"Why are there so many golf courses in the middle of the desert?" Some guy at the 110th floor in NYC: "I need them"

Phoenix should not exist let's be totally real

Almost seems like its a bit of a bad idea to built so many suburbs in the FUCKING DESERT!!!!!

I predict that in the future, former rust belt cities will experience a population and economic boom as people move from the American Southwest due to affordability and climate change. The Great Lakes region has an abundant supply of water which could sustain a population several times larger than its current size.

Even some rather smart urban planners I know have told me It was crazy to build Phoenix due to the water issue, and they would be shocked when I tell them that no, the crazy idea was developing agriculture, but that urban expansion actually creates a water surplus since urban land use is so much less water intensive than agriculture. Really glad to see a video that gets this issue correct! Well done!!

Living in higher density needs to be compensated by the benefits of living close to town and city centers. Putting high density out in the suburbs is stupid. You still have drive everywhere, and get to listen to your neighbors yelling at each other.

I’ll never feel bad for them. Pretty much all my family lives there. I remember in 2018 I was at my grandmas with all the family in town. Her neighborhood has a golf course. She wasn’t allowed to water her 20k yard but the golf course sprinklers ran every 2 hours so the grass didn’t burn doing the heat wave. It’s so ass backwards

Always tune in when you post, but what an awesome surprise to get a shoutout! Thanks for explaining incremental development so clearly, this is really crucial stuff. P.S. when I (Mike) lived in Scottsdale, I applied to live at cul-de-sac! Too bad construction wasn’t completed in time before we ended up moving to Chicago. We should connect next time I’m in the valley!

great to see a fellow arizonan posting videos about our urban planning woes in Phoenix, and what we need to do to overcome these obstacles. Really enjoying your videos dude

The people who claim the weather is nice in Arizona have lost their marbles

I just moved away from Phoenix in the beginning of 2022 and the climate was a big contributing reason. Based on current trends, I don't see how the city or state will move to curb the urban heat island effect, reduce unnecessary water use for all the grass lawns and golf courses in Phoenix metro, or significantly reduce car use, especially as it is trending hotter every year. I lived at 32nd st and thunderbird, right off AZ 51 and very near PV mall. Valley metro's plans to build a light rail line to one of the more dense, walkable areas of the city were canceled. The line to westgate and metro center are tenuous and take FOREVER to build. Apartment buildings and townhomes were being blocked in the central corridor while single family housing subdivisions that are car dependent and water intensive are exploding in areas like deer valley, cave creek, anthem, queen creek and san tan valley, and of course verrado and buckeye. As much as I love so many things about Phoenix and Arizona as a whole, it's difficult to see a positive long term outcome for most of the valley. Would love to live in a place like culdesac, but it's taken years to get the first car-free development. There isn't currently enough density or transit infrastructure to support that in most of the rest of the valley, meaning more places like that may be DECADES away. I feel like when people start to leave or when migration to maricopa county (and pinal county) starts to slow, the tax revenue for further development of transit infrastructure will dry up before enough can be built to make a truly walkable metro possible. That isn't even considering the outsized political power of NIMBYs in places like Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Ahwatukee, Chandler, and Gilbert, many of which fight tooth and nail to prevent transit (especially rail) to come into their city.

Hope Phoenix understand they need to make real changes.

The American system of constantly expanding single family home developments may be unsustainable. They don't pay their way.

Phoenix needs high density TOD around their light rail stations.

Golf courses and lawns in a desert city feels like a comedy skit. Ban golf courses and lawns in the desert. It's hilariously inefficient.

I've lived in phx for 25 years, i live in east mesa almost to AJ and im starting to see a few instances of old department stores, like the old k mart on power, that are empty getting turned into apartments that are surrounded by other stores. i hope to see more of that kind of change. there is so much wasted land where big box stores sit empty for 10+ years and if one does move in they just build a new one somewhere else. and just building smarter in general, you have to design for the heat and energy efficiency since we rely on AC for such a big chunk of the year and instead we build cheaply without any of our actual desert climate in mind.

All the factors you illustrate here are significant inhibitors to the viability of the Phoenix metro area. However, I think those claiming that Phoenix will become uninhabitable are thinking of the climate catastrophe. If you can't step outside in the daytime for > 20 minutes without succumbing to heat exhaustion from June - September & can't survive without AC that place is technically uninhabitable.

