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Old Posted Apr 9, 2019, 9:05 PM
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A More Vertical Skyline For Phoenix

Why Doesn't Downtown Phoenix Have More Skyscrapers?


April 8, 2019

By Grace Oldham



Read More: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...er/3332681002/

Quote:
.....

Joshua Bednarek, Phoenix's deputy director of planning, said multiple development factors ultimately led to a shorter skyline. One reason was the city's development around the automobile, Bednarek said. Phoenix is not a compact city. Currently, it covers about 520 square miles of land. "That is a much larger land area than cities like Chicago or Philadelphia or New York that developed around rail systems," Bednarek said. "Developing around the automobile allowed us to spread out more than other cities."

- Bednarek said the city developed a village system in the 1980s, spreading some of the city's height among multiple village cores. The plan to designate business hubs in each of the villages brought height outside of the center city, Bednarek said. Pockets of height and employment, such as at 24th Street and Camelback Road, are evidence of the cores designated in the 1980s. "The idea was that Phoenix would be this polycentric city, so we would have multiple city centers across this vast desert urban landscape instead of having it all concentrated in one place," Bednarek said. Today, the city has 15 urban villages. But not all of them developed as they were envisioned to in the 1980s. — Downtown has established itself as the hub of the polycentric system today much more so than in the past, he said. "I think we have gone into this new era of development with the light rail and all of the downtown investment," Bednarek said. "We have seen more investment in infrastructure and private investment downtown." Modifications to the zoning codes in downtown and along the light rail corridor in 2010 and 2015 encourage height development in the city's core, Bednarek said.

- While some height has always been allowed in the downtown corridor, the suburban-style parking standards and limitations to the number of units allowed in each development kept the buildings relatively shorter. Bednarek said taller buildings will continue to sprout up as more development happens downtown. "I think the code modifications have allowed those projects to move forward in a way that is a little easier than before and in line with what the community wants to see," Bednarek said. — Brian Farling, lead designer for Tempe-based Jones Studio architects, said the possibilities for creative developments are endless. "Phoenix is a young, adolescent city and it is getting more expensive and time-consuming to get across the Valley," Farling said. "As the city continues to grow, more high rises and extreme density will make sense and be more feasible." Jones Studio designed ASU's Beus Center for Law and Society building in and is currently working on the Thunderbird School for Global Management, another ASU building slated for downtown. "All of these bits of evolution and change will manifest in having some more creative and interesting buildings moving downtown," Farling said.

- Bednarek said residents will see more underutilized areas being developed with taller buildings, adding that the city is seeing a steady inflow of requests to develop more mixed-use walkable development. The downtown code (2010) and the walkable urban code (2015) encourage height in appropriate places, Bednarek said. While people can expect to see more height in the downtown corridor as the area continues to develop, Bednarek said they can count on it being in places where community members came together and agreed that they were OK with a taller development in that location. "Height can have a very positive impact on a city, but it has to be in the right place," Bednarek said. "Phoenix has done a great job of working with the city to identify the places height is appropriate we are not just doing height for the sake of height." — The Arizona Republic/azcentral's Valley 101, formerly Clay Thompson's two-decade series of columns, evolved into a podcast in February. Led by a new team on a new medium, the show seeks to celebrate what we love and answer what we want to know about the Valley of the Sun.

.....



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  #2  
Old Posted Apr 9, 2019, 9:44 PM
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i was under the impression that another big factor in phoenix's stubby skyline is the downtown's proximity to the airport and its runway approach paths.

that part of the equation seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 1:25 PM
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A few reasons:
1] Phoenix is a new city. 1950 the entire metro was just 375,000 and relatively isolated [it's now approaching 5 million].
2] Up until very recently, there was ample, easy to develop, flat non-desert agricultural land.
3] Early on, Phoenix was populated by midwesterners/easterners that fled urban decay. The last thing they wanted was to recreate it in the desert.
4] Phoenix has looked to L.A. for guidance and followed their mid century building example.
5] The airport is in Central Phoenix, making what is built, stubby and short.
6] Most downtowns occupy the most desirable, beautiful real estate of the metro, DT Phoenix does not, DT Phoenix is where it is due to the need to be close to a source of fresh water - canals and the now dammed and dried Salt River. In the modern world, this does not matter.
7] There was no reason to build tall towers in downtown when there was tons of open and better geographical setting to work and live, downtown died from 1960-2000.

