Menu
Looking back at the influential 1987 report on the Valley of the Sun.
Looking ahead to future challenges and opportunities.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Click the topic to jump to section
The Peirce Report, Revisited
“While the Valley today boasts nearly incredible growth figures, its apparent good fortune is no guarantee of what the future might bring.”
— Peirce Report, 1987
By William Fulton and Christopher Swope
In 1987, a prominent urban affairs journalist named Neal Peirce came to Phoenix with a team of colleagues to
examine the regional issues the Valley of the Sun faced at the time.
Then, about 1.7 million people lived in the Valley — more than half of them in the City of Phoenix. The region had enjoyed almost uninterrupted growth for decades, increasing its population tenfold since the beginning of World War II.
Laid out as a 16-page broadsheet in the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette, the “Peirce Report” highlighted not only the Valley’s successes but also its challenges. Topics included education, growth and development, regional governance, efforts to rejuvenate the Rio Salado, and the Valley’s civic culture. The Peirce Report kicked off a serious regional discussion about what the young metro wanted to be when it grew up — a dialogue that extended well into the 1990s, setting the table for the next generation of growth and change.
Neal Peirce, along with his colleagues Curtis Johnson and John Stuart Hall, and other journalists they worked with, went on to write similar deep-dive assessments in 25 other cities around the country.
Peirce became something of a legend among the government, business, and civic leaders he interviewed for these reports and for his weekly syndicated newspaper column covering cities and regions in the United States. When he passed away in 2019 at the age of 87, the Neal Peirce Foundation was established to honor his legacy.
When Greater Phoenix Leadership — known in Peirce’s time as the “Phoenix 40” — began to plan for its 50th anniversary, the organization decided it was time to update the Peirce Report. GPL asked the Neal Peirce Foundation to take a look back at the issues of the ‘80s and how the region dealt with them, while at the same time looking forward to the future challenges and opportunities of today.
This series of articles, based on interviews with more than 30 Valley-area business, government, and civic leaders — and informed by extensive public opinion survey research and “progress meter” data from the Center for the Future of Arizona — is the result of that effort. While GPL gave us guidance on topics to cover and suggested persons to interview, the findings in these articles are our own.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Introduction
We found a region that in many ways resembles the Valley Neal Peirce saw in 1987. It’s still a fiercely independent and optimistic place, propelled by a constant influx of people from elsewhere — “a civilization of newcomers,” as Peirce put it. Yet in other ways it’s completely transformed. Phoenix has jumped from the second tier to become America’s fifth-largest city. A growing number of second- and third-generation people born or raised in the Valley either stayed or boomeranged back to make a life here. A range of community, academic, and philanthropic institutions have grown up around them to build the bones of a civic culture that Peirce had found missing in 1987. As Phoenix’s economic development director, Christine Mackay, put it to us, in 1987 Phoenix was a bit like an adolescent and now is like a young adult.
The region successfully faced down some of the challenges the Peirce Report identified — an inadequate transportation system, for example — but still struggles with others, such as educating its homegrown workforce. Many of the challenges of today, from water scarcity to high housing costs to the accelerating pace of technological change, are equally, if not more, daunting.
The original Peirce Report saw a dynamic region bumping up against the limits of suburban sprawl, bottlenecked roads, and a lack of economic diversification required to foster future growth. There was a great fear, for example, that the real estate industry held undue sway in the region and accounted for too much of its economy. In the words of one economic analyst, “the business of the Valley is development.” Indeed, soon after the Peirce Report came out, a boom cycle went bust as Phoenix became a center of the national savings and loan crisis.
Because it was blunt about the region’s weaknesses as well as its strengths, the Peirce Report led to a great rethinking about the region.
Goddard recalls that the region’s leaders then knew little about the region they were leading. “We didn’t know what the high-volume intersections had in terms of traffic,” he says. “We didn’t know what the major economic drivers were. We couldn’t tell you that. So we went to work. We spent almost the first six months just getting the data put together. And then we did a year of bringing in national speakers, having citywide convocations, and then breaking up into groups in terms of ultimately coming up with a goals program in 1990 — the idea was looking 25 years into the future.”
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Introduction
Many of the big moves foreshadowed in the Peirce Report were already underway. The report noted that the transportation system was extremely fragmented — Phoenix had the last unfinished gap in I-10 between Jacksonville and Los Angeles, for example — but Proposition 300 had already passed, providing sales-tax revenue to build a regional highway network. And perhaps because Colorado River water was just about to start flowing, the Peirce Report said little about water scarcity. That issue was considered resolved.
The Valley of the Sun has continued its dramatic growth since the original Peirce Report came out almost 40 years ago. The population has tripled, to more than 5 million people, and metro Phoenix continues to add close to 100,000 persons per year, putting it on a par with Dallas and Houston as the fastest-growing big metropolitan areas in the country. At the same time, the population has become increasingly diverse, with people identifying as Hispanic or Latino now accounting for a third of the region’s population and more than 40% in Phoenix itself. Predictions vary, but estimates for the region’s ultimate population — several decades from now — range from 9 million to 12 million.
The eastern side of the Valley — Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler, Mesa — has been almost completely developed, with a population of well over a million people. Though some eastern locations such as Queen Creek and San Tan City are still growing fast, growth is now shifting to the West Valley — especially Buckeye, which had about 4,000 people at the time of the original Peirce Report but is looking at a possible 300,000 by the 2040s.
The economy has dramatically changed as well. The real estate boom-and-bust cycle no longer dominates. Phoenix was an early center of computer chip manufacturing, with Motorola serving as the catalyst. Intel’s chip plants have expanded the sector, and with the arrival of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in north Phoenix, the region is emerging as the nation’s microchip leader. Bioscience is another growth area. Meanwhile, Arizona State University has become both a major national institution and an important economic driver in the region, providing a big share of the workforce necessary for these growth industries while making major investments that have enhanced Downtown Tempe, enlivened Downtown Phoenix, and elevated Downtown Mesa.
Facing New Challenges
Some of the Valley’s problems remain persistent, while others have emerged.
The Peirce Report called for concentrating more power over growth at the Maricopa Association of Governments, the regional planning agency. While MAG had often served as an effective regional convening entity for local mayors, governance generally remains fragmented, with 24 municipalities in Maricopa County ranging from Phoenix (population 1.7 million) to Gila Bend (population 1,800) as well as many agencies such as the Salt River Project that provide specific services. The Peirce Report also identified K-12 education and workforce development as major problems — and they remain so today. The region continues to import skilled and qualified workers from elsewhere in part because the local population is not well prepared to take the jobs the economy is creating.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Introduction
Although there is a general consensus that the region will have enough water to sustain itself, the specifics of how that water, specifically groundwater, is to be managed remain contentious.
And written at a time when 110-degree summer days were not as frequent as they are now, the Peirce Report didn’t even mention the question of extreme heat. While most locals we spoke with shrugged off the heat problem with an “It’s always been hot here,” Phoenix in a time of climate change may be destined to headline national press coverage about extreme heat four months out of every year. The issue isn’t just about press coverage. Extreme heat will have real consequences on water supplies, agriculture, public health, and even whether people will still want to move here.Perhaps the biggest question is whether the region’s civic leadership is up to the task of meeting a new generation of challenges.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether the region’s civic leadership is up to the task of meeting a new generation of challenges. In 1987, Neal Peirce wrote: “To deal with the problems the growth has created, the region will need more collective decision making, more cohesion among its competing businesses, and stronger and more effective government than it ever tolerated before.”