Looking at the weather in Phoenix makes me happy i live in a place that snows.

I am always going to be suspicious of any company who's name is a color followed by "Rock" or "Stone"

Steve Kaiser tried to deregulate the zoning laws to allow duplexes and triplexes but could never get it passed. All the cities lobbied against the bill. I’m not crazy about the idea but I guess it’s better than all the McMansions they flip affordable old houses with.

I’m not convinced that the water issue will never happen as you seem to think. Too much short term thinking and profits prevent much change in this area.

I'm actually pretty sure by 2050 Phoenix will be inhospitable for human habitation. This is not die to the water, which would only cause a decline, but the weather. Too many homes won't be able to adequately cool thier house at ~150. That's why i moved away last year. You can stay inside all you want, but you have to leave at some point for groceries and sanity. Then you realize everything outside is literally cooking you. How is infrastructure going to be built/maintained when EVENING temps are above 110?

I imagine a large influx of the population to the Southwest is older people - just imagine all these stroads filled with elderly drivers who will end up isolated in their expensive single family homes. With my grandparents' mental and physical health taking a turn for the worst, I pity what will become of these older folks and for the limited younger population and state sponsored services expected to care for them.

Tempe Cul-de-sac looks amazing, I'm sure they are having no shortage of people looking for these types of walkable communities.

I work in new construction and man the landscape has changed so much in just the last 4 years

Even the downtown looks like car dependent garbage. Why would anybody choose to live in this terrible place?

What I see from my town is the unbridled greed that my town leaders exhibit, as they continually accept money from builders of these small, crap box apartments. There is no consideration of the impact that more people have on a community: increased traffic on small roads; sewage issues; higher crime. When I look around, I feel like I am back in NY, where I came from. I LOVED the farmlands and these are good for the desert, as they dissipate heat from the day. People grumble that we are experiencing high temps because of climate change when it's really the lack of open land. Asphalt and ceramic tile absorb heat without letting it go at night, so the daytime low is not as cool as it ought to be. I will be leaving Phoenix metro for a more rural, less populated, with less chance of becoming populated, as soon as the mortgage rates allow.

Thomas in 2023: "Phoenix unliveable by 2050? Doubt it." Thomas in 2033: "How I BARELY escaped from the Phoenix Death Zone (Our tires MELTED!)"

Came to an end at least 10 years ago. Lots of mid-rise and high-rise buildings going up in central and uptown, as well as Camelback east, Tempe, and probably other locations. The Valley is just turning in to LA, which went through this process 50 to 75 year ago.

I was in Phoenix last week for a nephew’s college graduation. Knowing a bit about water, soils and agriculture, and given that climate change seems to be speeding up, it felt like I was watching the introductory, “before” scenes from an apocalyptic movie. If the Colorado River flows continue to decline, the Southwest will also lose its cheap power for air conditioning. If it continues to get hotter, as the trends clearly show it will, water and electricity will get more expensive. And, declining productivity in the Permian Basin and completion for gas and diesel will drive up prices, making suburbs less affordable. Add to this, insurance companies are raising premiums, especially in areas prone to disasters. After the Gulf Coast, there is no area more primed for disaster than the desert Southwest.

I think the reason why people are hesitant to build more high density buildings is twofold. First of all, that tends to lead to higher incidences of crime especially property crime. The effect of that is the second reason which is lowering property values. It’s a complicated issue, but in Gilbert where they’re starting to build a lot more apartment buildings, you’re starting to see property crimes on the rise, which is exactly what people were concerned about. It's up 5% over year and continues to grow especially in the areas near the apartment complexes.

The habitability of Phoenix will also depend on if we follow the RCP2.5 to RCP8.5 model. At 8.5, there will be many days in summer by 2050 that may fall out of the standards of human habitability even with air conditioning. Air conditioners in Phoenix are rated for 107F (older homes), 113F (newer homes). They will work beyond that temp but they lose efficiency exponentially after 113. Temps of 120+ cause AC's to cycle 5x more which leads to them breaking years ahead of their operation life-cycles and juicing the grid. Luckily Arizona can offset with solar for electricity but the cost of an AC replacement can bankrupt a family and trying to go more than 24 hours without AC at 120+ is not possible.

so let me understand---your solution to water usage is to minimize single family homes in favor of high-rise complexes that accommodate many more people using much more water---correct? I would be in favor of stopping developments that create whole cities in one fell swope to build them out at a slower pace so that infrastructure could keep up with the increase. The issue is "tax greed " by politicians where their only source of income is to drain the pockets of citizens.

