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  #41  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2014, 6:12 AM
Leo the Dog Leo the Dog is offline
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Scottsdale has a split personality. North Scottsdale is quite rural with open lands, housing developments with big houses on large lots, strong NIMBYism.

South Scottsdale, has higher population densities, older tract homes, more crime, but more accepting of transit and development.

Old Town is really exciting right now. Unbelievable how much development is going on there right now. Many bars/clubs are reinventing themselves and very large urban developments are underway east of Scottsdale, south of Camelback.
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  #42  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2014, 6:56 AM
Jjs5056 Jjs5056 is offline
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Originally Posted by Leo the Dog View Post
Scottsdale has a split personality. North Scottsdale is quite rural with open lands, housing developments with big houses on large lots, strong NIMBYism.

South Scottsdale, has higher population densities, older tract homes, more crime, but more accepting of transit and development.

Old Town is really exciting right now. Unbelievable how much development is going on there right now. Many bars/clubs are reinventing themselves and very large urban developments are underway east of Scottsdale, south of Camelback.
Yea, the Old Town proposals and developments are the best in the Valley right now, IMO. They're denser and taller than anything in Phoenix, and most of the residential is condo vs. rental as compared with Tempe.

It gets a bad reputation because of North Scottsdale and because of its lack of height overall, but downtown Scottsdale is overall pretty impressive. It's just too bad about the immediate area around the mall: the fact that the mall is enclosed with suburban-style parking, and the empty lots near Safari Drive, which will fill up in time, but for now, leaves a pretty large hole in the streetscape.
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  #43  
Old Posted Dec 6, 2014, 7:00 PM
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xzmattzx xzmattzx is offline
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Just wanted to let everyone know that I am working on my next Arizona photothread. I hope everyone liked the Scottsdale pictures!

After talking with PHX31, I've decided to ask a few more questions. I'm seeing if I can plan a return trip by summer.


~ How far of a drive is it to Tucson? Yuma? Bisbee? I know there’s Google, but sometimes I can beat it a little bit, and sometimes I can’t.
~ What is the best Mexican border town to visit? Mexicali, while farther away, is an estado capital, which seems like a good place to start, but I don’t know. What about Nogales? Or, the towns across the border in either estado? How would you rate the safety of any/all of the border towns? Is any safe enough to go into?
~ We talked about Jerome, but are there any ghost towns that are fairly accessible and are not tourist traps? Jerome is still inhabited; Oatman appears to have been discovered, based on comments on Google and things on Google Earth; and places like Chloride don’t seem to be ghost towns, more than they are old mining towns. Any place not inhabited? Any place that is stuck in time?
~ Is there a map of Phoenix neighborhoods? I know of a bunch, including some mentioned here, like Encanto, Willo Park, Palmcroft, and a couple other neighborhoods, and I know about some other neighborhoods outside of the CBD area, like the Biltmore District, Arcadia, and the Camelback Corridor. Google and Bing Maps sometimes are cloudy on neighborhoods, since they now seem to label apartment complexes and places like that.
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  #44  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2014, 2:25 PM
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Let me entice you guys to respond to my questions with some Grand Canyon panoramas that I put together:








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  #45  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2014, 6:14 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xzmattzx View Post
Just wanted to let everyone know that I am working on my next Arizona photothread. I hope everyone liked the Scottsdale pictures!

After talking with PHX31, I've decided to ask a few more questions. I'm seeing if I can plan a return trip by summer.


~ How far of a drive is it to Tucson? Yuma? Bisbee? I know there’s Google, but sometimes I can beat it a little bit, and sometimes I can’t.
~ What is the best Mexican border town to visit? Mexicali, while farther away, is an estado capital, which seems like a good place to start, but I don’t know. What about Nogales? Or, the towns across the border in either estado? How would you rate the safety of any/all of the border towns? Is any safe enough to go into?
~ We talked about Jerome, but are there any ghost towns that are fairly accessible and are not tourist traps? Jerome is still inhabited; Oatman appears to have been discovered, based on comments on Google and things on Google Earth; and places like Chloride don’t seem to be ghost towns, more than they are old mining towns. Any place not inhabited? Any place that is stuck in time?
~ Is there a map of Phoenix neighborhoods? I know of a bunch, including some mentioned here, like Encanto, Willo Park, Palmcroft, and a couple other neighborhoods, and I know about some other neighborhoods outside of the CBD area, like the Biltmore District, Arcadia, and the Camelback Corridor. Google and Bing Maps sometimes are cloudy on neighborhoods, since they now seem to label apartment complexes and places like that.
Nice pictures of the Grand Canyon! Although as you probably know, pictures can never do it justice.

Tucson is about 1.5 hours away, a pretty easy drive right down I-10 (although it sucks to drive that stretch, and can actually be pretty dangerous with all of the semi-trucks and you surely don't want to be caught driving down there during a dust storm). Yuma is maybe a little under 3 hours. Bisbee, I'm not entirely sure, maybe 3+ hours?

Mexican border towns (actually in Mexico) = meh for me. So I can't be a good resource on that subject, maybe someone else can. However, if I were to go to a border town in Arizona I would go to Douglas (not far from Bisbee). I don't have much experience in this regard though, it just seems like Douglas would be the nicest and most interesting to me.

