Phoenix Is a Survivor

This City in the Sonoran Desert Is an Old Hand at Grappling with Its Thirst for Water and Electricity

The fact that people question Phoenix’s existence has been good for the city. That was the headline lesson from Tuesday night’s Zócalo/ASU College of Public Service & Community Solutions event, “Should Phoenix Exist?”

Before a full house at the Heard Museum, New York University historian Andrew Needham, author of Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest, suggested that Phoenix had an advantage when it comes to questions of urban sustainability. The city couldn’t have grown as it did after the Second World War without reckoning with its desert …