I wonder what water use patterns per unit are like between different residential land uses.

Thomas you feel the same exact way I feel about Arizona. and how they are building.

People on reddit were telling me that golf courses were fine, but that people shouldn't live in deserts. I was so frustrated responding to them.

I've always been impressed by this channel but this is the first video that shows me just how much deeper of a thinker you are than I am. Thank you for doing the work to make this information more easily understandable to people like me. I don't live in Phoenix but these concepts, I imagine, are applicable in more places than one. And thanks for using your platform to draw attention to Strong Towns. They may be the greatest force for good within world of city planning.

The two tanks you circled at the 2:10 mark are nowhere near a wastewater treatment facility. Those are the 1 & 2 Wash water storage tanks at the PHX 24th street water treatment plant. This is a clean water facility that treats Salt river water fed from the canal connection at granite reef to bring it up to potable levels. Completely different systems entirely. For wastewater try 91st Ave WWTP just north of baseline, or Mesa NWWRF where the 202 & 101 meet just north of Sloan park.

Yes. Even Dubai has the Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf. Phoenix needs transit, densification and more trees!

Maybe you people just shouldn’t build a mega city in the middle of a desert

I love your optimism! Keep it up and good luck Arizona! 💪

Thanks for this video. I live just off of Grand Ave (before it becomes a stroad) and I really hope this line of thinking takes off. More density, smarter water use, and more desert space to enjoy … the desert.

Funny thing is the suburb is better than the farmland water use wise. Way better in fact. They gotta ditch the farms and treat it like how we do in Vegas. You live in a desert. No farms. We also reuse all water that goes down all sinks and drains and toilets. Yes including black water and it all gets cleaned and put back into the system. We actually as a city put water back into Lake Mead every year. Only water “wasted” is water used outdoors that doesn’t get into a street drain.

Phoenix and water... I have been saying for YEARS - that there are idled desalination plants in california, and at some point, some Arizona government entity will pay to activate them in order to acquire the colorado river water rights for the same volume of water as the plants produce. your example of the farm is slightly smaller but EXACTLY what that transaction could look like.

Once water really becomes an issue that cannot be addressed the city will collapse and real estate will implode. People sitting on commercial or residential will be bag holders when the music stops.

It’s all about housing affordability at the end of the day. Yes there are some weirdos who like living in the middle of nowhere and commuting an hour to work and 30 mins to a grocery store but I don’t believe that the majority of people who buy in these far flung suburbs do so out of their will. No one wants to be that isolated and far away from everything. It’s just that you can’t buy a decent starter home in central Phoenix/Tempe/Glendale in reasonable prices anymore. Young family, people on limited income, single people etc. City center living is just not possible if you’re not able to get a half a million mortgage.

Here in Australia it’s similar. but what there doing in the suburbs is making the blocks so small the roofs of each house almost touch. So they can fit as many single family homes into a new suburb as much as possible

I truly don't understand why people want to keep coming to Phoenix.

Thank you for your more reasonable approach and what looks to be a really cool housing project. I tend to get really frustrated with the narrative of this area being too hot and dry for a city of this size. There is a way that you can have a city of this size that uses water sustainably, is cooler, and receives more rainfall. That way just isn't car-centric.

The fact it doesn't have a functioning mass transit system adds to the horror.

It would be great for you to talk how taxes differ in Chandler who is 93% built out vs a growing city. Most cities rely on fees for new development

Affordable housing is a broad term, and the homeless camping in piles of garbage are often addicts and/or mentally ill. Some people need government funded rehabilitation, or in-patient care, before they can live independently.

They're going to be in so much debt when the growth ends and all those roads need to be repaired.

Your channel is getting great keep it up love learning about AZ

If you use an aquifer faster than it's recharge rate, it will run out. Arizona is using it's aquifers faster than they are being recharged. I don't know how long that will take to run out of ground water but I know it will happen.

