We Live in a Great Place

The mainstream media loves to print stories about how rotten it is to live in Phoenix.  Talton made a good living printing the same "Phoenix sucks move to Denver" column each week for seven years.  The local spending lobby constantly flogs the story that Arizona is 48th in everything, the freeways are gridlocked, the air is dirty and people are crazy to move here. 

Let me say that I think Arizona is a great state and metro Phoenix is one of the nation's great metro areas.

The Bizjournal agrees and makes some excellent points. 

More than a million college seniors are preparing to enter the real world this spring — and their prospects are remarkably good.

Bizjournals analyzed 171 metros, looking for qualities that would appeal to workers in their 20s and early 30s. It gave the highest marks to places with strong growth rates, moderate costs of living, and substantial pools of young adults who have college degrees and jobs.

There's a distinctly Western flavor to Bizjournals' list of the 10 most attractive metro areas for young adults.

Four other Western metros are among the 10 leaders: Phoenix (second), Salt Lake City (fifth), Seattle (eighth) and the Riverside-San Bernardino (10th) region in California.

"In particular, the interior West has done really well the past few years," says Hugo Sellert, research manager for Monster Worldwide Inc., the parent company of Monster.com, an online employment service.

"A lot of companies moved to places like Las Vegas and Phoenix from the Northeast and Midwest, because costs there were cheaper," he says. "And there's also been a substantial relocation of people there from the coastal West. It may slow down a bit in the future, but those are still strong markets."

Comments

[Some Guy]

Jon Talton was unfit for print, and usually factually incorrect, and I proved it regularly on his blog.

Shutting it down was icing on the cake.

Phoenix does have many problems, but it also offers many opportunities, which uneducated journalist doofuses like Talton cannot recognize.

[ron]

Greg,

You wrote, "Let me say that I think Arizona is a great state and metro Phoenix is one of the nation's great metro areas."

I think you have engaged in this kind of hyperbole before - and I called you on it before - and I will call you on it again.

Surely, you do jest, when you call metro Phoenix 'one of the nation's great metro areas!'

Obviously you have never lived outside of Phoenix. First, I previously lived in Vancouver, BC and Toronto, ON (even the AZ Republic Travel section admits they are great cities). So I think I know a thing or two about great cities with great transit, very low crime rates (I was in Vancouver in 2005 in the third week of August when the city was having fits because they had their eleventh murder of the year - we have that many in the first month of each year!), great vibrant economies, great civic leadership, great tourist opportunities, great universities, great shopping (AZ Republic just did a great article on Toronto's underground city) and restaurant diversity Phoenix will have to wait another 20 years to match.

I have also been to Downtown Philly, Downtown Chicago, Downtown Seattle, Downtown San Fransisco - and any of those downtown areas will beat out this sad think called 'Copper Square' any time! Even your's and Phil's boosterism can change reality!

Check you coffee cup, Greg - too much espresso?

[Greg Here]

Ron: I have only lived in Phoenix and Tucson. I love them both. But I spent a summer in Paris, I've been to London several times together with Amsterdam and Zurich. When I worked with the World Bank and USAID, I worked in Cairo, Dar Es Salem, Abuja (Nigeria)Scopja (Macedonia)not to mention Zimbabwe and Zambia. Naturally, I've spent plenty of time in LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Seatle, Washington DC, Atlanta, Atlantic City, Philadelphia and Houston.

What can I say, I think Phoenix is a great metro area. I love the climate and the scenery. I hike the Grand Canyon every year I represented 125,000 people in the Legislature for 4 years, I know thousands of people in Phoenix. The schools are good, my church is here, the airport is convenient, the capitol is close. I enjoy ASU. This is a great metro area. I wouldn't live anywhere else...with the possible exception of San Diego in August.

[BobH]

I've lived in Phoenix, LA, San Francisco, San Jose, Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, and New York. I've visited just about every other metro in the US and a few elsewhere. I think Phoeix is great.

Obviously not everyone will agree, but who cares?

The important thing is that massive numbers of people agree, proven by the long-term growth.

