choice of building materials, building designs, and varying approaches to soil erosion. Obviously, those who live in a desert environment with limited water sup- plies cannot live like those in the rainforest. Aesthetic desires also influence building patterns. Rachel and Stephen Kaplan question why, in a utilitarian market-oriented society, people value nature in ways that do not generate income. Caring for plants, spending large sums of money on natural set- tings and landscaping, and widespread decorating of homes with flowers "provide at least circumstantial evidence that nature is important in itself' (1989:1). Indeed, the selling of wilderness 16  INTRODUCTION depends on its beauty, as evidenced by advertisements selling homes in the desert (see Chapter 3). Developing green building structures may satisfy not only an ethical obligation to tread more softly on this planet but may also serve psychological and aesthetic needs to see and experience nature. Although structural, environmental, and aesthetic influences permeate our experience of the built environment, this book specifically focuses on those widely held collective perceptions that shape our behavior and choices. I refer to the belief systems that drive development as the cultural forces of suburban sprawl. The dynamic forces underlying any social phenomenon are complex and defy complete understanding or explanation. How- ever, by looking at some aspects of culture we can explore the nature of our attitudes and perceptions and thus begin to identify some of the underlying factors that influence our choices. Geertz ( 197 3) orn.:e JelineJ cullure a1> lhe ~olledion of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Through examining some of 0u1 most fundamental taken-for-granted beliefs, we can see how our perception oflanJ and the way that we deYelop land tell us a story J about ourselves and that which we value. This approach- looking at particular social phenomena as a "~ultural text" (Geertz 1973) that reveals underlying meaning-raises certain questions when applied to suburban sprawl: What does sprawl communicate to us ab9yJ :wha.t..w~~e? Are those values in sync with or at odds with other values? If we are not happy with.. - - - -- the spra"'._l st2!).'., how do w~ ~C? abou,,! re~E_!!g the ~l