A stronger and more centralized government did not materialize. But to their credit, the region’s civic leaders stepped up in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, in part because of the Peirce Report. The question today is whether a broader and more diverse civic leadership — one representing a much larger and more economically robust region — will step up again to face a new set of challenges.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Introduction
“The business of this Valley is development.” — Peirce Report, 1987
When Neal Peirce and his colleagues wanted to highlight the idea of “leapfrog” development in the Valley of the Sun in 1987, Peirce team member Tom Spratt — then with The Phoenix Gazette — focused on Tatum Ranch in Cave Creek.
When you reach the cluster of saguaros that line the corner of Cave Creek Road and Dixileta Drive, you have arrived at the heart of the proposed Tatum Ranch, described by planners as Phoenix’s biggest new leapfrog development.
You are now 22.5 miles from downtown Phoenix and six miles from the nearest buildings on Cave Creek Road.
The planned 1,413-acre site has been criticized by the few residents who live nearby as a blatant example of urban sprawl. And it has been described by Jim Hansen, a city planner, as “probably the most notable, the most obvious” example of leapfrog development being planned in Phoenix.
Today, of course, Tatum Ranch is an established community mostly surrounded by other subdivisions (and the Sonoran Preserve to the west). Development has moved far to the north, mostly up I-17 on the other side of the Sonoran Preserve. And the new “leapfrog” development is to the West — specifically, on the other side of the White Tank Mountains, where Howard Hughes Corporation is building a 100,000-home community called Teravalis.
You are now 50 miles from downtown Phoenix.
A vision of endless growth persists in the Valley. Even though the population has tripled since the original Peirce Report to more than 5 million, most observers expect another doubling of the population in the 21st Century. Buckeye, which had 4,000 residents at the time of the Peirce Report, has 120,000 today, is forecast to have 300,000 in 20 years, and anticipates an eventual buildout as populous as Phoenix itself. Phoenix, meanwhile, still has two Chandlers worth of unbuilt land, mostly to the north.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Growth
The Valley of the Sun is beginning to bump up against limits — the availability of water, housing costs, traffic jams — that could inhibit future growth unless the region addresses these issues head-on.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether the region’s civic leadership is up to the task of meeting a new generation of challenges. In 1987, Neal Peirce wrote: “To deal with the problems the growth has created, the region will need more collective decision making, more cohesion among its competing businesses, and stronger and more effective government than it ever tolerated before.”
A stronger and more centralized government did not did not materialize. But to their credit, the region’s region’s civic leaders stepped up in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, in part because of the Peirce Report. The question today is whether a broader and more diverse civic leadership — one representing a much larger and more economically robust region — will step up again to face a new set of challenges.
Although there is a general consensus that the region will have enough water to sustain itself, the specifics of how that water, specifically groundwater, is to be managed remain contentious.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Growth
Although the debate is often framed in the national media, and by competitive states, as whether Phoenix has enough water to support future growth, the debate is really about where the water will come from, how it will get there, and how those decisions will dictate where growth will occur.
“We are really talking about the peripheral growth,” says Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center, who adds that established cities such as Phoenix are well positioned for the future when it comes to water. “There’s just a lot of capacity still in cities with renewable portfolios … to add population. That opportunity doesn’t exist in those peripheral areas.”
Others see it a different way. “It’s a political situation,” says Greg Vogel, Phoenix’s leading land agent. He is critical of the 2023 DWR report and Gov. Hobbs’ decision, saying, “it became ‘Arizona doesn’t have water,’ and we have tons of water here.”
The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. The complicated groundwater management law restricts groundwater pumping in the immediate Phoenix area but does not apply to other groundwater basins elsewhere in Arizona. That has some fast-growing cities — such as Buckeye — looking to those outlying groundwater basins to obtain more water. At the same time, better integration of the water infrastructure between the Central Arizona Project and the Salt River Project could create more flexibility.
A city like Buckeye could obtain water rights from outlying areas and run that water through the Central Arizona Project’s canal — a process that is already happening. “We’re in escrow for $80 million worth of water — 6,000 acre-feet of water per year that we could use for homebuilding out here,” says Buckeye Mayor Eric Orsborn.
Disappearing Starter Homes
Also missing from the 1987 Peirce Report — and, indeed, from virtually all regional growth discussions in Phoenix until the pandemic — was the question of housing cost. But it’s now a big issue.
Traditionally, Phoenix was an inexpensive alternative to nearby Los Angeles, where the combination of high home prices and significant regulation have driven both people and companies to relocate. But since the Peirce Report, many factors have changed the situation. The Great Recession hit Phoenix’s housing market more severely than almost anywhere else in the country. And, as elsewhere in the country, however, prices skyrocketed during the pandemic.
Population: 1990 & 2020
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Growth
According to the St. Louis Fed, which closely tracks home prices nationally, the median home asking price in the Phoenix area today is more than $500,000, or 50% more than it was before the pandemic. Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Census, median household income is $85,000. Zillow says the median rent is now $2,000. All this means that even families with healthy incomes can’t afford to buy a home in a region that has traditionally been very affordable.
“It’s really, really hard to find a rental for less than a thousand dollars a month,” says housing expert Amy St. Peter, who leads homelessness efforts at the Maricopa Association of Governments. “And it’s virtually impossible to find a home for less than $300,000. So you have people who are being priced out of the market who were not priced out of the market before.”
“And it’s virtually impossible to find a home for less than $300,00. So you have people who are being priced out of the market who were not priced out of the market before.”
– Amy St. Peter, Maricopa Association of
Governments
Part of the problem, as is the case elsewhere in the country, is a lack of housing supply. According to an annual report provided by Greg Vogel’s company, Land Advisors, construction dropped in half during the 2010s, from 438,000 units in the 2000s to 215,000 in the next decade. The biggest drop came in single-family homes — traditionally Phoenix’s strongest market — which dropped 60% during that time.
“I think most people in Arizona are shocked at how high we are, and I’m not sure why,” says Grady Gammage, a veteran developers’ lawyer and thought leader on growth in the region. Maybe houses are getting bigger, he muses, or maybe it’s just getting harder for new housing developments to be approved. Whatever the cause of high home prices, residents are alarmed. According to polling from the Center for the Future of Arizona, eight in ten Arizonans think the price of housing is too high and “state and local government must do more to ensure that housing options are affordable and available to middle and low-income earners throughout the state.” Even 71% of Republicans agree with that statement.
So the question is whether Phoenix can keep up with the growth both on the periphery and in the center of the region at the same time. Despite Sarah Porter’s warnings about water, peripheral growth continues apace, especially, on the region’s western edge. Despite the increasing cost of both water and land, Mayor Orsborn of Buckeye argues that new master-planned communities on the periphery can continue to provide a wide range of housing options, including starter homes in the $300,000 range and even denser development with walkability.
Percentage Population Growth:
1990-2020
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Growth
At the same time, the other big question is whether the center of the region can grow up with higher density while peripheral areas grow out. In places like Phoenix and Tempe, high rises now abound — and there are plenty of cranes building more. According to Vogel’s statistics, the percentage of new housing in the region located in multifamily projects doubled in the 2010s — from 16% in the 2000s to 30% the following decade.