The Talton types will always quote some stat showing Phoenix lagging in some measure, and say that it will spell the city's doom. They've been doing this for a long time, but after more than sixty years, they're still wrong.

[Some Guy]

Talton is stupid because he confuses confiscatory tax policy with “progressive stuff,” and the AZ Repugnant was dumb enough to employ that idiot as a regular business reporter/peon. And he has zero economic background.

It’s even more fitting that he got fired from his “hometown paper,” as it were. Not to mention his bizarre public behavior.

[ron]

Greg, you wrote,

"What can I say, I think Phoenix is a great metro area. I love the climate and the scenery. I hike the Grand Canyon every year I represented 125,000 people in the Legislature for 4 years, I know thousands of people in Phoenix. The schools are good, my church is here, the airport is convenient, the capitol is close. I enjoy ASU. This is a great metro area. I wouldn't live anywhere else...with the possible exception of San Diego in August."

Well, Greg, I counted eight 'I's' in that paragraph and one 'my'. So this is a very personal opinion about Phoenix. You remember the class on the difference on 'opinions' and 'facts' back in elementary grade school.

We are finally getting a medical school in Phoenix - the 'fifth' largest US City. ASU, in your opinion, is a great university. Question, how many Noble Peace Prize winners teach there? How many Rhodes scholars has it produced? Arizona finally woke up and realized it had a brain drain going on and created an 'honor's' college to try and catch the brightest and best. If it wasn't for the huge private donations it has capturied the last 10 years, ASU would still be clawing its way into the 21st century.

And by the way, just because we have a Grand Canyon - doesn't contribue to 'metro' - unless your defintion of Metro - is 'any place I can drive in three-four hours'. If that is the case, I think metro Phoenix is great because I love Sedona!

There are lots of good reasons to live here - but, please, don't call it 'one of the nation's great metro areas'. As I said, saying it a hundred times a day, as our Mayor likes to do, doesn't make it so.

[Geoff]

How do you have a brain drain if you have among the largest growth numbers in America???

Just because the universities here aren't very good doesn't mean you don't have smart folks moving here.

[ron]

Geoff, I am almost falling off my chair I am laughing so hard at this logic.

When my son graduated from Cortez HS in 1992 - the top 4 students when to Boston College, MIT, Standford, and my son - Valedictorian- went to Northwestern (Evanston, IL). My son was also accepted at Claremont, University of Chicago, Santa Clara U and heavily recruited by the head of the ASU honors college at the time. We had weekly phone calls from heads of departments and university presidents - I thought my son was an athlete (just happened that he was born in 1974 when there was a dip in the birthrate and consequently all academically sharp students were being heavily recruited in those years).

Thank you for admitting that 'the universities here aren't very good'. Which means the smart folks you are talking about who are moving here are probably sending their kids back to the 'good' universities they graduated from.

Large growth numbers don't mean that we have lots of smart people moving here. In fact, if you look at our overall academic achievement as a state, we are not doing as well as we think.

This is the logic that the AZ Republic used this week to say that foreclosurers where the highest ever - in actual numbers probably yes, but in numbers as a percentage of the total housing stock or the total number of mortgages out there - the numbers are probably equal or lower than in past years. Of course, may be the writers were graduates of our not very good universities here.

[Geoff]

I was born in 1974 as well, and grew up on the East Coast. I have degrees from two highly prestigious East Coast Universities. Yet I found Phoenix as a desirable place to live. My wife also has two degrees from highly prestigious schools. And I know of plenty of others that work with both of us who aren't from Phoenix, but brought our academic pedigrees to the region.

[ron]

Geoff,

First, welcome to the Valley of the Sun. I wish you every success in your endeavours here.

Second, I am glad that you represent the reverse brain drain that my son and his class mates represented - none of them have returned to the Valley.

Third, May be you can bring some enlightenment to this place - as you know great cities have great museums, great art, and great music. I am not opposed to country music but there is more to music than Country Thunder and there is more to Art than the Scottsdale and Tempe Arts festivals (which are more crafts than arts). The Phoenix Film Festival is now on - it is a start but a johnny come lately in this kind of venture. Some people think tearing up the downtown for a race of champ cars is enlightenment. I don't get it - and I have live through al the previous disasters which included the last one when the Chandler Ostrich Festival outdrew the F-1 cars in attendance. But then maybe that illustrates how much we have 'to go' before we become the 'greatest city in the nation' which Greg wants us to believe we are. When Ostriches outdraw the F-1 crowd something is wierd in the culture (or is the water?).

