Suburbs 2.0: The Scottsdale Story

What happens when an affluent suburb like Scottsdale, Arizona, runs out of land and faces difficult choices as its role in a booming metropolis changes? That's the question that Solimar Research Group investigated as part of "Which Way Scottsdale?", a major report from the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University that has been receiving considerable publicity in Phoenix and throughout the West. It's a cautionary tale for older suburbs all over the country -- and especially in the West: "Scottsdale is at a critical juncture in its history. “The West’s Most Western Town” has for thelast fifty years followed the expansive development pattern of the West and has grown andprospered with the development of suburban neighborhoods. Now that era is all but over.Scottsdale is now landlocked and nearing build-out. And it faces the challenge of finding a newmodel that will allow it to preserve what has been built in the manner to which its citizens havegrown accustomed. In this the city is of two minds: that which would put the focus on thebusiness environment and that which would concentrate on lifestyle and the natural environment.At the extremes, neither viewpoint recognizes the degree to which these two concerns aremutually dependent." Editor's note: This link is to a 2 MB PDF document.

Thanks to Paul Shigley