At the same time, the other big question is whether the center of the region can grow up with higher density while peripheral areas grow out.
Though it has not accommodated an enormous population growth, Tempe has added significant multifamily projects — including the “car-free” neighborhood of Cul-de-Sac — while downtown Phoenix now houses some 25,000 people.
It may be counterintuitive that a region known for sprawl and single-family homes may become more dense on both the periphery and in the center. But it may be the only option if the Valley of the Sun is to keep its traditional competitive advantage over locations like California.
Questions for the Future
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Growth
GREATER PHOENIX HAS MADE GREAT STRIDES ON TRANSPORTATION, OFFERING A POTENTIAL MODEL FOR HOW THE REGION CAN COME TOGETHER TO PLAN AHEAD ON COLLECTIVE CHALLENGES.
“As for traffic, it’s still far below Los Angeles or Orange County levels — but it’s on its way.” — Peirce Report, 1987
In 1987, when the Peirce team came to town, Phoenix’s freeway system was literally a few fragments of what it is today. The main north-south freeway — I-17 — was complete but there wasn’t much else. Even I-10 had a gap in it — the only hole in the entire road between Jacksonville and Los Angeles. The bus system revolved solely around Downtown Phoenix and no light-rail lines yet existed in the region.
Critically, voters had recently agreed to fund massive improvements.
“Virtually each community leader we met expressed pleasure in the common effort mobilized behind the 1985 referendum to raise the sales tax by a half cent and thus raise the megabucks necessary to build the Valley’s long-delayed freeways,” Peirce wrote. “But one added: ‘We should never have gotten to that point. Waiting for an overt crisis is no kind of a model for public policy’.”
Almost 40 years later, transportation is Phoenix’s best story of successful regional planning and collective problem-solving. The half-cent sales tax has been extended twice, by Proposition 400 in 2004 and Proposition 479 in 2024. The once-fledgling and incomplete freeway system is now robust and will soon be strengthened with the addition of the east-west State Route 30, which will serve as a reliever for I-10. As the Center for the Future of Arizona’s Infrastructure Progress Meter shows, average commute in Maricopa County is 26 minutes, one of the fastest in the nation for a large metro area. Valley Metro’s light-rail system has played a critical role in strengthening both Downtown Phoenix and Downtown Tempe and will soon serve South Phoenix as well.
Even though the region was growing very fast during most of this time, the Valley of the Sun was able to get ahead of the curve because of the sales tax. “We really built freeways as they were needed as opposed to trying to react after the fact where you can’t afford to get right of way to build freeways,” says Charley Freericks, a veteran homebuilder who now serves as the Phoenix region president for Howard Hughes Holdings. “And what we have now is a very regional approach to transportation planning.”
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Transportation
The result is hard to argue with. “We have the best commute of big cities in the United States,” says Ed Zuercher, the former Phoenix city manager who is now Executive Director of the Maricopa Association of Governments, which serves as the Valley’s regional transportation planning agency. “It doesn’t feel like that at five o’clock when you’re trying to get different places. And we’ve got problems on the I-10. But as a network, it functions as well as any big city.”
“We have the best commute of big cities in the United States,”
– Ed Zuercher, Maricopa Association of Governments
Keeping Up with Growth
The question is whether the region can maintain this advantage as it simultaneously sprawls and densifies in order to keep up with expected future growth of close to 100,000 people per year.
“We never want to become a place with freeways that are bogged down with traffic jams,” says Christine Mackay, Phoenix’s economic development director. “If you go to LA or you go to New York, it is a traffic jam 24/7/365 there. How do we make sure that we stay ahead of all of the infrastructure needs to make sure that we never become one of those places that people lament?”
“How do we make sure that we stay ahead of all of the infrastructure needs to make sure that we never become one of those places that people lament?”
– Christine Mackay, Phoenix Economic
Development Director
No one seems to dispute the need to expand the freeway system and maintain the region’s massive arterial road network as well. Proposition 479, the sales-tax extension that passed in 2024, contains large pots of money for both. In the long run, the bigger battle is likely to be over whether other transportation options, such as the region’s light-rail system, should also be expanded.
Like many major metropolitan areas, Maricopa County doesn’t meet federal air quality standards, in part because of vehicle emissions. In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency deferred sanctions against the county, but there is no guarantee that this deferral will continue.
Unlike the freeway system, the light-rail system does not cover the entire region — and it’s not paid for exclusively by the half-cent sales tax. Now 30 miles long, the system starts in north Phoenix and loops through Downtown Phoenix and Downtown Tempe before terminating in Mesa to the east. The system began construction in 2004 and opened in 2008, with extensions opening more recently. Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa have all chipped in to help build it.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Transportation
Ridership on the light-rail system was running at close to 50,000 persons per weekday before the pandemic, with an occasional bump when sports activities or other events in Downtown Phoenix attracted more riders. The system also provides quick connections between Phoenix, Tempe, and Sky Harbor Airport.
Ridership dropped by half during the pandemic but has since rebounded to about 40,000 per weekday. (According to the American Public Transportation Association, Phoenix’s light-rail system ranks 14th nationally in ridership, in between St. Louis and Denver. That ridership may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the 300,000 vehicles per day that traverse I-10 through downtown Phoenix. But it has been enough to drive significant development in Downtown Phoenix — especially from Arizona State University.
“We wanted to be on the light rail,” said Wellington Reiter, a former dean of the ASU architecture school and now a senior advisor to ASU President Michael Crow. “The first building we built was the Cronkite School [ASU’s journalism school], right on the light rail downtown, with a direct connection to ASU in Tempe.” ASU now has a large complex downtown that includes both the law and public service schools, with more than 10,000 students attending classes there.
“We wanted to be on the light rail.”
– Wellington Reiter, Senior Advisor
to ASU President
But in permitting Proposition 479 to appear on the 2024 ballot, the majority Republican Arizona Legislature stripped out all funding for future light-rail expansion. Alone among Arizona counties, Maricopa must submit proposed tax measures to the legislature and the governor for approval before putting them to voters. Politically far-right members of the legislature disliked the light-rail provisions. One Scottsdale state representative, whose district includes suburban and rural areas in northwest Maricopa County, told the Arizona Mirror that the proposal would hold road funding “hostage” and deny transportation choices to Maricopa County residents.
How Maricopa County Residents Rate Transportation Facilities (Percentage Responding “Excellent or “Good”)
Source: Center for the Future of Arizona “The Arizona We Want: The Decade Ahead,” 2021.
Planning for the Future
Although Proposition 479 does not contain any funding for light-rail expansion, it does contain significant funding for Valley Metro’s bus system. Bus ridership is currently running at about 100,000 passengers per weekday. But bus ridership has not bounced back after COVID as quickly as light-rail ridership. Bus ridership in 2024 was about 65% of pre-pandemic levels, compared to 85% for light rail. This compares to a national average of 73% for all transit ridership.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Transportation
Other transportation alternatives are emerging in Phoenix. For example, Waymo operates its robotaxis in parts of Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa, and Chandler, providing a driverless alternative to ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft. While services such as Waymo may allow more efficient use of the road system — and reduce the need to devote land to parking — they may not meet all of the metro area’s needs.