*These trends have begun to reverse in the past 10-15 years.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 1:59 PM
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more people live in phoenix then in the state of oregon. i dont even want to know what thats like.

cities with 5+ mill need subways imo.

elon musk has a lot of tunneling to do.

Last edited by dubu; Apr 10, 2019 at 2:17 PM.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 2:43 PM
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The Phoenix metropolitan area has about 103 million square feet of office space in it. Divided by the 4.7 million people in its MSA, that's 22 sq ft per person. That's pretty low.

Compare that to the Denver metropolitan area, which has about 117 million square feet of office space total. Divided by the 2.9 million people in its MSA, that's 40 sq ft per person.

Or compare to Boston, which has an almost identical metro area population to Phoenix (4.8 million), but has 184 million square feet of office. That's 38 sq ft per person.

Or let's compare to another new city: Charlotte. Charlotte has 107 million square feet of office space and an MSA population of 2.5 million, for 43 sq ft per person.

Conclusion: It's not just that Phoenix is a new suburban city. Part of the answer here is that Phoenix has less office space than you'd expect for a metro area of its size. If Phoenix matched the office space per person rate of more office-oriented cities, it would have almost twice as much office space as it has.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 2:57 PM
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^ That's because there are a lot of retirees in Phoenix
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 3:42 PM
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i just realized you take off 175,673 because vancouver isnt in oregon, 4,190,713 + 175,673 = 4,366,386. thats almost 5 million i guess, putting that many people in one city doesnt make much sense too me. but ive never really owned a car though, maybe you get used to all those cars and always driving? its not like we have a choice, everyone has to do something to get money and a new city wont happen any time soon.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 3:54 PM
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Originally Posted by badrunner View Post
^ That's because there are a lot of retirees in Phoenix
It may be because the type of companies have do not need as much space per employee (some types of companies like tech/gov/energy seem to need more space for employees than other types). I think LA has a low amount of office space compared with population for the same reason. I think the main reasons are that Phoenix is a newer city, has a lot of space, and the general preference is to have multiple clusters of development, again like LA and even DFW.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:05 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
i was under the impression that another big factor in phoenix's stubby skyline is the downtown's proximity to the airport and its runway approach paths.

that part of the equation seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
It is a limiting factor but none of our buildings come close to hitting that limit.

The fact is Phoenix was built in a time when there was 0 desire for people moving into the area to live densely. Even now, supposedly progressively minded Tech Companies out of San Francisco open suburban office parks in Chandler instead of putting them downtown, despite downtown office rents being cheaper than anywhere in the Bay Area.

This has just now begun to change and there are currently a dozen buildings between 10-20 stories in various stages of construction and planning in DTN. but until maybe 5-10 years ago downtown was little more than a ghost town it was killed by development patterns in the 1960's and 70's and it took 50 years for that to change.

LA was much the same until the last 20 years or so, considered endlessly suburban, people avoided downtown LA like the plague,

Both cities developed in similar ways.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
The Phoenix metropolitan area has about 103 million square feet of office space in it. Divided by the 4.7 million people in its MSA, that's 22 sq ft per person. That's pretty low.

Compare that to the Denver metropolitan area, which has about 117 million square feet of office space total. Divided by the 2.9 million people in its MSA, that's 40 sq ft per person.

Or compare to Boston, which has an almost identical metro area population to Phoenix (4.8 million), but has 184 million square feet of office. That's 38 sq ft per person.

Or let's compare to another new city: Charlotte. Charlotte has 107 million square feet of office space and an MSA population of 2.5 million, for 43 sq ft per person.

Conclusion: It's not just that Phoenix is a new suburban city. Part of the answer here is that Phoenix has less office space than you'd expect for a metro area of its size. If Phoenix matched the office space per person rate of more office-oriented cities, it would have almost twice as much office space as it has.
There are a couple of strange oddities to the density calculation.

