Phoenix

Phoenix, certainly more than New York City and perhaps yet more than Las Angeles, epitomizes the trouble the United States has with urban sprawl. New York City's Manhattan packs well over four times as many people into an area much smaller than Phoenix's city limits, creating an capable, although crowded, city center. Phoenix, on the other hand, didn't extend up like the New York City skyscrapers. Although Phoenix does have a few high buildings, nearly all of the development in the Phoenix downtown region and its neighboring suburbs spread out, not up.

Since Manhattan is surrounded by water its developers didn't have the option to construct out, or else they'd be in the Atlantic. They built up instead. Though such a dense population created a great quantity of waste, the average New Yorker produces far less waste than a property holder in Phoenix or any other suburban region. Few New Yorkers own cars, they reside in smaller, easier to heat spaces, any surplus warmth from one apartment helps to warm up the apartment above it; just in building and heating expenses alone city living is far more efficient that suburban sprawl.

Phoenix began in the middle of a huge desert bowl. Although ringed with mountains, the Phoenix valley is hundreds of miles wide, with not anything but cactus and sagebrush in the way to prevent builders from moving farther and farther out into the desert. Flying over the Phoenix metropolitan region gives you views of miles and miles of look-alike houses located on cul-de-sacs and gently curving roads that bend around absent hills. With all of this development came Arizona's superb golf courses, cropping up out of your airplane window as massive swaths of vivid green set across the brown sand backdrop of the desert. Of course, brilliant green grass was never intended to grow in a desert setting; it takes millions of gallons of water to keep Phoenix's golf courses so green. Most of that water is diverted from the Colorado River, which is so depleted by irrigation that it no longer reaches the ocean; it dies out in a scrubby land of marshes down in Mexico instead.

The degree of Phoenix's urban sprawl can possibly be best confirmed by Luke Air Force Base. When it was first built, Luke AFB was situated in the center of nowhere. Enclosed by only sand and cacti, Air Force pilots could train whenever they wished without bothering anybody. Now Luke AFB is surrounded by developments and retirement communities who protest about the din from the F- 16s which fly training missions of the region, frequently right over the top of stuccoed, tile-bricked houses.