Let’s go local first and foremost to view and examine a specific niche.  Here in Phoenix, AZ we have an economy which has a great deal of basis in the falsity of new home building and the real estate bubble.   Tons of real estate “investment groups” have invested heavily in this local market effectively helping to drive the price of housing out of the realm of affordability.  Now the mortgage rates (i.e. ARMs) have caught up with many and foreclosures remain on the rise with no realistic end in sight.  These homes were built by developers using contractors that hired a predominance of immigrant labor and fostered an immigration of the culturally illiterate (like we had a culture here, huh?).  Now, we have an economy that sinks into nonrenewable waste.  Now we have a local environment founded in sprawl, energy resource wasting, and all the associated social problems.  We also have socio economic stratification-the white people and those wanting to emulate the “white” middle class strata have moved to the outlying suburbs to escape the immigrant’s urban settlings.   We have a spread out, shitty city with little sense of urbane community.  In the city of Tempe, our quasi university community, the immigrants have overtaken much of the low cost housing and brought with them crime, squalor, and the undesirable aspects of overpopulation.   The downtown infrastructure seems greatly stressed-particularly the sewers-and the pollution is at all time high levels-especially from the unburned fuel and hydrocarbons that come from lying under the flight path of the airport.  Next we have gentrification.  Soaring prices of crackerbox condos lock out the diversity of the social strata.  If it this downtown community didn’t have students, they wouldn’t have much.  Noise, stench, inflated prices and yuppies…oh what choices.  Adieu, Tempe.

Phoenix seems too large to criticize concisely.  This city has too much sprawl and not enough infrastructure in its resources. The metro area of Phoenix has too many people, low wages, poor public transportation and spotty educational resources.  Too many people keep moving here.  Affordable housing has vanished.   Industry growth relies too much on new home builds and hardly at all on renewable industry development.  The adult populace seems predominated by conservative ideologies in spite of a wealth of information that shows these leanings to be pure folly.  By and large the community seems populated by a too many idiots and stupid fucks.  Perhaps the revitalization of the downtown area will produce some social culture that will create and perpetuate an ongoing consciousness of urbanity.  The First Friday events have great import in this and have replaced what used to happen on Mill Avenue in Tempe in the realm of artsy fartsy socializing.  Still this hasn’t gotten beyond the spottiness of once a month crowds.  Of course, the best galleries don’t get the most traffic…

My biggest peeve comes as North Scottsdale.  This community is pretentious on a good day.  It seems that in many of the new housing developments that a preponderance of the new real estate wealth-people who made huge windfalls selling their homes in California-have moved here and driven the price of housing into realms that ought not to be tolerated.  The desert continues to get consumed and the ensuing ecological disaster continues unabated despite the desert landscaping and feeble attempts to make things look like something other than upper middle class Taco Bell architecture occurs.  This housing is packed tight and ugly as hell.  The thing that has always baffled me has to do with homes that have two or more stories.   The climate of the desert dictates otherwise.  Huge energy waste occurs trying to cool these homes.  There are many other alternatives that save energy and prevent ugliness of this sort while containing the sprawl.   The worst part comes from the mentality of most of the creeps who live in this part of town.  For the most part they bring a public rudeness and arrogance that blossoming communities can well do without.  Nothing short of annihilation of the entire area seems desirable.  Sadly enough, this area seems least affected by the real estate bubble burst.  The trend seems to occur that the outlying areas in the west parts of the Metro area rot off first and while this is desirable and necessary the growth will eventually continue at a ridiculous pace. 

 The biggest question for the entire Valley has to do with water.  What’s going to happen when there isn’t enough water to support the masses here?  What’s going to happen when there isn’t enough affordable gasoline?  These questions, especially the first, seem to go on ignored by the masses.  There’s too much concern with everyday mundane life to address these issues.  Most continue to breed on inexorably. 

 Do we need wonder why some of us long for the demise of humanity and the rise of a new, more exciting species?