A new book suggests the desert metropolis has been getting a bad rap, and has lessons to offer other cities
Grady Gammage isn’t happy with the way people talk about his city. A land use lawyer and senior scholar at Arizona State University, Gammage believes the stereotypes about Phoenix, that it’s a sprawling city without rules that wastes resources, just aren’t true. His new book, The Future of the Suburban City: Lessons From Sustaining Phoenix, challenges the idea that this is a city in the middle of the desert that shouldn’t exist. Rather, the fast-growing city’s evolution, originally based on autos, air conditioning and air travel, has lessons that apply to other large metro areas.
“I used suburban city in the title because it’s a pejorative term,” he says. “I’m OK with that, since I want readers to understand they shouldn’t think of it as a pejorative term. It’s just a different type of city.” […]
