“Super” site sports super sprawl

You may be aware that there is a Big Game this weekend.  And it gives me an opportunity to shine a spotlight, er, make that floodlight, on one of our nation’s most sprawling areas.

Now, the Big Game involves a couple of professional football teams from New York and New England.  It being winter and all, I guess it makes sense to play the game (if it’s not such a blowout that it’s basically not a game at all) in the southwestern desert.  You won’t read me calling it anything here other than the Big Game because the name that 99% of the country uses is, of course, “a registered trademark of the National Football League” and, man, do they get rowdy when someone uses it without paying them.  Wouldn’t want to upset the corporate types who were enticed into paying for the right to associate themselves with the event and host, say, the Gatorade Training Camp, the VISA Field Goal Kick, the Chevy Roll Out, or the Pepsi Punt, Pass, and Kick competition.

So the Big Game is in Phoenix this year.  Or, not quite in Phoenix, since most anything you’ve ever heard of in the Phoenix metro area is really somewhere in its vast suburbs, in this case Glendale.  And I do mean vast:  New York Times reporter Timothy Egan observed over a decade ago that the place was already essentially the size of Delaware.  As we soon shall see, it's expanded since then.

Take a look at these four images of the Phoenix region.  They depict exactly the same section of land, at exactly the same scale, in 1950, 1974, 1990, and 2004, respectively, from top to bottom.  In the 1950 and 1974 images, the red area is the built area of the region; the green is agriculture.  The 1990 and 2006 images are satellite photos and self-explanatory.

There is a wonderful short video using these maps to show the transformation of the area year-by-year from 1912 to 2004, by the American Museum of Natural History, here.

Some facts about Phoenix:

• It is America’s second-fastest-growing city, after Las Vegas.
• In an average year, the temperature exceeds 100 degrees on 89 days.  It was over 150 days in one recent year.
• 93% of all trips are taken by car, with only 2.2% taken by public transportation.
• It is the largest US city without intercity rail service.
• It has the highest ratio of downtown parking spaces to downtown jobs in the country (and nearly twice the ratio of Los Angeles!).
• It ranks 7th among US metro areas in transportation spending per household.
• It ranks 10th among US metro areas in pedestrian fatalities as a portion of people walking.

As writer Catherine Getches put it, “the resulting sprawl is so expansive that it literally prevents travel on foot. Vast eight-lane roads stream past strip mall after strip mall, each shopping center flanked by stadium parking...Parking lots are so abundant they are often completely empty...Public transportation is barely a possibility. Subway? Not in my lifetime. Bus? Yes, but it hasn't kept up with the sprawl . . .” 

So, this eastern city boy will be quite content to watch the Big Game on TV, thanks.  As to the question of for whom I’ll be rooting, I sort of wish they both could lose win.  I’d like to see the Patriots’ glory season, with their quarterback who has led way too charmed a life, come to a bad end just to remind them that they are mortal.  But, if the Giants lose, and the Patriots do get to crown their record-breaking season, it will finally shut up those old grumps from the ’72 Dolphins who remain full of themselves over thirty years after the fact.  May the coin toss begin.