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Rio Rancho: Watching A Suburban Transformation

Posted by: Brenda Meyer

13 December 2005 - 5:00am

Rio Rancho, a suburb of Albuquerque, is changing sleepy suburb into an urban center that could one day rival Albuquerque in size. This in-depth, multi-part series focuses on the town's potential and growing pains.

"From a sports arena to new businesses to subdivisions, this booming city says it's poised for greatness. But is it?

...Paradise for next to nothing down beckoned from brochures in the '60s. But what looked woodsy, lush, on paper was just a tumbleweed-slapped nowhere. Yet they came. And still do... Today, this suburban Shangri-La is just a few subdivisions away from becoming the third-largest city in New Mexico, behind Albuquerque and Las Cruces. In a few years, its borders are expected to span a massive 300 to 400 square miles - nearly twice the geographic size of Albuquerque and Las Cruces combined.

...Rio Rancho has gotten good at growing rapidly. But some worry it has yet to grow a culture, infrastructure, soul. The wide expanse of nothingness is too much something, too much everything."

Full Story: Rio Rancho: City on the Edge
Source: The Albuquerque Tribune, November 30, 2005
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Every dollar spent on new and wider highways is a dollar taken from taxpayers, and every inch of right-of-way that Big Brother takes is an inch taken from landowners.
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