Geddes Out of Tucson: A Desert Region and Its City
Introduction
This article considers Tucson, Arizona through the lens of Patrick Geddes’ urban philosophy and methods. It is organized within his trinity rubric of lieu, travail and famille, first presenting a sampling of background information not meant to be exhaustive, but to create an impression of the city. This information entails primarily ethnographic observation, or what Geddes would term a “diagnostic survey” (Munshi, 2000, p. 488), and therefore makes no citation except when drawn through secondary sources. In the final part, I then use specific examples from Tucson to discuss how it conforms, varies or in other ways reflects Geddes’ perspective and engagement. In this way, I approach the article, itself, through Geddes’ lens, creating a survey before plan by using his method of a walking tour and participant-observation to inform my understanding. Tucson is an interesting case study: it did not achieve “urbanization” until relatively late with a population explosion in the 1950s and continued rapid growth through the 1980s. Therefore, it had the advantage of a rich repository of planning theory and examples from which to draw – including the work of Geddes and the subsequent translations by Mumford – to support highly intentional, ideal development. Yet, even with this self-reflective planning opportunity, Tucson largely failed to avoid ‘new city’ urban pitfalls or protect place-based assets.
Lieu
First, the terrain of Tucson must be considered as the “basis for the total reconstruction of social and political life” (Hall, 2003, p. 150). Perhaps surprisingly for those unfamiliar with the landscape, Tucson takes its form from Geddes’ imagination, with a “clear outlook, the more panoramic view of a definite geographic region…as lies beneath…a mountain” (p. 146). Cascading from a maximum height of 9,453 feet (“Tucson, Arizona,” n.d.), Tucson is a valley surrounded by five mountain ranges and descends through Geddes’ social geography of mines, forestry, hunting, ranching, farming (p. 149) and a physical topography of mountains, foothills and elevated plain. There is not currently a defining water line, although just under a 100 years ago, Tucson sported a raging perennial river with a lovely waterfall, the Santa Cruz, which has now been flushed, drunk and irrigated through enough tee greens for submission into a seasonal wash. There are many large and small washes – seasonal rivers which fill with semi-annual monsoon rains and snow melt from the mountains; local mountains often receive enough snow to support a ski resort. Water is still well and groundwater sourced, but most of the urban needs come through a Colorado River pipeline known as CAP. The Sonoran desert is a gentler desert due to its elevation, but it still reaches 120°F in the height of summer and as low as 6°F on the coldest winter night, although temperatures in the 90s and 30s are more common. It may seem that a desert could never support much farming, and in modern times this is harder with a scant 12” of annual rainfall, but Tucson was originally a flood basin with rich seasonal soil that supported a number of agrarian, tribal settlements.
Thus a prosperous settlement area for Native Americans, their presence and local assets drew missionaries, traders and military forts in early days. Arizona was rich in minerals, attracting regional mining. The University of Arizona was an early and prominent institution in Tucson, and the region has also always been regarded as a healthy place for various respiratory ailments, such as tuberculosis in the 1800s or gas-lung injuries after WWI (“Tucson, Arizona,” n.d.). The city was settled in waves of indigenous, pioneer, postwar and modern migrations, initially forming conventional patterns of a commercial hub surrounded by the early neighborhoods – now, historic districts – with a line of affluence around the university. The modern boom has led to incredible sprawl, with the affluent fleeing into the foothills as a suburban analog, partly molded by the mountain barrier. The regional architecture reflects local resources, climate and a blend of cultural influences: 1900s Craftsman homes are common in historic districts, with a splatter of Victorians from the last of the 19th century; adobe (stucco and concrete block are the modern version) pueblos are frequent, especially in the oldest 1800s sections originally settled by Mexico or tribal peoples; brick and volcanic rock are prevalent. Neighborhoods often appear bare and run-down to a foreign beholder, with sparse vegetation; prevalent single story buildings; no sidewalks and lack of streetlights under the dark skies ordinance.