[ron]

Geoff,

First, welcome to the Valley of the Sun. I wish you every success in your endeavours here.

Second, I am glad that you represent the reverse brain drain that my son and his class mates represented - none of them have returned to the Valley.

Third, May be you can bring some enlightenment to this place - as you know great cities have great museums, great art, and great music. I am not opposed to country music but there is more to music than Country Thunder and there is more to Art than the Scottsdale and Tempe Arts festivals (which are more crafts than arts). The Phoenix Film Festival is now on - it is a start but a johnny come lately in this kind of venture. Some people think tearing up the downtown for a race of champ cars is enlightenment. I don't get it - and I have live through al the previous disasters which included the last one when the Chandler Ostrich Festival outdrew the F-1 cars in attendance. But then maybe that illustrates how much we have 'to go' before we become the 'greatest city in the nation' which Greg wants us to believe we are. When Ostriches outdraw the F-1 crowd something is wierd in the culture (or is the water?).

[BobH]

A hundred thousand or so people a year express their disagreement with you, Ron, by moving to the Valley.

Inevitably some move away, like your son (and me), but unless all the net gain are cretins (which apparently you think they are, to choose such a dreadful place), it would seem that Phoenix has no "brain drain" problem.

[Geoff]

You know, Massachusetts has some of the finest universities in the nation. Harvard, MIT, Boston U., and most of those students leave the state. Pennsylvania has Penn and a ton of great small liberal arts schools, yet the population is moving elsewhere. I'd be much more worried about brain drain in states where kids come for college and then leave right away, than a state where post-grads move to establish careers.

[Satya Thallam]

I don't think Greg ever implied that his assessment of AZ/Phx was anything more than one man's opinion.

Making ordinal value judgments of things as complex as cities will of course come down to (personal) tastes: there are just too many dimensions, and no place will be the most desirable along all of them.

As a former New Yorker, I can understand the many, many people who say NYC is the greatest place in the world. But as Ron pointed out, people probably value things like low crime, of which it has gotten better but certainly is not the very safest place.

Weather may seem like something totally exogenous and therefore not inclusive in the "great city" category, but it is nonetheless another characteristic of a place that some find important (and of course, cannot objectively quantify as better or worse except based on preference).

A couple of years ago, Joel Kotkin (a pretty focused urban expert, and self-described liberal) wrote a report on Phoenix (http://goldwaterinstitute.org/Common/Files/Multimedia/628.pdf). Agree or disagree with his final disposition (positive), it contains extensive exploration of the trends and numbers that define AZ and Phx's growth, along with references to their original source data (much of which comes from the Brookings Institution and the government sources).

Among the findings is that yes, while the area is taking in prodigious numbers of lesser-educated in-migrants (from other states) it also one of the country's top (net) gainers in college-educated transplants: see Table 3 (p.19); Figure 12 and Table 4 (p.21). So while many AZ HS grads are strongly pulled to where university offerings are more plentiful, ultimately once they (or more accurately, anyone) graduates, there is a very strong pull inward.

[Full disclosure, I collaborated with the author on that paper].

In an event related to the release of the above study, several urban experts and local economic development boosters gathered. The question was posed to each at some point: "how do we know a city is 'successful?'" The best answer, as far as I can tell, is net in-migration -- the number of people who, based on their own needs, skills, education and circumstances decide a place is worth moving to. As crude as that measure is, it seems to say a lot more than one might think.

[BobH]

>As crude as that measure is, it seems to say a lot more than one might think.

It is crude, but it is the market speaking. A city that is meeting the needs of the people will grow and prosper, as Phoenix is doing.

No city can meet everyone's needs -- Talton will want something different from Greg; I had career needs that boumced me around the country. But Phoenix, it is obvious, meets the needs and wants of a great and growing number of people.