For one thing, many residents with low-wage jobs may need robust public transit service for commuting. And for another — as the famous urbanist Richard Florida once said — once a region gets to around 5 million people, it just gets harder and harder to move everyone around in personal vehicles.
Even in outlying areas, more transportation options may be necessary, especially since Phoenix has traditionally attracted retirees and older residents who may have difficulty driving. And local elected officials seem to understand that transit may be more of an option in newly developing areas. “We have such a blank slate to do things differently,” says Mayor Eric Orsborn of Buckeye. “We can build the infrastructure for transit and keep the corridors open where the utilities go — and then it’s not so expensive to retrofit for light rail.”
Questions for the Future
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Transportation
THE VALLEY HAS MADE GREAT STRIDES IN DIVERSIFYING ITS ECONOMY, BUT LEADERS NEED TO STAY FORWARD THINKING AS THE PACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ACCELERATES.
“Phoenix and its sister cities suffer from branch-town syndrome perhaps more seriously than any other metropolitan area of America.” — Peirce Report, 1987
When Neal Peirce came to the Valley in 1987, he was blown away by the dynamism of the region’s economy. At the time, Arizona topped every other state in job and income growth. “Rarely in American history,” he wrote, “has an area’s economy jumped forward with the monstrous leaps and bounds of Arizona and the Valley.”
Yet Peirce and his colleagues also detected grave concerns about the local economy. They wrote that local leaders “worry that the area’s high-tech employment is high on quantity but low on quality,” making many of those jobs vulnerable to being moved elsewhere. Phoenix then was seen as something of a back office to California-based companies without corporate headquarters of its own. Education and the workforce development system was a major weakness, as we discuss more in the education section of this report. Above all, the regional economy was over-reliant on the growth machine churning out one new subdivision after another. That formula worked for long stretches at a time. But it also was susceptible to crashing.
Of course, that’s exactly what happened, repeatedly. Not long after the Peirce Report came out, a national savings and loan crisis wiped out half of Arizona’s thrifts, taking the local housing sector down with them. A smaller bust came at the turn of the century when the “dot-com” bubble burst. Then in 2008, the Great Recession “shook our foundations to the core,” says Todd Sanders, President and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. Housing prices plunged by more than half, foreclosures spiked, and it took many years for homebuilding to pick back up. The Phoenix area was hit harder than almost any other market in the United States.
There was other bad news in the air then. Motorola, a premier local employer for decades, moved the bulk of its semiconductor operations to Austin in the late 1990s, and later shut down or sold off most of what was left. When the internet unleashed a “new economy” of digital startups in tech hubs around the country, the Valley mostly got call centers and the relatively low-paying jobs that go with them.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Economic Development
“I would argue that we lost our way in the 1990s and early 2000s,” says Christine Mackay, economic development director for Phoenix. “We were so busy working on what was in front of us and growth that we didn’t pay attention to the future and where things were going to go.”
Mackay and nearly every other business and civic leader we spoke with likened the Great Recession to the Valley’s great wakeup call. The housing collapse made clear that a more intentional effort was needed to build a diversified and resilient economy. “That’s where the inflection point occurred,” says Chris Camacho, President and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. “It’s when we really began to analyze, from a civic leadership perspective, that just growing population in eight-to-ten year runs at a time, and then having a massive collapse, is not a way to build an economy.”
“That just growing population in eight-to-ten year runs at a time, and then having a massive collapse, is not a way to build an economy.”
– Chris Camacho, President & CEO of the
Greater Phoenix Economic Council
Push to Diversify
A big change came in 2011 when the state adopted the Arizona Competitiveness Package. The program lowered corporate tax burdens and streamlined regulations, unleashing a boom in advanced manufacturing and foreign direct investment. According to the Arizona Commerce Authority, the state since 2011 has landed more than 1,250 companies, who have committed to creating more than 285,000 jobs.
One result: the Valley’s leap to the forefront of semiconductor manufacturing. Intel, a longtime presence in Chandler, launched a $20 billion expansion of its fabrication facilities there. A successful effort to woo the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) brought a whopping $65 billion investment to begin making the industry’s most advanced chips on an open patch of desert in Phoenix. That investment, raised by another $100 million in March, created a new economic center of gravity on the region’s far north side where dozens of suppliers are setting up and growing.
Meanwhile, bioscience took root in the Valley. The same year as the Peirce Report, the Mayo Clinic planted its first seed in Scottsdale. The hospital’s “Discovery Oasis” biotech hub is now poised to bring billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs to north Phoenix. Another coup was the successful cross-sector effort in 2002 to bring Dr. Jeffrey Trent, a leading genomic scientist, to return to his childhood home of Phoenix. The institution he founded, TGen, spun off dozens of life science startups and lured industry heavyweights like Bristol Myers Squibb. While football fans may disagree, today’s thriving downtown innovation campus is a better outcome for Phoenix than an earlier plan that got scrapped to build the Arizona Cardinals a stadium on the same land.
Catalyzing these and so many other economic developments in the Valley was the rise of Arizona State University into the top tier of many national rankings. Hardly a person we interviewed did not crow about Michael Crow, whose arrival as ASU’s president in 2002 was a turning point for both the institution and the economic trajectory of the region.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Economic Development
In the face of declining financial support from state government, Crow turned ASU into what he calls a “public enterprise,” in which “the shareholders are the citizens and the profits are returned to the institution.”
The university is an entrepreneurial dynamo transforming parking lots and underutilized urban land across the region into innovation districts while fueling growing industries with research, faculty know-how, advanced lab space to prototype new products, and tens of thousands of graduates. ASU is a powerhouse and Crow makes sure everybody knows it. It’s hard to miss all the buses and billboards advertising ASU’s ranking by U.S. News & World Report as the nation’s most innovative university. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego calls ASU “my secret sauce as mayor,” and “wonderful partners in everything we’ve done,” including landing TSMC’s chip plants.
ASU’s frenetic growth fundamentally remade the downtowns of Tempe and Phoenix, and may soon do the same in Mesa. The Phoenix campus was particularly audacious. In 2006, ASU partnered with the city on a $223 million bond issue to redevelop 18 acres — when voters passed the deal, the Chronicle of Higher Education called it “an unprecedented investment by a city in a public university.” Within months, ASU began moving in students, who a couple of years later could ride the new light rail system back and forth between the Tempe and Phoenix campuses. Then ASU relocated entire colleges, such as journalism, nursing and law, and built them gleaming new facilities. With more than 10,000 students, large swaths of downtown Phoenix now hum with the energy of a college town.
Add in a growing financial sector and traditional strengths in defense and aerospace, and the Valley’s overall economic picture is far more diversified than it was in 1987. To be sure, building subdivisions remains a big part of the region’s economy. Now, however, that’s one of many industries rather than pretty much the only game in town.
The Valley’s overall economic picture
is far more diversified than it was in
1987.
“We’re not forgetting about construction,” Sanders says. “But adding other layers to that has created a really strong foundation. Certainly when there’s talk about a recession nationally, we’re not immune to that. The foundation helps us weather those types of economic cycles in a way that we hadn’t been able to in the past.”