1. Phoenix has MASSIVE empty city parks in its mountain preserves that take up a huge amount of square milage and are counted as city land.

2. the northern 1/3 of the city limits is uninhabited desert (for now)

This makes the straight size/population calculation inaccurate, our density is actually quite on par with like LA or Dallas fofor the most part.

Furthermore Because downtown was so undesirable for so long, most of the offices located in Tempe, Scottsdale and Chandler.

Desirable close suburbs that have most of our upscale and high calss offices that would traditionally locate downtown.

Once again this is starting to change but you guys must understand that downtown was practially worse than non-existent for 5 decades.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:14 PM
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i think the fact that phoenix doesn't have a lot of office space (relative to its size) to begin with is a huge part of this. it's not like metro phoenix is unusually non-dense, either, as a whole. the office vacancy rate is also higher than some rustbelt cities, too. if it had a more-normal demand it would have more major office clusters, downtown and/or suburban.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:26 PM
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There is also a lot more skyscrapers than People think they are just spread out.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanenglish/1349078080







Our ill fated attempt to copy century city in LA back in the day resulted in a long string of random skyscrapers miles north of downtown, hard to find a picture that gets it all in a single shot.

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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:35 PM
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Originally Posted by DCReid View Post
It may be because the type of companies have do not need as much space per employee (some types of companies like tech/gov/energy seem to need more space for employees than other types). I think LA has a low amount of office space compared with population for the same reason. I think the main reasons are that Phoenix is a newer city, has a lot of space, and the general preference is to have multiple clusters of development, again like LA and even DFW.
There could be some truth to this, as Downtown LA for being a metro area of like 20 million has a small skyline relatively speaking.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:36 PM
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Originally Posted by dubu View Post
more people live in phoenix then in the state of oregon. i dont even want to know what thats like.

cities with 5+ mill need subways imo.

elon musk has a lot of tunneling to do.
We have a light rail ? But also there is some long term plans (collecting dust) for a commuter rail.

For now, since the city was built around cars traffic is actually very manageable in comparison with other major cities.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:41 PM
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Development is changing, but not fast enough for the likes of Jon Talton or most people on this forum.

I don't personally care about the height of the skyline (side note, I wish Valley Center's observation deck would be re-opened), I care about developing vacant lots throughout the central city and centralizing commerce in Downtown and Midtown as much as possible, which is difficult when having to compete with Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Scottsdale and Tempe for jobs.

It's going to take time, but patience is lacking.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
We have a light rail ? But also there is some long term plans (collecting dust) for a commuter rail.

For now, since the city was built around cars traffic is actually very manageable in comparison with other major cities.
most places up here isnt built very good for cars, i looked at the map of phoenix and they werent kidding its all a grid. that makes it easier for cars.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:46 PM
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I suspect Phoenix also has a higher share of logistics, warehouse and blue collar employment, and less of an office/corporate/HQ presence, relative to size.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 4:53 PM
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I suspect Phoenix also has a higher share of logistics, warehouse and blue collar employment, and less of an office/corporate/HQ presence, relative to size.
Actually I always thought our manufacturing was lacking (now expanding massively) thats a good thing though, having a strong blue collar base for the workforce is better overall.

Historically Phoenix had low wage general pop and a disproportionately large group of rich with a relatively small middle class.

I would say in the last 10 years you've seen that even into a more stable demographic profile.

Even our average age has fallen dramatically, the idea that its purely retirires is no longer true.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2019, 8:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dubu View Post
more people live in phoenix then in the state of oregon. i dont even want to know what thats like.

cities with 5+ mill need subways imo.

elon musk has a lot of tunneling to do.
You need density far in excess of what Phoenix has to support a subway. I live in Chicago but grew up in and around Portland. I haven't owned a car since 1999. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Philly are good places to live without cars. There is a second tier of about ten cities where it's possible but not as easy as those and after that it drops of rapidly for large metros. College towns are decent after that.

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There is also a lot more skyscrapers than People think they are just spread out.
...
Might be semantics, but I wouldn't call any of those buildings skyscrapers. Just high-rises and in some cases, mid-rises.
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Old Posted Apr 11, 2019, 12:48 AM
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emathis, + DC for the "doable without a car" group?
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