A look into SW Valley's crystal ball
Future appears full of non-stop development

Christine L. Romero
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 1, 2006 12:00 AM

It's impossible to know what the next 100 years hold for the Southwest Valley.

It would have been unthinkable a century ago for the people living here then to know what the area would become in 2006. Homes are sprouting out of the land that once grew cotton and before that was open desert.

Even the most recent data created and collected by the Maricopa Association of Governments for regional planning purposes is out of date. The association is working to update its records, and it's widely acknowledged within the municipalities that MAG's data, albeit recent, is behind the times. Consider this:

• The Greater Phoenix Economic Council pegs Buckeye's 2004 population around 14,500 while town officials believe it's now closer to 35,000.

• The most recent and long-term figures peg Goodyear's 2030 population (now about 42,000 residents) and Buckeye's at around 330,000 and 380,000, respectively.

• Planners expect Avondale, now with about 62,000 residents, to weigh in with about 160,000 people in 2030.

MAG is using the newest census data and other information to help create its projections, which are expected in September or October.

Scottsdale architect and urban planner Vern Swaback says the Valley's future in another hundred years is hard to visualize.

"If you were to back up a hundred years . . . what exists here today would have been equally unimaginable," Swaback said.

No one could imagine the freeways would max out with a growing number of vehicles pouring into the already packed lanes. And that local leaders would be fighting for accelerated expansion ahead of the region's plans.

Swaback expects less commuting and more interplay between living, open and working spaces.

One example of this is seen in large cities like New York and Chicago, where there is living space above shopping space.

"There's no such thing as finished," Swaback said. "It's constant change and a work in progress."

Swaback has authored several books, including Designing With Nature, which examines the future of urban sprawl.

Take Buckeye as a case study. It took the Phoenix-metro area about 50 years to grow to its current size and scope. Swaback expects Buckeye's growth will zoom ahead and expand with that kind of fever in about a decade.

"We definitely become happy when we are the fifth-largest city," Swaback said. "One has to ask why that should be something we even notice. People are moving here on automatic pilot. It has nothing to do with what anybody has done."

Years ago, planners believed the metro area would best be based on an "Urban Village Model," meaning the area would have many areas of concentrated population and shopping rather than one traditional downtown model. The Valley's shopping centers now sit at the center of many of these urban villages, and growth continues concentrating around these centers.

Swaback envisions a network and nodes of high density, but he expects the landscape to evolve.

"If our economy in the future depends as heavily on growth as it does now, you are talking about growth in the form of cancer," he said. "The future is unknown and unknowable. That's what the futurists have always said."