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- All Subjects: Suburbs
- Creators: Vandermeer, Philip
Description
Tempe political and business leaders implemented a series of strategies, composed of interconnected economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the city's growth over time. Influenced by a new economic opportunities and challenges, changing ideas about redevelopment and the role of suburbs, and Tempe's own growth issues after 1960, Tempe leaders and citizens formed a distinct vision for downtown redevelopment. Modified over time, the redevelopment strategy depended on effective planning and financing, public-private collaboration, citizen participation, and a revised perception of growth. After 1980, the strategy gained momentum enabling leaders to expand their ambitions for downtown. Redevelopment manifested through riverfront redevelopment, art and culture, and historic preservation redirecting the city's growth, creating economic development, and revitalizing downtown as Tempe began flourishing as a mature supersuburb. The strategy showed considerable economic success by 2012 and the completion of the Rio Salado Project, the Tempe Center for the Arts, and the preservation of the Hayden Flour Mill made downtown an attractive and diverse urban destination.
ContributorsGerszewski, Alyssa Danielle (Author) / Vandermeer, Philip (Thesis advisor) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Historians typically view the postwar suburban metropolis from one of two vantages: from the vantage of urban capital as it flowed out of central cities into new automobile suburbs, where a new suburban culture emerged and flourished after 1945, or from the vantage of central cities, which become progressively hollowed out, leaving behind badly deteriorated inner-city services and facilities. Rarely, however, do historians view the postwar suburban metropolis from the vantage of peripheral small towns and rural countrysides. This study looks at the “metropolitan revolution” from the outside in, as the metropolis approached and then absorbed a landscape of farms and ranches centered on a small farm-service town. As a case study, it focuses on Tempe, Arizona, a town and rural countryside eight miles east of Phoenix.
During the postwar period, Tempe became part of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Agricultural production in Tempe yielded to suburban development, as a producer-oriented landscape of farms and ranches became a consumer-oriented landscape of residential subdivisions and university buildings. Intangible goods such as higher education eclipsed tangible goods such as grain, dairy, and cotton. Single-family houses supplanted farmland; shopping centers with parking lots undermined main street businesses; irrigation water became domestic water; and International-style university buildings displaced vernacular neighborhoods rooted in the early history of the settlement. In Tempe, the rural agricultural landscape gave way to a suburban landscape. But in important ways, the former shaped the latter, as the suburban metropolis inherited the underlying form and spatial relationships of farms and ranches.
During the postwar period, Tempe became part of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Agricultural production in Tempe yielded to suburban development, as a producer-oriented landscape of farms and ranches became a consumer-oriented landscape of residential subdivisions and university buildings. Intangible goods such as higher education eclipsed tangible goods such as grain, dairy, and cotton. Single-family houses supplanted farmland; shopping centers with parking lots undermined main street businesses; irrigation water became domestic water; and International-style university buildings displaced vernacular neighborhoods rooted in the early history of the settlement. In Tempe, the rural agricultural landscape gave way to a suburban landscape. But in important ways, the former shaped the latter, as the suburban metropolis inherited the underlying form and spatial relationships of farms and ranches.
ContributorsHallam, Nathan (Author) / Vandermeer, Philip (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Karen (Committee member) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016