Maricopa County Job Growth
Source: Center for the Future of Arizona Jobs Progress Meter, via U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Economic Development
New Opportunities and Risks
Still, big challenges lie ahead, and the stakes are huge: Maricopa County alone accounts for nearly three-quarters of Arizona’s economy. While Valley leaders are rightfully proud of their booming semiconductor cluster, that’s another industry known for big swings between ups and downs. And with new ties to Asia and deepening ties to Mexico, the Valley’s economy is more globally connected than ever. That creates new opportunities for Arizona companies but also new risks. As Mayor Gallego told us, U.S. foreign policy impacts the city of Phoenix more than it used to. “I care deeply about tariffs in Mexico right now,” she says. “I’m concerned about China-Taiwan relations in a way that I would not have been previously.”
The biggest worry we heard about is the availability of electricity and water to handle all the new chip fabs, data centers, and other industrial customers rapidly coming online. On the water front, most business and civic leaders are optimistic. They see it less of a question of water supply than how to move water to places where it’s needed to accommodate growth. (For more on water, see the section of this report on growth.)
What keeps leaders up at night is the supply of electricity. Power demand in the Valley set peak-load records last summer and is set to rise in the range of 40 to 50 percent over the next ten years. Meanwhile, the Valley’s two electric utilities are replacing coal plants with solar and wind. As they rush to build new generation and shore up the power grid, there’s not much wiggle room. As Salt River Project CEO Jim Pratt told us, “We have a plan in place to get to that increase. But can we do a bunch more than that? No.”
Of particular concern is the boom in data centers fueling the back end of the rise of artificial intelligence applications. The state of Arizona and many of the Valley’s cities have pursued these power-hungry data centers vigorously despite the relatively small number of jobs they bring. One new “data center park” planned in Buckeye would consume twice as much power as all the households in Phoenix. Data centers can go up faster than the utilities can build power plants to serve them. The fear is that if this surge continues unabated, data centers will become a brake on all industrial growth in the not too-distant future.
Another potential brake is the rising cost of living. The availability of cheap housing has long been one of the Valley’s big draws. That advantage is disappearing as housing costs soar. Phoenix isn’t California expensive yet, but it’s moving in that direction. According to Amy St. Peter of the Maricopa Association of Governments, the stock of rental units available for under $1,000 a month has dropped by 86 percent since 2011. On the homeownership side, there are 75 percent fewer houses available for less than $300,000.
Average Wage per Worker: 2023
Source: Center for the Future of Arizona Jobs Progress Meter, via U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Economic Development
We’ve lost a lot of the supply of housing that used to be affordable and made up the majority of our market,” St. Peter says. “Our calling card as a region had always been, ‘Hey, we’ve got this great quality of life, we’ve got affordable housing and great amenities. We can’t say that anymore.”
Above all, staying competitive will require keeping an eye on the future. Consider all the things that did not exist in 1987: The internet, smartphones, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, social media, electric and autonomous vehicles, and so much more. The pace of change isn’t just going to continue. It will accelerate.
Buckle up.
“The technology changes we’ve seen over the last 25 years are going to be dwarfed by what we see in the next five,” Mackay says. “So while we’re heavily entrenched right now in semiconductor and biosciences and healthcare and space and other areas, we’re already moving forward in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, big data, deep space. We can’t ever lose our way again.”
“The technology changes we’ve seen over the last 25 years are going to be dwarfed by what we see in the next five.”
Christine Mackay, Economic Development Director for Phoenix
Questions for the Future
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Economic Development
THE VALLEY NEEDS TO STEP UP ITS GAME ON EDUCATION AT ALL LEVELS — FROM PREPARING THE YOUNGEST LEARNERS FOR KINDERGARTEN TO RETRAINING ADULT WORKERS TO STAY CURRENT WITH RAPID CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY.
“Most states are moving to a second generation of [education] reform… even while Arizona awaits its first significant reform.” — Peirce Report, 1987
Neal Peirce was impressed with many things about Greater Phoenix in 1987. The public education system was not one of them. It’s the one area of the Valley of the Sun’s civic life that came in for the Peirce Report’s harshest criticisms.
Peirce and his colleagues pointed to companies who shunned the Valley because the schools, technical programs, and universities were lacking. He worried that retiree communities without school-age children diluted the constituency for good schools. And he found the business community largely disinterested in trying to fix the problem.
“What single thing could the Valley do to strengthen its economic prospects, to ensure against a severe letdown?” Peirce wrote. “From the leaders we interviewed came a virtually unanimous answer: education. A multiyear effort to upgrade the learning systems in the Valley, from preschool to postgraduate to adult education. Why? Because, as one college administrator told us, ‘The kindergarten to 12th-grade sector here is generally bad and beleaguered.’”
The story since then is complicated. So is the path ahead. And it’s critical to answering the question of who’s going to fill all those jobs in semiconductors, bioscience, and other advanced industries Valley leaders have worked so hard to nurture.
Many of the civic leaders we spoke with believe that despite a few signs of progress, the K-12 situation has gotten worse since the Peirce Report — especially compared with the rest of the country. Arizona public schools today routinely fall at or near the bottom of national rankings of per-pupil spending, teacher pay, test scores, and more. One study in the headlines last year, which counted Washington, D.C., as a state, ranked Arizona 51st in the country on education. Several people we spoke with made the offhand comment that while Arizona used to thank the likes of Arkansas and Mississippi for occupying the bottom rungs of state education rankings, those states now say the same about Arizona.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
The Valley was an early adopter of charter schools, and has had 30 years to experiment, grow, and refine its approach. School choice is now an ingrained and widely embraced part of the region’s culture. In our conversations with local leaders, we heard numerous anecdotes about sterling charter schools powered by dedicated parents, teachers, and administrators creating promising pathways for children, including kids from families with low incomes. We also heard about pockets of excellence in the K-12 school districts in Chandler, Gilbert, and Scottsdale, as well as in other individual traditional public schools across the Valley.
Those stories may reassure executives moving their families to the area, but they mask a highly unequal system that is failing vast numbers of children. For every high-performing charter or traditional public school, there are others pulling the system down.
The data speaks for itself. Here are the latest vital stats for Maricopa County from the Arizona Education Progress Meter, co-developed by Education Forward Arizona and the Center for the Future of Arizona. Included for each indicator is the 2030 statewide goal set by a coalition of experts, business, and community leaders based on national benchmarks.
Some of these datapoints have edged in a positive direction over the past decade, despite disruptions due to COVID. Still, nobody would call these outcomes success. Drill down into the numbers by race and ethnicity, and troubling disparities emerge between white students and their Black, Hispanic or Latino, and Native American peers.
Today, the Valley’s big K-12 debate is over private school vouchers. Sold as a way to save taxpayers money, the program has cost hundreds of millions more than expected, with the bulk of those dollars going to families whose children were already enrolled in private school. A ProPublica analysis of voucher use in Maricopa County showed that “the poorer the ZIP code, the less often vouchers are being used.” Rather than offer a much needed comprehensive long-term strategy for lifting education for all, vouchers have further atomized an already fragmented and unequal K-12 landscape.
Per-Student Higher Education
Appropriations Over Time
Source: State Higher Education Executive Officers Association
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
“The state really did not have a plan for education,” says Rich Nickel, President and CEO of Education Forward Arizona, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “From a policy standpoint, investment standpoint, governance standpoint, there was no plan to think about education from a continuum of [early childhood to adulthood]. No real strategy on how to tie those together or align them, and certainly not how to align that to evolving business needs. There was not a plan and still isn’t today.”
