“The broad attention is showing the world what local leaders have spent the past half-century trying to prove: This desert city can be a major player in global tech and manufacturing.”
But putting the water shortage in the very last sentence of the story? Seems like burying the lede.
Between water shortages and extreme heat/weather it doesn’t seem Phoenix will be anything other than in trouble in the future.
That’s why they’re putting out a puff piece to get people to move there before it’s too late lol
Move to the desert, put a strain on the electric grid running AC all the time, and strain the water supply for a population that can’t be supported. What could go wrong?
I think we’re perfectly capable of building well-designed, sustainable cities in the desert. But Phoenix is not a model I would want to replicate.
The major strain on the electrical grid can be solved with solar power, which is what is happening.
Water demand for residential is less than agriculture, and Arizona is switching out a lot of farms for housing. There are also a lot of farms choosing to sell their water instead of farm. You also have companies like Intel being able to clean their effluent to a quality it can be used as potable water.
The cost of beef and frozen orange juice may go up, but the heat something the area designs around.
I love Phoenix - I lived there for 10 years and left in 2019 - but it isn’t all roses. Housing prices and cost of living are up, and the whole water situation scares me a little bit. Miss late night Filibertos though, tbh
Unfortunately, water shortages seem very much in line with what we should expect from the “cities of the future”
It’s funny people think there’s going to be a nice future where you can choose to live in Phoenix or some other fine place surely with plenty of water and no consequences from climate change or fascism.
It’s pretty much solarpunk or die when it comes to future anything.
Good thing they voted down that automated rapid transit plan in the 80s. Otherwise they’d be struck in the past.
I love living here in Phoenix, but tired of it being “city of the future”. All it’s doing is driving people out of homes with investors buying up our housing market.
Great. Now all the state government needs to do is figure out that it’s not 1950 anymore.
