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Thursday, August 07, 2008
Populations, Solutions Booming in Arid Southwest
By Ned Farquhar
Of the Journal
In a recent report the Brookings Institution (a well established Washington think tank) took a look at the fast-growing “megapolitan” areas of the Southwest, observing that they are a major new American nerve center despite major challenges.
The five major urbanizing areas are Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. They are among the most economically and culturally dynamic places in the country.
Each is growing and changing under circumstances different from those that have shaped other American cities. Forces as divergent as immigration, drought, energy-inefficient suburbanization, and reduced funding for transportation alternatives and housing are the major influences in a new form of urban growth.
One of the main authors of the report is an analyst named Mark Muro, who moved to Brookings from Arizona State University, just across the Salt River from Phoenix, where he had written a highly respected report about that area's rapid growth.
His analysis of transportation decisions in Phoenix's history (including conservative icon Barry Goldwater's adamant opposition to the construction of a ring road or beltway around the city) was incisive and prepared him well for a larger look at the growth trends in the Southwest.
But even since that report about Phoenix was issued six or seven years ago, conditions have grown more extreme. The region is among the fastest-growing in the country, often the fastest.
Huge numbers of people have moved into retirement centers like Phoenix and Las Vegas, depending on cars, new shopping centers, specialized housing developments, and urban freeway systems. The familiar part of the story is that the influx of new residents has created an economic bubble and attracted immigrants whose low-priced labor helps keep the cost of living down.
But these five southwestern metro areas have also developed a cutting-edge economy in new technologies, research, finance and higher education. Companies interested in escaping California's costs and congestion move inland, while universities and national labs (such as New Mexico's Sandia and Los Alamos, and Colorado's National Renewable Energy Lab) spin off new ideas and new businesses.
As California implements new policies to reduce its global warming pollution and increase its percentages of renewable energy and electric cars, it reaches out to the interior West where wind, solar, and geothermal power are plentiful.
What had been a relatively sleepy and overlooked region has become instead a pathbreaking 21st century model for the rest of the nation.
The five states that these metro areas lie within are testing new transportation systems. Except for Las Vegas, each is developing major rapid or commuter rail that was considered unthinkable only 10 or 15 years ago. These are among the most aggressive new transportation startups anywhere in the country. According to Brookings, the federal government should allow more flexibility in the use of funds in the design and implementation of these new transportation systems.
For instance, New Mexico's new commuter rail system has struggled for federal funding that flows freely for highway improvements such as Albuquerque's Big I, the interchange of Interstates 25 and 40. These states and metro regions are also the laboratory for new immigration policy. Arizona is an interesting case. On the border with Mexico and adjacent to the California economic powerhouse, it has spawned U.S. Sen. John McCain's original immigration proposal unfairly characterized as “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants to the nation's most stringent state and local crackdown and policing policies.
When big changes happen, big proposals come forward, and on the issue of immigration no region has been as affected as the Southwest.
Water issues consume tremendous attention in these states. The urban areas want water generally controlled by agriculture. They see the prospect of increased drought (if global warming models are accurate) and know that their economic future is limited without adequate water and energy. But conditions have changed. These basic growth-fueling resources are going to be increasingly scarce and expensive.
Old solutions to the region's arid conditions, such as increased water storage or groundwater pumping, don't work anymore because of increased evaporation and reduced precipitation and snowpack in the mountains. Water recycling and conservation, alongside new concepts in landscaping and golf course design, are likely to be more productive.
It's a whole new era. The five Southwest megapolitan areas identified in the Brookings report have the vitality and ideas to meet the challenge.
Ned Farquhar is a former senior policy adviser to Gov. Bill Richardson. E-mail: inthewest@comcast.net.
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