“The state really did not have a plan for education.”
– Rich Nickel, President and CEO of Education Forward Arizona
Progress Despite Budget Cuts
The state’s fend-for-yourself attitude extends to higher education, as well. The Great Recession of 2007-09 was a major turning point. While higher ed funding took a hit in most states around this time, Arizona’s cuts went astonishingly deeper than any other state. And the cuts keep coming, with millions more taken out of the current year’s budget. Adjusted for inflation, state appropriations for public higher education in Arizona are 20 percent less today than in 1980.
Under the circumstances, the state’s public universities have adapted exceedingly well. They raised tuition rates and chased more out-of-state and international students to pay full freight, but also increased financial aid for local students who need it. They pivoted to bring in dramatically more federal research dollars (although recent changes in Washington put some of that at risk). The Valley’s preeminent institution, Arizona State University, now gets just 9 percent of its budget from the state, supplementing its bottom line with real estate ventures and other enterprises. Funding scarcity “taught Arizona’s universities to become much more entrepreneurial,” says Chad Sampson, head of the Board of Regents. “At the same time, these are public institutions. They serve the people, and they need state support.”
Even as state funding melted away, public universities made an admirable choice to prioritize access. ASU pledged to admit any student with at least a B average in high school. The university now proactively sends eligible high school seniors personalized letters to let them know they’re accepted — before they apply. University President Michael Crow likes to say that ASU “measures itself not by who we exclude but who we include and how they succeed.” That inspiring language is now in the university’s charter.
“The model we’re advancing is the model of the ‘New American University’,” Crow told us. “That is, an elite performing research university at the highest level of research, discovery, and innovation, matched with a truly egalitarian institution in terms of access.”
ASU enrolls a staggering 153,000 students, including 80,000 at its physical campuses across the Valley and 73,000 online. ASU’s push for inclusion is bearing fruit: 42 percent of undergraduates are among the first in their families to attend college, 34 percent receive Pell grants (meaning they demonstrate exceptional financial need), and 52 percent of first-year on-campus students identify as a minority.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
Building a Talent Pipeline
The one ASU stat every business and civic leader in the Valley knows by heart is 33,000. That’s the number of engineering students at ASU, now home of the largest engineering school in the United States. That talent pipeline is critical to fueling the workforce needs of the Valley’s boom in semiconductors and other advanced manufacturing. The question is whether even 33,000 engineers is enough.
“ASU is doing a tremendous job of making sure companies have the engineering talent they need,” says Todd Sanders, President and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. “The challenge for Dr. Crow and ASU is that as Phoenix grows, there’s going to be increased demand for more engineering talent in other areas of the economy. We’ve got to make sure we can do that. I’m confident he can.”
Just as critical to workforce development is the region’s community colleges, which also adapted in the face of state budget cuts. The 10-college Maricopa County system now serves 170,000 students a year despite getting eliminated from the state’s budget in 2015 (a tiny $8 million appropriation earmarked to STEM classes recently came back; the system funds most of its operations with local property taxes and tuition.) By contrast, 2-year public colleges around the U.S. get, on average, 61 percent of their funding from state government.
Maricopa Community Colleges have found ways to innovate. They recently began going beyond two-year associate degrees to offer bachelor’s degrees in high-demand fields such as nursing and public safety administration. They launched the nation’s first certificate, associate degree, and now bachelor’s in artificial intelligence. And in partnership with Intel and TSMC, they created a ”quick start” program for semiconductor technicians — a 10-day, 3-credit program that teaches students enough to get a job interview to work in a fab.
Add it all up and you get a workforce development pipeline that is making some headway but not nearly enough. The North Star goal is postsecondary attainment — that is, the percentage of persons age 25 to 64 who have earned at least an associate degree or a professional certification. For Maricopa County, the Education Progress Meter shows that this figure has gone up from 49 percent in 2018 to 52 percent today. That’s better, but still far below a statewide goal of 60 percent. Again, the disparities are troubling. The statewide attainment rate for Latinos is just 26 percent.
Put another way, about half of all the Valley’s working-age population — and large majorities of the Latino, Black, and Native American communities — are not set up to benefit from the staggering array of new industries and job opportunities in the region.
About half of all the Valley’s working-age population — and large majorities of the Latino, Black, and Native American communities — are not set up to benefit from the staggering array of new industries and job opportunities in the region.
They’re not positioned “to take advantage of all that gold,” says Joe O’Reilly, Director of the ASU Helios Decision Center for Educational Excellence. “That’s where the work is: Getting them the skills needed to take advantage, and not be a subclass that can’t move up into the opportunities that Arizona has. And if Arizona doesn’t
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
Choices for the Future
These trends leave Valley leaders facing some fundamental choices. For years, there was an easy way to paper over neglect of the education system: Keep importing educated workers from California, the Midwest, and elsewhere. But what if the rising cost of housing, water, electricity and other necessities causes that inflow to dry up? The Valley will need to invest more in its own people.
“We’re grossly underperforming in producing college graduates from the people that are already here, and particularly the people that have been here the longest — families that have been here for five, six, seven, or 50 generations,” says ASU’s Crow. “That’s where we’ve not done as well. That’s where we need to do better.”
Meanwhile, automation and artificial intelligence aren’t just coming in the future — they’re here. You can see that more clearly in the Valley than almost anywhere else in the world, with all those driverless Waymos shuttling around. It’s not just people who drive cars and trucks for a living whose jobs are at risk. Tens of thousands of people in the Valley who work in mortgage processing are vulnerable. So are many others in retail, clerical roles, manufacturing, and other industries. One recent study put Phoenix in the top ten of U.S. cities most vulnerable to AI-driven job losses.
To stay ahead of these trends, the Valley needs to step up its game on education at all levels — from preparing the youngest for kindergarten to retraining adult workers to stay current with rapid changes in technology. It’s something that the people overwhelmingly support. Despite the polarized rhetoric around education in the state, the Center for the Future of Arizona’s public opinion survey research has consistently shown that residents want and value increased funding for K-12 public education, raising pay for teachers, expanding career and technical education opportunities, and more.
The Valley needs to step up its game on education at all levels — from preparing the youngest for kindergarten to retraining adult workers to stay current with rapid changes in technology.
While higher ed has done remarkable things with scant funding from state government, it’s hard to see how Arizona gets ahead without more support. In its “Billions to Gain” report, the Helios Education Foundation makes a compelling case that this investment pays for itself in higher salaries for residents. Increasing college enrollment by 20 percent, the report found, would yield fiscal gains equivalent to twice what the state contributes to its universities. CFA polling in 2024 found that 79% of Arizona voters agreed that investments in public higher education should be a priority.
Percentage of Maricopa County Residents
Who Agree or Strongly Agree:
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
Investments can be targeted and evidence-based. Compared with the educational landscape Peirce observed in 1987, today there is much more data on student and school progress and evidence of what works. Another study backed by Helios found positive outcomes with dual enrollment — that is, when high schoolers take post-secondary classes while still in high school.