As with Detroit, Tucson occupies an enormous footprint, claiming 227 square miles (“Tucson, Arizona,” n.d.). Unlike Detroit, there was never distribution across this immense space: there is considerable land intentionally set aside as state, federal and local parks, used for recreation, conservation and grazing. Therefore, Tucson feels more like scattershot sprawl, with clusters of occupation separated by large spaces of “empty” desert terrain. Tucson has a true, planned axis: it’s at Stone (east-west) and Broadway (north-south). The numbered “streets” run east-west, and the numbered “avenues” run north-south for a general grid around the city core. However, this map reference no longer reflects the territory, but instead acts as a scar. Like most cities in the US, Tucson was subject to a massive highway building project that cut through a community: as with many other cities, this was the poorer, minority community of Latinos and Natives. Although Tucson has resisted a large highway system and retains surface streets for cross-town traffic, the national I-10 is routed through and around Tucson to the west and south. The highway cut off, physically and psychologically, the western and southern barrios of Tucson; therefore, most of the development has progressed east, changing the true center axis into a perception of “central Tucson” that chases the direction of settlement a little further east each year.
The metro region is politically organized into the city; the unincorporated county still under the city’s jurisdiction for most administrative purposes; and various smaller towns along the periphery and now connecting the highway line between Tucson and Phoenix. Like Detroit, Tucson has an “internal suburb” like Highland Park, called South Tucson. The administrative organization and sprawl patterns matter politically and economically to the region because the issue of infrastructure costs and subsidies have been a point of tension for decades: only very recently has the cash-strapped City of Tucson begun to randomly impose infrastructure service fees for new projects proposed outside the city limits. Previously, the city completely subsidized infrastructure expansion for private development.
Travaille
Tucson has never been a city of manufacturing or industry in the mass-production sense. Not a mining town itself, it acted as a regional financial hub for operations of various types (“Tucson, Arizona,” n.d.). Money from mining, ranching and some farming flowed through Tucson in the early days. Later, it established itself as a health resort, which is a reputation it still uses to attract visitors to centers specializing in alternative medicine, such as Canyon Ranch, and research hospitals. Tucson has a small economic base in the military-industrial complex, hosting an Air Force base – with an Army base about 60 miles away – a large Veteran’s Administration facility, border patrol, and a few military contractors, such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin (Hargis, 2013). The public research university is a major employer, attracting scientific research for projects within the university, and the presence of so many excellent vantage points has created both an astronomy and optics industry. But Tucson’s biggest source of revenue is itself: selling the unique landscape for recreational and spiritual restoration; engaging the imagination with its historic Western culture; capitalizing on its cultural swirl of Mexican and Indigenous pueblo peoples; offering bars to college students. Tucson also hosts annual events which are internationally renown, most notably the Tour de Tucson, a 100-mile bike race; Rodeo; Folk Festival; and Gem and Mineral Show.
Once mining collapsed and without a manufacturing base to support a non-degreed middle-class, Tucson today is an economically distressed city, ranked 9th in the Distressed Communities Index (Carrasco, 2015). Its permanent population largely works within a “right to work” environment in low-paying service, building or agricultural industries. This is augmented by a small professional class relative to overall population: but Tucson is “home” to a large transient population which skews the demographic toward college students and snowbirds (retirees who are seasonal residents). It also continues to be a brisk “port” for formal Mexico trade and less formally for affluent Mexicans who cross the border for a weekend of shopping and excursions. This inflow of external money not based in the local economy creates a complex marketplace, with a glut of four and five star restaurants, a surfeit of golf courses adjacent to desert trailer parks, and a significant homeless population. Housing costs are wildly variable – possible to find a studio apartment for $250/month, but improbable to buy a house within a mile of the university for less than several hundred thousand dollars. Yet this variation supports a robust creative and activist class who occupy affordable housing niches. Tucson’s primary economic strategy is through “growth,” which is largely defined as continuing to attract newcomers to the area, thus driving the housing market. But, little explanation has been offered on how such growth will be sustainable in the absence of a viable local economic sector, especially for development of a strong professional class and support of a largely ignored, non-degreed permanent population (Hargis, 2013; Kelly, 2015).
