April 6, northeast Phoenix, Arizona, late afternoon. A shot from the car window at some interesting rock formations with assorted cactii. We spent this entire day driving all around the Phoenix metropolitan area trying to find greenhouses Stan had tracked down on the web. The first one was the most successful.Labels: Route-66-Part2, Vacation
3 Comments:
Driving around the Phoenix area is easy because it is all in a grid format, but it is difficult because...well because... it just s&5$*. The whole area is flat with really wide streets and buildings spread out like a one story ocean. I've never seen so much space used up to put up a city, and Tucson isn't much better. The only buildings taller than one story are the big box stores and they effectively only use one story of space.
It's a very wasteful system because it takes up too much land and causes everyone to have to drive long distances to go anywhere for anything a person might need.
I really enjoyed seeing most of Arizona, but I have to say seeing the wasted land use for cities in that state was far from enjoyable.
I really loved that first greenhouse and wish I had spent a little more money there.
Phoenix and Tucson have a few tall buildings downtown, but outside of a small few blocks of downtown, there is nothing.
It's a strange dilemma. OK, so they don't want tall buildings for aesthetic sake. I can also see where a tall building in a hot environment can be a large consumer of energy to cool the thing. But then what about all the energy in terms of gasoline people are using to traverse the city because of urban sprawl?
Going to those cities really makes you realize just how overpopulated the world is.
I know that Madison has its own ordinance of "no taller than the Capital", but at least we can build higher than a couple stories.
I think someday even Madison will be forced to begin to allow very tall to happen in some location. Perhaps on the other sides of the lakes away from the core city sky scrapers will begin to grow. They will clear out some of the really cheep milk carton looking suburbs to put up some really tall city type buildings.
There is too much valuable farm land and natural areas close to Madison to keep spreading out in the kind of unchecked way the Arizona cities are.
I hope the future won't look like a sea of milk cartons at the cost of destroying some of the best farm land in the world.
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