Recent travels placed me in Phoenix for four days. I continue to find downtown Phoenix one of the most sterile and uninhabitable pedestrian environments created by human hands. Uninspired architecture of drab beige stucco walls surrounded by an excess of parking line the enormous city blocks, an environment designed to traverse only in a personal life support system.
Phoenix is an improbable city located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. The first residents attempted to farm in the vast Salt River riverbed which is normally dry except when excess runoff forces torrents of muddy silt to pour down over the valley floor from upriver. The city is surrounded by Superstition Mountains far to the east, and the Sierra Estrella to the southwest providing the primary orientation landmarks in an otherwise mundane urban fabric. Why would anyone decide to stop and set up home in the middle of the desert? I have an idea it was the sun. Traveling days without end in the desert without water will make people go insane. Having the choice of hanging around this small puddle of brackish water or continuing to push on through the desert to an insane sun-crazed prospector might make some sense. However it makes no sense to build a major metropolitan city in a region without water.
I have noticed one common and curious trait of American urbanization. The more sublime and spectacular the natural environment in which a city is built, the more tacky, ugly and deplorable are the urban environments we create. It’s like civilization is saying I can’t compete with this beauty, but I can certainly create a contrast you can’t ignore. Like the dog that doesn’t know not to shit on the carpet, we continue to defile natural places out of ignorance or even worse in the name of progress. I’ll save the discussion about personal property rights for another day.
Phoenix is one of the few cities where its name has relevance. The phoenix is a mythical Egyptian sacred firebird. According to legend at the end of its life the phoenix builds a nest of cinnamon twigs that ignite and fiercely burn the bird and nest to ashes, and from the ashes is born the new phoenix. It was also said that the phoenix would regenerate when wounded, providing the mythical bird immortality and invincibility. The phoenix is a metaphor for the sun. Interpreting the legend for today the phoenix (sun) rises each morning to do battle with its foe (man); being mortally wounded by what man has done to the world, it bursts into flames reigning fire upon the land, ultimately to be reborn each new day. Man in order to survive this eternal struggle with this mystical bird protects himself in little portable bubbles called cars. To the Navajo, Phoenix is appropriately called “Hoodzo” which translates to, "the place is hot,"
The Sonoran Desert is one of the most fragile and delicate ecosystems in the world. Fauna and flora acknowledge the ruler of the desert, the sun. Life in the desert is an incredible struggle against death. Out of this struggle is found the pristine beauty of this place. A simple footprint might last decades. Once disturbed we do not have the knowledge or ability to restore the balance. Once disturbed nature will punish us turning what was the desert into a lunar like rock strewn pile of dirt for decades on end. Being the thoughtful residents, we feel uncomfortable with the retched strip mined scars that progress created and desire to do something. All of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men don’t know how to put it together again, so we seek to comfort ourselves with things that are familiar. Since nobody is really from the desert, we desire to surround ourselves with the green grass lawn of childhood home in Kentucky, the swaying tropical palms of some Caribbean island we visited once or the majestic elm lined streets of the northeast. Our fond memories can no more survive the desert than we can, but than doesn’t stop us.
Like its residents that are from every corner of the world Phoenix is filled with plants from every corner of the world few of which are a desert environment. In order to make these plant survive and prosper vast resources of water, herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides and grooming are required. Not only is this process insanely wasteful but it is changing the environment making Phoenix even less habitable than what it already is, if that is even possible. Increases in relative humidity can lead to a “discomfort” range increasing stokes. People are more likely to suffer from the allergy of pollen of plants not native to the desert. Oddly enough Phoenix is genus of trees within the palm family Arecaceae (including the Date Palm) from north Africa which is contributes greatly to allergic reactions. The list goes on and on. It’s the insane musings of a desert hermit that has cooked away any logic from his brain. But it’s pretty you say! Remember beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure that velvet painting of Elvis hanging on the wall of trailer park home has great artistic meaning to its owner.
Phoenix can not afford to cover all the gapping scars of the lunar landscape with this transplanted array of glutinous foreign plants. What can be done with the vast stretches highways carving the desert? We need to decorate them. We can decorate them with what we have in great abundance, rock and dirt. We can decorate the land with tributes to the earliest settlers in the Valley of the Sun, the Hohokam Indian people. The disappearance of the Hohokam civilization which lasted from 350 B.C. to 1450 A.D. remains a mystery to most. It’s not a mystery to me, I believe they got sick and tired of living on the moon and decided to take a vacation to California or Florida.
Phoenix has embarked on a program of doodling designs of cave paintings and ancient patterns in rock and dirt on the landscape. Much to my chagrin the program has received praise from the design community. It’s a tacky blue collar attempt at lawn art with a questionable connection to cultural history. I think it is more about our cultural fascination with tattoos. We have run out of places on our body to inscribe childish cartoons and we have taken it to the streets. Phoenix is fast becoming the undisputed leader of “land tattoos”. How do they do this? Is there a department of ex-bikers that sitting around drinking beer, kicking dogs and scribbling ideas for the next great Tattoo?
We must have the Russian space agency scared to death. The entire program is funded by rich businessmen that are willing to pay millions of dollars for a brief look at the moon. It would destroy the Russian space program if word ever got out that you can come to Phoenix and live of the moon for free.