Dual enrollment students in Arizona are more than twice as likely to attend college than their peers who don’t participate, the study found, and they’re more likely to stick with their postsecondary work. Lawmakers, administrators, business leaders and philanthropists should double down on strategies like this and others that are proven to work.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
Another opportunity area is early childhood. While Arizona debates whether to require or fund full-day kindergarten, a growing number of states have moved on to expanding pre-K options for 4-year-olds. From Boston to Birmingham, Alabama, cities are also betting on early childhood initiatives, responding to research showing how critical the time from birth to age 5 is in children’s brain development and educational outcomes. Investing even modest resources in high quality early childhood education can pay triple dividends: It prepares kids to be ready to learn in kindergarten, while simultaneously offering caregivers opportunities to build small businesses and addressing the high cost of childcare for working families. And it’s popular: In CFA’s 2022 poll of Arizona voters, 78% supported increasing access and affordability of early learning for 3- and 4-year-olds.
“We all ultimately benefit from an educated populace,” says Dr. Steven R. Gonzalez, Chancellor of Maricopa Community Colleges. In 25 years, he says, “I would like to think that that the attitude about education has generally changed in this state such that we all see its value and understand it and that it’s one of the things that we can get behind as much as we get behind our own health.“
Questions for the Future
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Education & Workforce Development
TEMPE AND PHOENIX SHOWED THE VALLEY TWO VERY DIFFERENT AND SUCCESSFUL PATHS FOR REJUVENATING THE RIO SALADO. A NEW EFFORT AIMS TO BUILD ON THAT MOMENTUM AND EXPAND IT ACROSS THE REGION.
“Flying over the Valley today, one has to be appalled by the sight of the drained Salt River. It is nothing other than a jagged, ugly, dried out scar cutting across a beautiful valley.” — Peirce Report, 1987
When Neal Peirce came to Phoenix in 1987, he was both dismayed and intrigued by the parched riverbed slicing east to west from one end of the Valley of the Sun to the other.
The neglected Rio Salado, or Salt River, had become an unsightly trash dump in some places and scraped out by sand and gravel mining operations in others. It also had become a muse for urban planners who envisioned cleaning up many miles of riverbed and turning it into a long green ribbon of parks, lakes and trails, with opportunities to redevelop adjacent land into housing, offices, retail, and cultural centers.
A Rio Salado master plan developed in 1985 was grounded in big ideas about unifying a fragmented metro area around this common purpose. Neal Peirce was a big fan of this kind of regionalist thinking. If carried out, he wrote, revitalizing the Rio Salado “might be the most ambitious public project of this generation, in any metropolitan region of the United States.”
That broader vision never came to pass. Just months after the Peirce Report came out, Maricopa County voters rejected the plan and the property-tax hike that would have helped pay for it. Big-picture hopes of bringing the whole region together around its river largely went dormant.
But the dream never went away. Local leaders in Tempe and Phoenix separately created partnerships to carry out key parts of the Rio Salado plan on their own, with impressive results. And now, a renewed effort is underway to build a regional vision once again, this time taking in an even larger area encompassing both the Gila and Salt Rivers, from Buckeye in the West Valley to Mesa in the East.
Local leaders in Tempe and Phoenix separately created partnerships to carry out key parts of the Rio Salado plan on their own, with impressive results.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Rio Salado
One River, Two Models
Since the Peirce Report, the most visible change along the river is in Tempe. The idea of damming the Rio Salado and creating a “Town Lake” had been discussed since architecture faculty and students at Arizona State University proposed it in 1967. A lake was meant to bring three big benefits: recreation, economic development, and flood control. After it got voted down with the broader Rio Salado Master Plan, Tempe city leaders kept the concept alive and worked out financing for an ambitious plan to move forward with building the lake. The Army Corps of Engineers dug out the river bottom, shored up the banks, and opened the floodgates in 1999, filling a wide channel with nearly a billion gallons of water.
Skeptics at the time said nobody would want to live or work near a “fake lake.” At first, it seemed they might be right. A major deal to build a lakeside hotel and conference center fell through. But over time, the lake and the parkland on its banks became a big draw for offices and condos, supercharged by ASU’s breakneck growth. Today, Tempe has one of America’s most striking skyline views, with its glassy modern office buildings, pink arched bridge, and cone-shaped butte reflecting in the lake. The Phoenix Business Journal recently called Tempe “the most valuable office market in the Phoenix metro” with Tempe Town Lake “at the center of the appeal.”
Today, Tempe has one of America’s most striking skyline views
The lake is a culture and recreation hub, as well. Popular parks on both sides of the lake draw bicyclists and runners to trails, while a sandy beach beckons families, sunbathers, and volleyball players. The water attracts boaters, rowers, and stand-up paddleboarders, while the lakeside Tempe Center for the Arts hosts 200 programs a year and outdoor festivals draw big crowds to Tempe Beach Park.
Eight miles downstream in Phoenix, a more naturalist vision for Rio Salado came together in the late 2000s. You can see it in just south of downtown, where truckloads of tires and other trash were removed from the gravelly riverbed and replaced by more than 70,000 native plantings. More than 200 species of birds live here among the cottonwoods and willows, along with butterflies and other wildlife. Bikers, hikers, and horseback riders hit the many trails through the area and an Audubon Center hosts school groups and nature enthusiasts. A place where people used to illegally dump trash is now a spot where 60,000 people a year enjoy nature right in the heart of the city.
City planners see this 600-acre habitat restoration area as a model for ongoing efforts to rejuvenate two more river nodes within Phoenix. Each area presents a different puzzle to solve. A section called Rio Salado Oeste is pitted with sand and gravel mines feeding the construction industry with concrete and other building materials. The mining companies often have decades-long leases and many aren’t obligated to fill in the gaping holes they leave behind, making naturalist transformations here a long-term and complicated project.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Rio Salado
Downstream further still is a third section of river at Tres Rios. This is a lush patch of river and wetlands, rich with beavers, bobcats, blue herons, and other wildlife. The area is also overrun with salt cedar, a scrubby invasive plant species that sucks lots of water, hinders native habitat restoration, and adds to wildfire risks. As Tricia Balluff, environmental programs manager for Phoenix, told us, “Each of our habitat restoration areas has its own unique challenge, even though they all lead right into each other.”
Reviving Regionalism
In 2018, the late Senator John McCain sparked a new round of big-picture thinking around river restoration. McCain convened the leaders of six cities and two tribal nations who touch the Salt and Gila Rivers, as well as Maricopa County, and the Salt River Project. These partners agreed to collaborate on improving a 55-mile river corridor, from Buckeye to Mesa, including the land within two miles of the riverbank. To incubate the effort and keep dialogue moving forward, Arizona State University set up and staffed a planning initiative called Rio Reimagined.
Leaders of that initiative have been working to build relationships with federal, state, local, nonprofit, and private partners who own land or have other interests within the vast planning area. They’ve been studying river restoration efforts across the U.S., including urban waterways in Los Angeles and San Antonio, the city that first grabbed McCain’s attention. And they’ve been engaging community-based organizations in neighborhoods along the river corridor to ensure there’s a diversity of voices at the planning table.
Cecilia Riviere, with the ASU Rio Reimagined initiative, says this first phase has mostly been about laying groundwork and reigniting thinking about the river’s potential to bring the region together. “We’ve spent the first five years just creating the concept of Rio Reimagined as a regional effort,” she says, “and building the belief system of these local partners around it.”