Others might be better to speak on the subject of ghost towns, but I'm sure there are some out there. I would think there are some interesting places in NW and SE Arizona. But yeah, mostly old mining towns that are still inhabited, although are still pretty cool, Clifton, Globe/Miami, etc.

Here is a map of Phoenix's historic districts:
https://www.phoenix.gov/pddsite/Page...mapshpres.aspx
You touched on some of the bigger and more popular/established ones already. Willo, Roosevelt, Encanto-Palmcroft, FQ Story are the ones with the most "money" and wealth. A lot of the houses have been renovated and are some of the best and oldest in Phoenix (early 1900s-1930s).
Others like Coronado and Garfield are more "up and coming" although still gritty in areas and started off more blue-collar/streetcar suburbs (same age, just started out with less money). They are currently home to more hipsters and diversity and also have quite a few places of interest (bars/restaurants/etc) popping up. Coronado is probably the best mix of all, including some nice houses/more money, and close enough to light rail (and there are a couple of the new bike share stations within the neighborhood). Although not as ultimately desirable and expensive as the others mentioned above.

North Central Phoenix is probably the "hottest" area of the central city, IMO, although I'm not sure of any real neighborhood designations, it's mostly just referred to as North Central Phoenix. This may include Arcadia, but the "hot" area really stretches from Indian School Road-ish north to Northern-ish, near Central Ave east to 40th Street-ish (and maybe even beyond). There are so many new, cool, and just good bars and restaurants and hang out places. It's more of the gay area of town (although someone else might have more insight on the actual specific gayborhoods), but really just young to middle aged professionals (25-45 year olds would feel welcome at any of the hot spots, whereas Tempe or even Scottsdale clubs might trend more college aged). The neighborhoods are really nice from the mid-century, green, leafy (by Phoenix standards) and a lot of the best Mid-Century Modern houses, apartment complexes, and buildings and areas are there.

Last edited by PHX31; Dec 11, 2014 at 6:31 PM.
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  #46  
Old Posted Dec 15, 2014, 4:23 PM
Leo the Dog Leo the Dog is offline
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Regarding Mexican border towns, I would skip most of these. I have been to Nogales, Sonoyta, Naco. There's been a lot of cartel drug and human smuggling here, really not impressed with these border towns.

If you're considering going to Mexicali-Calexico, you may as well just fly into San Diego, take the trolley to San Ysidro border crossing, walk across the border and check out Tijuana.

Then drive on the 8 freeway to Southern AZ. Mexicali will be around 110 in the summer, Tijuana 75-80.
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  #47  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2014, 5:05 PM
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xzmattzx xzmattzx is offline
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I was planning on visiting Tijuana in 2009 when I was in San Diego, but the State Department issued a travel warning to military members to not go into Tijuana. That was enough for me to decide that it was too dangerous to go over there. Is it still dangerous there? Is there any travel ban/warning still in effect?

Is there any town in Mexico on the border next to any state at all that is safe and worth seeing for a day? Any place near the border, as well?
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  #48  
Old Posted Jan 14, 2015, 4:51 AM
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xzmattzx xzmattzx is offline
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While I work on my pictures of Flagstaff and elsewhere, here's an ongoing account of my trip:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=215176
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  #49  
Old Posted Feb 11, 2015, 3:11 PM
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Are there websites, links, PDFs, etc of neighborhoods in Phoenix (and Scottsdale, Tempe, and other cities in the valley)? Not just historic neighborhoods, but a map of every place in the common vernacular?
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  #50  
Old Posted Feb 11, 2015, 5:16 PM
Jjs5056 Jjs5056 is offline
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Originally Posted by xzmattzx View Post
Are there websites, links, PDFs, etc of neighborhoods in Phoenix (and Scottsdale, Tempe, and other cities in the valley)? Not just historic neighborhoods, but a map of every place in the common vernacular?
More detailed than you'd probably ever need:
http://emvis.net/~sean/ssp/126_neigh...of_phoenix.png

Urban villages map, which doesn't necessarily match the native vernacular:
http://freegeographytools.com/wp-con...01/phoenix.gif
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  #51  
Old Posted Feb 11, 2015, 5:58 PM
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There aren't many neighborhood designations in the common vernacular. The City has tried fragmenting neighborhoods into names, but I guarantee you no one in the entire metro area knows where "New Village" is located. In general the whole city name is typically used, sometimes with a direction added (ie, South Scottsdale vs North Scottsdale, or South Tempe). There are a few, and I would say these are the most common (disregarding from the historic neighborhoods) :

Neighborhood name / location

Sunnyslope / (north phoenix)
Maryvale / (west phoenix)
Arcadia / (NE central phoenix)
Ahwatukee / (south phoenix on the other side of south mountain)
Anthem / (far far north phoenix)

Then there are some that are possibly less common in the city as a whole, but may be more localized. Some follow housing/development names that are big and may have morphed into their own "area":

Arrowhead / (northwest Phoenix & north Glendale)
Desert Ridge / (northeast Phoenix)
DC Ranch (among others) / (North Scottsdale)

One pretty common blanket way people describe the city is "Westside" vs "Eastside". It's not all that creative, but it comes with connotations. The westside has a more negative connotation for most as it's the grittier/poorer/more diverse/more crime area relatively speaking. The eastside is typically thought of as "better"/richer/etc. and lumps in all of the suburbs like Scottsdale/Chandler/Tempe/Mesa/Gilbert.
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