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Slje JfeHr Mark eim <br />pynghl 1Q9« T!if New York Timei SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1996 Printed in <br />9TM*•r- •vr- • ♦ •'' <br />Jeff To^iptng lor The hew York Times <br />A part of Scottsdale. Ariz.. that was desert six years ago has given way to a shopping center and housing. <br />Urban Sprawl Strains Western States <br />100 perceni urban <br />WIST <br />By TIMOTHY EGAN <br />CAREFREE. Ariz. — The plane <br />dips below the brown cloud and <br />lands m the urban heart of the <br />American Southwest: hope, com­ <br />merce and chaos stretched to the <br />horizon in the Sonoran Desert. Con­ <br />suming land at the rate of an acre <br />an hour, metropolitan Phoenix - <br />and its new frontiers like Carefree <br />— is now bigger than Delaware. <br />You drive to Scottsdale, a gangly <br />suburb. It is brimming with p" )s- <br />perity, resorts and lawyers in tank- <br />tops doing business by cellular <br />phone in the shade of saguaro cacti. <br />In 1950, barely 2.000 people lived <br />on the single square mile that was <br />Scottsdale; today it is three times <br />the physical size of San Francisco. <br />BECOMING LOS ANGELES <br />First of two articles. <br />with 165.000 people. <br />After coursing through traffic for <br />nearly an hour, you arrive at the <br />edge of the megalopolis. Here the <br />desert buckles up toward national <br />forest land, in the sweet-smelling <br />exurb of Carefree. Developers are <br />scraping away mesquite and palo- <br />verde. replacing them with signs <br />offering “one-acre lots In a future <br />gated community “ <br />But after years of being re­ <br />strained only by how fast it could <br />pour concrete. Phoenix may finally <br />be reaching its limit. <br />The air is so bad at times that <br />people who came to the desert <br />seeking good health are warned to <br />stay indoors While some schools <br />have swimming pools, others are <br />short of textbooks and a Federal <br />court has ordered the system to get <br />more state financing. And some­ <br />thing called "the inner city." built <br />about 30 years ago. is an urban <br />orphan — denounced for its crime, <br />racial conflict and abandonment. <br />It was not supposed to be this <br />way. this early. Phoenix, like other <br />Western cities swollen with Califor­ <br />nia exiles, has matured under a <br />mantra that it would not become <br />another Los Angeles — an all-pur- <br />Continued on Pufie 14, Column I <br />30 <br />20 <br />10 <br />■^0 <br />0 r <br />^940 50 60 70 -80 *90 <br />The Bureau aeiines uroan as <br />Cities V nacies Dorouqns ana <br />towns ^'in at leasi 2 500 peoD'e <br />or outivmg areas with at 'east <br />1 000 oeoDie oer square mne <br />The New York Times