Famille
The metro area supports over one million people, while the city itself houses over half of those. The population in the decade between 1950 and 1960 quintupled, and then doubled again between 1960 and 1990 (“Tucson, Arizona,” n.d.). In many ways, although it is a major metropolitan area, the culture, like Detroit, is still very parochial and self-identifies in terms of relationship constellations which prioritize rooted tenure. This applies to both business, which must often negotiate without consistent systems or processes, and socially. It often makes it difficult for newcomers to feel “at home” and creates unseen barriers for new enterprise, even though the continuing population growth rate ensures more newcomers than not.
The ethnic or racial axis is not Black and White, but brown and White (“Tucson, Arizona,” n.d.): with African-Americans comprising only 4%, the tension is between Caucasian and Latino populations, who are nearly evenly represented – especially if Native Americans are lumped in, which often happens by perception, if not accuracy. Like many cities with a strong minority demographic, the public bureaucracy is strongly Latino, whereas the private sector is primarily White. Yet unlike Detroit, where the Latino population is small and highly differentiated, arguably leading to stronger perceptions of cultural appropriation, Mexican culture is ubiquitous in Tucson, and can be seen in cuisine, architecture, fashion, art, music, and one of the biggest local public holidays, Dia de los Muertos. In spite of this cultural mélange, there is pronounced spatial segregation of Latinos, and development choices over time echoed national trends of disproportionately disrupting minority communities (in Tucson, barrios). This history continues to underpin enclave relations; for example, the Tucson Convention Center, built in 1971, razed a large portion of the Old Barrio, a deeply established Lation sector. This project was considered a hostile act of aggression toward Latinos, and its reference remains the opening salvo in current community meetings.
Tucson is the “blue patch” in a red state, and this shows through an early acceptance of the LGBTQ community, an active sustainability culture, and incredible biking infrastructure. It is, I think, more accurate to say that Arizona as a whole still embodies a very western pioneer spirit, which creates a “live and let live” tolerance and social policy pragmatism, rather than a progressive political culture. This pioneering legacy is reflected in gender norms, for where archetypes like Big Nose Kate and Belle Starr are embedded, women with grit and gumption are valued.
There is much to say about Folk in Tucson, but here I will rest with the social feeling there. Perhaps imbued with a Central American cultural relationship with time, or perhaps a reflecting the oppressive heat, there is a lethargy which one encounters in Tucson. For some, this is peaceful. For others, it creates a restiveness. In either case, it does affect the pace of business and often requires a change in expectations around urban timekeeping or being “on point”: there is no New York snap. It is often experienced as an unreliability of individuals and an ad hoc approach to systems. It also leads to an extreme form of casual presentation which flattens the normal markers of status: Tucson may be one of the few places in the US where one can feel entirely comfortable wearing flip-flops to a four star restaurant.
A Geddes Partial Diagnosis
One stunning correlation between Geddes’ methodology and Tucson’s milieu is the use of pageantry and masks to capture and reflect civic life. As previously mentioned, a major Tucson festival is the annual Dia de los Muertos constellation of events. This festival began as performance art by a White female artist in 1990. However, it has since become a galvanizing social occasion which draws on Tucson’s pervasive Mexican influence. Unlike in Detroit, this does not seem to result in intracommunity accusations of cultural (mis)appropriation, but instead appears to unify across demographics in what I would regard as a shared mystical experience. Geddes used this type of ritual in India to engage a disenfrachised community in a strengths-based approach toward a common goal. Arguably, Dia de los Muertos is not parallel in this regard. However, I think that it does serve two key purposes which reflect Geddes. One, in a locality with deep, historical inter-ethnic antipathy, this festival embraces the spiritual legacy of Indigenous and Mexican residents: Geddes emphasizes the imperative of including of cultural values, maintaining both structures and activities which support them (Munshi, 2000). Two, the event planning shifts tension away from the brown-white axis, and unifies participants in a community-state struggle. Each year, the event is challenged by a lack of logistical and financial support by the city, even while Tucson leverages the event as one of its signature features. The pageant is completely community-driven, and often flourishes in spite of substantial obstacles capriciously imposed by the municipality. Therefore, as with the Indore Experiment, the event activates community members as advocates and builds community agency (Munshi, 2000).