There are a few immediate next steps. The first has to do with “active transportation” such as bicycling and walking along the river. The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), the region’s transportation planning body, has just begun an 18-month study of how to stitch existing trail segments into an interconnected regional network with links to nearby neighborhoods and transit. Riviere says a key learning from other river revitalization efforts in the U.S. is that trail projects can be catalytic, serving as “connective tissue” that expand access to the river and build new constituencies for change.
At the same time, MAG, ASU, and Greater Phoenix Leadership (GPL) are kicking off a process to build a vision around a regional plan for the whole 55-mile corridor. It starts with a scoping study, due this fall. Next comes a massive community engagement effort to develop the vision for what people across the Valley want to see the rivers become, and what financing mechanisms might pay for it.
Finally, another learning from other cities is that the most successful restoration efforts have a 501(c)(3) community impact organization either leading or assisting the effort. Greater Phoenix Leadership has stepped up to incubate such an organization, assembling a founding board of community leaders from the various jurisdictions to contribute to the visioning process, and advocating and raising funds for its implementation.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Rio Salado
“We’ve already heard from all the mayors,” Riviere says. “They’ve said scope it. We want it. We know this is such a massive underutilized asset. We are going to need something to help guide us. And we’re going to need an entity that is above and beyond our own territories. This can’t just be a city of Phoenix plan. It can’t just be a Gila River Indian Community plan. It’s how do we create something that’s contiguous and connected in multi-jurisdictional ways where it benefits everybody?”
Thinking Big and Small
The challenges ahead are substantial. Despite all the progress since 1987, large stretches of the Rio Salado still resemble the “jagged, ugly, dried out scar” Peirce saw 38 years ago. Mining operations in the riverbed will take decades to phase out. There are still numerous dump sites along the river. The patchwork of land ownership along the river makes coordination difficult. And while some of the cities and tribes have been reimagining their riverfront for years, others are basically starting from scratch.
On the other hand, leaders across the region today have the benefit of something that was missing in 1987: concrete examples of what the future can look like. Tempe’s template of a lakeside commercial, recreational and cultural center and Phoenix’s model of ecosystem restoration represent two strikingly different yet successful paths this work can take. Meanwhile, Valley leaders can take inspiration and ideas from how other cities around the world have developed new linear parks, such as New York City’s High Line, Atlanta’s Beltline, or Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon stream.
Leaders across the region today have the benefit of something that was missing in 1987: concrete examples of what the future can look like.
What’s more, the public supports this work. Gallup polling from the Center for the Future of Arizona’s “The Arizona We Want” report found that 92 percent of Maricopa County residents believe it is important or very important to preserve and protect rivers, natural areas, and wildlife. Some 80 percent support protecting and expanding open space for parks and outdoor recreation.
Valley planners will need to think big and small at the same time. While gaining buy-in for a bold regional vision is important, the river areas are too big and diverse to be the same thing to everyone in its path. What may emerge is a series of interconnected small plans, tailored to the needs and desires of the communities the river touches. To that end, Rio planners have identified a good model in Indianapolis, where a 50-mile restoration of the White River was carved into smaller “character reaches” or planning areas.
Near some of Rio Salado’s reaches, a fresh look at land use and zoning is in order. In many spots, the riverbanks are lined with big warehouses and industrial complexes — not ideal neighbors for a nature park. Redeveloping these areas over time with housing and other uses would better leverage public investments in river cleanup. It also could make these new parks, where one descends down into the terrain toward the river, feel safer to the people who use them.
The Peirce Report, Revisited: Rio Salado
Tempe Town Lake, circa 1998
Source: Tempe History Museum
Tempe Town Lake, circa 2017/2018
Source: Tim Roberts
There are many more unanswered questions. Who will pay for these projects? Will communities along the rivers support a new vision? Will mining companies and other powerful interests oppose it? And could local and state leaders get behind creating new authority around regional decision making? History suggests none of this will be easy, but also that obstacles can be overcome. Progress is already happening.
Questions for the Future
The Peirce Report, Revisited
This series was commissioned by Greater Phoenix Leadership (GPL) as an independent review of community progress of the last four decades, to better understand current status on critical issues, and identify areas of discussion regarding our shared future. GPL acknowledges and thanks the Neal Peirce Foundation and the Center for the Future of Arizona for their collaboration on this work as a component of the 50th Anniversary History Project recognizing the 1975 founding of the Phoenix 40, today known as GPL.
William Fulton is a journalist, author, and urban planner who has written about cities and regions for more than 35 years. He is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Urban Studies at UC San Diego, the editor and publisher of California Planning & Development Report, and the author of eight books about cities and urban planning. Bill has also served as Mayor of Ventura, California; Planning Director for the City of San Diego; and Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. He holds master’s degrees in Mass Communication from American University in Washington, D.C., and Urban Planning from UCLA. He serves on the board of the Neal Peirce Foundation.
Christopher Swope is a writer and editor specialized in city innovation and leadership. Chris has 30 years of journalism experience at NPR, Governing Magazine, and the Citiscope news service on urban innovation, which he managed alongside its founder, Neal Peirce. Chris has led wide-ranging storytelling initiatives for Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Pew Charitable Trusts, and lives in the Washington, D.C., area. He serves on the board of the Neal Peirce Foundation.
Sybil Francis, Ph.D., serves as the Chair, President & CEO of Center for the Future of Arizona (CFA). A member of the organization’s founding team, she brings her passion for creating positive change, her love of
Arizona, and her considerable prior national public policy experience to her leadership of CFA, whose mission is to bring Arizonans together to create a stronger and brighter future for our state.
Amanda Burke, Ed.D, is Executive Vice President of the Center for the Future of Arizona. Dr. Burke focuses on innovation and systemic change that will advance the priorities of Arizonans and the long-term future success of the state. She is responsible for the organization’s strategy, operations, and program leadership, including CFA’s statewide initiatives in the areas of education, workforce, and civic engagement.
The authors would like to thank the following people for their insights and other contributions to this report:
Tricia Balluff, Teniqua Broughton, Dr. Amanda Burke, Chris Camacho, Dr. Michael Crow, Mike DiDomenico, Ian Dowdy, Tommy Espinoza, Dr. Sybil Francis, Charley Freericks, Mayor Kate Gallego, Grady Gammage, Jr., Neil G. Giuliano, Terry Goddard, Dr. Steven R. Gonzalez, Max Hartgraves, Craig Hayton, Stephanie L. Herndon, Kevin Hilgers, Curtis Johnson, Holly Kurtz, Christine Mackay, Devney Majerle, Rich Nickel, Joe O’Reilly, Mary O’Reilly, Mayor Eric Orsborn, Andrea Peirce, Deidre Pfeiffer, Sarah Porter, Jim Pratt, Wellington “Duke” Reiter, Cecilia Riviere, Amy St. Peter, Chad Sampson, Todd Sanders, Scott Smith, Kathryn Sorensen, Kyle Squires, Maggie Soffel, Brent Stockwell, Greg Vogel, Mary Jo Waits, Andrea Whitsett, Ed
Zuercher.
The content of this report, in whole or part, may not be reproduced in any form without written consent of Greater Phoenix Leadership.
