Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections on Developing the Desert [Paperback]

Grady, Jr. Gammage (Author), Grady Gammage Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 1999

Gammage relates Phoenix's development patterns to the historical context. He examines how the region can better manage future growth given the issues of water, transportation, work patterns, and infrastructure, as well as the context. A thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the urban Southwest and twentieth-century American cities.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Grady Gammage Jr. is an Arizona native who has practiced law in Phoenix since his graduation from Stanford Law School. He has spent the last 20 years dealing with land use, development, and growth issues; representing real estate development projects such as master-planned communities, high-rise buildings, regional shopping centers, and sprawling tracts of subdivisions; and consulting with cities and towns. In 1981, Mr. Gammage was instrumental in structuring Arizona's innovative Urban Lands Act, which allowed state trust lands to be released for private development. He has chaired the Phoenix Design Review Standards Committee twice, helping create mechanisms to regulate the aesthetics of commercial and residential development. He serves as an elected official as a board member of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, and was president of that board from 1985-89. Mr. Gammage is also an adjunct professor at the Arizona State University Colleges of Architecture and Environmental Design and Law, where he teaches classes on land use regulation and on historic preservation planning.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Herberger Center for Design; 1 edition (April 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884320171
• ISBN-13: 978-1884320170
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #695,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "We really lay it on thick", September 20, 2000

By 

Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections on Developing the Desert (Paperback)

This is truly a disappointing and shocking book; and, for that reason, a must read in any city where residents want to stop or at least curtail the destruction of their community by developers whose only motive is greed.

Grady Gammage Jr. is the son of one of Arizona's great families; Gammage auditorium at Arizona State University, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, honors decades of contributions by his family. Instead of community service, he became a wealthy lawyer for developers and was instrumental in creating the urban blight he so skillfully outlines in this book.

A hundred years ago, Phoenix was the smallest of the four major Southwestern cities (the others are Tucson, Albuquerque and El Paso). Now it is the largest, and is growing by an acre of new homes per hour. At that rate, as Gammage notes, growth can continue uninterrupted for another 672 years.

What is the new Phoenix? In Gammage's words, "A small narrow lot, a relatively large house, and a two- or three-car garage combine to produce neighborhoods with a different feel than those of even ten years ago. Houses seem squeezed together by non-existent side yards. Garage doors, lined up to a mandatory setback line, become the dominant feature of the streetscape. Front yards are shallower, with less grass . . . the desert is covered by acres of concrete tile."

Everything is geared to growth, at the lowest possible cost to developers. When the first Interstate freeway was built through Phoenix in the 1960's, it went below ground in elite neighborhoods and then soared to 25 feet above ground in low income areas. The elevated portion was often called "our Berlin Wall" and it destroyed poorer neighborhoods, providing cheap land for "slum clearance" and industrial space. No interchange was ever built to serve Guadaloupe, a low-income Yaqui village on the freeway; but, when a developer was appointed to the highway commission, bulldozers were at work within six months building an interchange for his speculative subdivision.

Obviously, as an attorney for developers, Gammage doesn't highlight problems. Yet, two out of three new residents to Arizona leave the state within five years. The Phoenix downtown crime rate is five times the national average. Arizona has the highest percentage of children without adequate medical care of any state, including Texas. It has the second-highest high school dropout rate. Believe it or not, here in the Sonoran Desert, it's against the law to grow sagebrush in your front yard.

It's what makes this book so worth reading. It's a lesson in every sweet-talkin' word that you'll ever hear from developers and their lawyers. Read it in conjunction with `The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, often regarded as one of the great urban thinkers of the past 40 years. This book clearly and proudly offers the opposite of everything Jacobs advocates.

For Phoenix residents, it's a chilling account of change from "the city that Los Angeles wishes it could be" into a mass of urban sprawl that even LA wouldn't tolerate. Gammage does an excellent job; he is articulate, knowledgeable and one of the best lawyers developers can hire. As one of the local asphalt companies proudly says on its billboards, "We really lay it on thick." So does Gammage.

For outsiders, it explains why two of every three newcomers flee within five years, most within a year. Read it, then decide if you're safe to assume in your city, "It can't happen here."

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America's most thoughtful book on city development, November 28, 1999

By 

Alexander Garvin (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections on Developing the Desert (Paperback)

Grady Gammage provides readers with an accurate and insightful account of the development of the Phoenix metropolitan area. More important his book presents a sensible review of the problems of urbanization and suburban growth. Most important it avoids uninformed theories, irrelevant Utopian visions, or public action action that has neither political support nor financial justification.

4 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cheerleader for the Development Industries, October 16, 2000

By 

Scott D. Mittelsteadt (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections on Developing the Desert (Paperback)

Its hard to take Grady Gammage seriouly in this book. As a real estate lawyer, he has done little else besides acting as state cheerleader for the development industries.

While providing a pretty good history lesson on the city of Phoenix (thus the one star), this book does little but glorify and exaggerate the contributions the developement industry has had on the growth and prosperity of the Valley of the Sun (he credits the low-cost housing industry on the population boom...oh yeah...and air conditioning).

He discounts the notions of "sprawl" and blames any negative aspects on Phoenix's growth to market demand and a wonderful climate. He finds a way to absolve the develpment industry from any of the poor planning, tract housing, and characterless suburbs that blanket the Sonoran landscape.

While agreeing that there will someday be a limit to how large Phoenix and its outlying suburbs can get, he sees little use for any type of growth management and describes growth boundaries as "draconian." Portland is proof enough that growth boundaries do in fact work, and that they are hardly "draconian."

Gammage's solution to growth issues in Phoenix relates to water supply. Yet he fails to see that dealing with growth management via the water supply is like realizing that its time to go on a diet once you've already reached 400 pounds. By that time its too late. How do you tell a city of 5 million that the water supply has dried up, and now its time to start conserving....or limiting population? If growth boundaries are draconian, how does Gammage describe stopping growth because of a lack of water?

This book offers a neat history lesson on the Valley of the Sun, but outside of that, it offers little in the form of solutions to Phoenix's problems related to growth, pollution, traffic and its now characterless landscape. I'd give it a half star if I could.