While Tucson enjoys a success under Geddes’ rubric, in many ways it exemplifies his warnings. Geddes seems to promote regional growth, yet also wants to control it. He envisions regional growth with towns of discrete territories, dense splotches liberally punctuated with rural utopia: Geddes desires an alternation of spatial density that promotes concentrated arts and sciences, while still permitting easy access to restorative nature (Hall, 2003). What he fears and anticipates is urban sprawl that consumes the countryside, “expanding ink stains and grease-spots” which “[dissipate] resources and energies” (p. 154). Tucson sadly is, like Los Angeles and Phoenix, a quintessential example of urban sprawl, consuming unique natural features under the heavy footprint of its built environment. This sprawl also consumes nature in a literal, unsustainable way, sucking the landscape dry by settling the territory far beyond its natural carrying capacity. The infrastructure diaspora eschews “public conservation” and leans in toward “private dissipation” (p. 152). It is not a perfectly binary failure, because Tucson does retain enormous areas of protected landscape, effecting a greenbelt, even if unplanned as such. It also takes advantage of a long wash for a public mixed-use recreation space, and enforces lot to structure ratios outside the dense city limits to retain patches of desert surrounding buildings. Nevertheless, the combined sprawl of Tucson and Phoenix is rushing together in a city-line, as Geddes imagined along the Atlantic Coast, without regard for the natural checks he advocated (Hall, 2003). Instead of utilizing its natural advantages, the progression of Tucson’s regional growth nullifies and destroys them, a general urban outcome which Mumford hoped to avert with sound regional planning (Mumford, 1926).
Lastly, there are two Tucson examples which demonstrate Geddes’ principles, but somehow diverge from his anticipation. In many ways, Tucson embodies the Swiss federacy of “co-operative and helpful neighbourhoods” (Hall, 2003, p. 152). Voluntary community groups have formed within self-identified communities to become quasi-political advocates for infrastructure, policies, and other interests. Within their own borders, they have succeeded to varying degrees with renewal and socialization. However, contrary to Geddes vision, this has not resulted in strong regional sovereignty and cohesion. Instead, it has resulted in a sociopolitical environment which pits neighborhoods against one another in competition for resources kept scarce by the State. Some attempts were made years ago to effectively “regionalize” these groups into a more strategic, collaborative relationship, but factional infighting focused on personal disputes and undermined collective mobilization.
Tucson is also an interesting counter-example to “big industrial concentrations” (Hall, 2003, p. 151). Geddes thought decentralization would promote people-centric cities with smaller, more agile industries. With the possible exception of mining located in the regional hinterlands, Tucson has never housed concentrations of industry. However, rather than promoting quicker decentralization and agricultural integration toward a more livable region, this history has arguably achieved the opposite. Tucson’s baseline decentralization has created an economic environment which is currently precarious for the majority of its residents and further makes it difficult to attract professionals to the region. This is because professionals who move to the area do not have the benefit of a larger scaled industry network inside of which they can transfer. The lack of opportunity for professional growth and change deters talent from relocating to Tucson, and deters local talent from remaining in Tucson, in spite of its size and amenities. While Geddes did not specify the minimum amount of industry which must be present in order to support his neotechnic society (Hall, 2003), Tucson seems to demonstrate that some minimum threshold of industrial concentration is required for labor’s sustainable prosperity.
Conclusion
While regionally important as an economic hub to mining, ranching and agriculture, Tucson remained a small town until its population quintupled between 1950 and 1960, and then doubled again over the next thirty years. By the era of Tucson’s major growth, the field of planning had a strong theoretical basis of knowledge, as well as compelling case studies of “great cities.” Geddes and his protégé, Mumford, helped develop, articulate and advance some of the best tenets from this body of wisdom. With this foundation, Tucson had the opportunity as a newer city to aggressively engage in self-reflective planning, thus avoiding some of the caveats and pitfalls already evident in urban development. Yet, it largely failed to do so, often careening into precisely the conditions Geddes hoped older cities would recover from, and about which he forewarns newer city regions.
References
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Hall, P. (2003). The city in the region. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (143-69). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
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Munshi, I. (2000). Patrick Geddes: Sociologist, Environmentalist and Town Planner. Economic and Political Weekly, (Feb 5, 2000), 485-491.
Tucson, Arizona. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson,_Arizona