Thank you for your fine video which explained everything very logically. I could run back to the great lakes region, or I could just stay here. By the time Phoenix runs out of water for real, I'll probably be gone. Carry on.

there is a big problem, as when golf courses are degraded, no one is willing to reshape the land, not even the city, and the homes nearby suffer price gouging, providing instability to the families who attempted to make an economical decision. instead of trading out the course with a more ecologically sustainable park, which would attract arguably dangerous wildlife, it is reinstated back into what it once was, just under new management. In regards to water rights, yes, our worse contributor is agriculture, and worse than that, are the laws surrounding our agriculture, where it is incentivized to grow a crop when you own such land, that may be thirsty for water, in order to just sustain the water rights through the seasons you would produce crops that wouldn't drink as much.

People have decided the best place to grow alfalfa, run golf courses, and build semiconductors (three of the most water intensive industries on earth!) in the middle of a desert... and they wonder why we have water issues lol

What will the boomers do once they no longer are able to drive , and once the country can't afford to take care of their aging population because they squandered 30 trillion dollars in the last 20 years while now requiring the country to spend close to 750 billion a year on interest payments?

The fact that the Phoenix metro is not dense is what made it affordable. Suburbs offered the trade off of having to commute in a car everywhere in exchange for affordability compared to dense areas. As far as multi-family residences are concerned, they are popping up everywhere in the valley in dense areas such as Westgate and Norterra as well as less dense areas along the 303 and 202 extension. The prices are outrageous though, so hopefully demand dries up and they'll be forced to reduce asking rent prices to fill them. As far as NIMBYs, I don't blame people living in suburbs for not wanting skyscraper apartments or subsitized duplexes in areas zoned for single-family homes.

Absolutely. We need food, water, and shelter. Water scarcity is a terrifying thing

Soaring temperatures and water shortage in a desert will definitely affect it, worse than Las Vegas.

Criminally underrated channel, you get my sub.

Good video! A lot of useful information.

im still mindblown that phoenix exists and is growing. its so hot and car dependant. what do people do for fun? what do you do on a day off? what do kids do before they have access to a car? why do people want a grass lawn if they live in the desert? why did they build a city in the hottest valley of an already hot region? i will never understand this city

I moved to a neighborhood close to the middle of Washington, DC in 2018 to escape the sprawling suburbs where I grew up and have never had any desire to go back even though I live in a condo about 1/5 the size of what I was able to afford before. Phoenix sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. America definitely needs to rethink the practicality of sprawling suburban development. I’ll never understand why people actually choose to live this way. I think they’ve all been brainwashed.

I remember flying over Phoenix as my first time ever leaving the PNW and it was absolutely wild to me

Thank you for this video! The shots of the freeways and Grand Ave, are making me homesick for Phoenix!

Density is the solution. Everyone can’t live in a single family home. Roads aren’t what makes a great neighborhood and community.

Vegas is literally in the same boat in every way phoenix is built just like Vegas

As someone from Surprise, thank you for calling attention to this

The weather is heavenly, Idk what you are all talking about. Sure, summers can be hot, but every other season is nice. We also don't have very large natural occurances. We rarely if ever have hail, snow, tornados, noticeable earthquakes, etc. Even fires are very limited despite how dry everything is because of sparce vegetation.

An "acre-foot" might be the must cursed unit of measurement I've ever heard of

I like having the apartments in our neighborhood. The grounds are landscaped and the complexes are quiet and offset from the street. So it is nicer to walk there than in a whole street of single family homes. Of course this doesn’t matter in Phoenix because people don’t walk there, or at lease they won’t as the temperatures continue to rise.

I got out of AZ three years ago. I couldn't be happier with that decision. I do not miss the sprawl and the heat and the no seasons. My kids are a lot happier, too.

