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Tempe experienced rapid growth in population and area from 1949 to 1975, stretching its resources thin and changing the character of the city. City boosters encouraged growth through the 1950s to safeguard Tempe’s borders against its larger neighbor, Phoenix. New residents moved to Tempe as it grew, expecting suburban amenities that the former agricultural supply town struggled to pay for and provide. After initially balking at taking responsibility for development of a park system, Tempe established a Parks and Recreation Department in 1958 and used parks as a main component in an evolving strategy for responding to rapid suburban growth. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Tempe pursued an ambitious goal of siting one park in each square mile of the city, planning for neighborhood parks to be paired with elementary schools and placed at the center of each Tempe neighborhood. The highly-publicized plan created a framework, based on the familiarity of public park spaces, that helped both long-time residents and recent transplants understand the new city form and participate in a changing community identity. As growth accelerated and subdivisions surged southward into the productive agricultural area that had driven Tempe’s economy for decades, the School-Park Policy faltered as a planning and community-building tool. Residents and city leaders struggled to reconcile the loss of agricultural land with the carefully maintained cultural narrative that connected Tempe to its frontier past, ultimately broadening the role of parks to address the needs of a changing city.
ContributorsSweeney, Jennifer (Author) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis advisor) / Gray, Susan (Committee member) / MacFadyen, Joshua (Committee member) / Smith, Jared (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This research investigates the biophysical and institutional mechanisms affecting the distribution of metals in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. To date, a long-term, interdisciplinary perspective on metal pollution in the region has been lacking. To address this gap, I integrated approaches from environmental chemistry, historical geography, and institutional economics to study the history of metal pollution in the desert. First, by analyzing the chemistry embodied in the sequentially-grown spines of long-lived cacti, I created a record of metal pollution that details biogeochemical trends in the desert since the 1980s. These data suggest that metal pollution is not simply a legacy of early industrialization. Instead, I found evidence of recent metal pollution in both the heart of the city and a remote, rural location. To understand how changing land uses may have contributed to this, I next explored the historical geography of industrialization in the desert. After identifying cities and mining districts as hot spots for airborne metals, I used a mixture of historical reports, maps, and memoirs to reconstruct the industrial history of these polluted landscapes. In the process, I identified three key transitions in the energy-metal nexus that drove the redistribution of metals from mineral deposits to urban communities. These transitions coincided with the Columbian exchange, the arrival of the railroads, and the economic restructuring that accompanied World War II. Finally, to determine how legal and political forces may be influencing the fate of metals, I studied the evolution of the rights and duties affecting metals in their various forms. This allowed me to track changes in the institutions regulating metals from the mining laws of the 19th century through their treatment as occupational and public health hazards in the 20th century. In the process, I show how Arizona’s environmental and resource institutions were often transformed by extra-territorial concerns. Ultimately, this created an institutional system that compartmentalizes metals and fails to appreciate their capacity to mobilize across legal and biophysical boundaries to accumulate in the environment. Long-term, interdisciplinary perspectives such as this are critical for untangling the complex web of elements and social relations transforming the modern world.
ContributorsHester, Cyrus M (Author) / Larson, Kelli L (Thesis advisor) / Laubichler, Manfred D (Thesis advisor) / MacFadyen, Joshua (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation explores the role transportation infrastructure played in regional and community development in northwestern Arizona from 1882 to 1989. Transportation infrastructure undergirds the economic viability and development of most American regions and communities. In northwestern Arizona, following a process familiar throughout the American West, the initial construction of railroad transportation infrastructure fundamentally transformed the area from sparsely populated space to an industrialized region centered on railroad created townsites. Although critical to regional development and growth, U.S. Route 66 was added well after the initial railroad period. In total, regional transformation occurred in four phases: Railroad, Route 66, I-40, and post-bypass. For regional residents, Route 66 was the most important phase transforming railroad created spaces into functional communities. Yet, despite maturing as communities, each of these towns also struggled with the same racial and class divides as the larger nation. From the early railroad period, through WW2, tourism was present in the region, but an ancillary part of the economy focused on visiting environmental attractions like the Grand Canyon. After WW2, it became more important as regional industrialism faded and traffic levels rose on Route 66. However, as long as Route 66 remained a primary highway, tourism retained its focus on the environment. As much as the construction of transportation infrastructure provided initial access to the region and founded towns, the later regional highway and railroad bypasses cut-off many of these communities from the source of their economic livelihood. Regional towns lucky enough to be integrated into the new interstate highway system like Kingman profited and grew; towns bypassed by the interstate and railroad withered and were forced to reinvent themselves to survive. This post-bypass reinvention took the form of a non-environmental focused mythic tourism connected to an emerging national Route 66 nostalgia movement that envisioned the lost Route 66 as representative of a better, more authentic America. The association with the national Route 66 nostalgia myth successfully attracted tourists but came at the cost of regional communities losing a more realistic understanding of their past and becoming disassociated from their previous community identity.
ContributorsMilowski, Daniel (Author) / Jones, Christopher (Thesis advisor) / Lim, Julian (Committee member) / MacFadyen, Joshua (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021