I live in the area between San Tan Valley and Florence, used to live in Columbus, OH. I have family in Chicago, LA, NYC, Charlotte, Fort Lauderdale, and Las Vegas... I actually think Phoenix has an optimistic future compared to the other ones I mentioned. Phoenix is still young enough to drastically improve with lots of area to fix things. Housing is still relatively affordable, compared to the East (Northeast, Midwest, and South) the weather here is actually pretty nice. It does get hot, but there are plenty of days Eastern cities get nearly as hot with high humidity and lots of rain. I personally enjoy living in a master plan community... but there is alot that can be improved upon as a whole. The Phoenix metro needs more mass transit like the subways of Tokyo, Biking of Seattle, or Cable cars of San Francisco to connect suburbia to the main city. We also need better planned developments with a mix of residential and commercial inside these master plan communities. I also think designing infrastructure to be more eco-friendly will help lower temperatures city wide (look at Singapore and the United Arab Emirates). Lastly, I actually think more communities need to switch to artificial grass instead of real.

awesome vid m8

Me when I read the title: It'll be New California

Love your videos and I am happy to say I am near downtown Tempe and a lot of high-density (apartments) projects in my area and also around downtown Mesa, where I also enjoy going. Great info on how zoning changes work. Oh, and loved the info on developing the car-free community here in Tempe, hoo hoo! :-)

Im so confused as an european why do so many people want to live in Phoenix 🤔 Like, I know prices ar3 cheap but whats actually there. 😂

Living and walking to school in phx made me have a deep hatred for that city. You can’t enjoy being outside without burning up. You can only go out and night or during winter time. There are a few cool spots but overall phx isn’t meant to be lived in. I love the Mountain View’s of the city but that’s about it

Great video! Would love to see you interview locals from different perspectives.

Alfalfa farmers make Phoenix look frugal with its water

So you won't "run out of water," you just wont be able to afford it? I'll never understand how people in a desert can afford to be complacent about water "after" a 20+ year drought.

Whats worse is that Tucson isnt learning from Phoenix's mistakes. The Sardine Suburbs are getting ridiculous. Houses so close with so little land they may as well be town homes.

That Murphy bed couch combo is smart. Does it have a stand for the end?

You say we have the water now, but other cities besides Phoenix use the same water supplies too, and they are running out.

Shout-out to California's Senate Bill 9, which ended single-family housing in the state, in the sense that if you have a house on a lot, you can add an ADU and/or split the lot to construct a second house (and second ADU) on the other lot, for a total of up to 4 units anywhere that is currently zoned/built out with just 1. The only problem is that other municipal codes (e.g. setbacks, driveway requirements) still apply, which eliminates probably 95% of houses from the pool. After all, you would need 12-20' for a driveway (depending on jurisdiction) to the second lot, but most houses are built with a 5-10' side yard.

The houses are much less bad in terms of water use than the farms they were replacing were. So as far as water goes, in the desert sprawl seems to be better than rural.

The problem with the 'by right' argument is that apartment complexes, at least, put massively different traffic demands on their immediate area. I'm thinking of my neighborhood and, if there were room for an apartment or three at the end of the street and they were built, the street would be clogged like nothing else in no time. Duplex and the like aren't nearly the same.

This planet is mostly water. We'll never run out of water. We know how to build pipelines & desalinization plants. This is not an insurmountable problem. For what we dumped into that light-rail disaster, we could have probably built a solution.

Love or hate the golf courses you can't deny that they mitigate the heat island effect on the valley.

Thank you for your very informative and well thought out video. 😊

My GF pays 1,2k for a tiny studio apartment in a Phoenix suburb. It’s madness!

its so annoying when people confuse pessimism 'phoenix is going to fail' with realism 'the data shows that if they dont change, they will fail'

good bye lawns , teach our kids water is not a toy ,maybe catch our water sink

soo wild seeing footage of what used to be my old commute on grand

Arizona- landlocked hellscape. Stable water supply with 1 yr usage in reserves, stable power grid, reasonable traffic.....constant influx of Californians California- Gorgeous green oceanside state - Rolling blackouts, water usage limits, congested freeways. i learned all the buzzwords in my college urban design classes to convince us not to want a suburban lifestyle - "sustainability" "food deserts", "designed around cars".... The truth is most people want to own a house, a bit of land, and a car and that is what Phoenix was designed for. All things considered, it was done so very wisely compared to the other cities listed in the comments

People dont really want to live in apartments or such. People want single family homes. The zoning laws dont help. To be sure. But I don't think many people find a duplex or townhouse to be desirable in the long run. Everyone I ever talked to finds the few duplexes and townhomes they build to be terrible. People move into them. But they are just so poorly built and ugly as sin. Plus are build like single family homes away from everytbing and dont make anything more walkable and just continue the sprawl

Very smart thoughts and video.