Settlement, Growth, and Water Security for Southwest Cities - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 440

these cities exposed the fault in the economies of southwestern cities—an overreliance
on growth and development activities for sustaining the economy. Overall, this may be a
good thing if community leaders take the time to examine options to restore balance to the
urban environment. The lessons learned from this and past cycles of boom and bust can
provide lessons to put forth a new vision that will sustain the region with solutions that
better serve the residents of southwestern desert cities.
This chapter will describe the process of urbanization in the southwestern cities of El Paso,
Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tucson from their natural environments to their
current metropolitan settings. In particular, the need for securing water for these growing
cities is a fundamental concern to provide a sustainable future for growth and development.
Much like a living organism, without adequate water, cities will not grow to their full
potential. In summary, this chapter will provide a snapshot of these urban centers in their
founding, development, and efforts to balance growth, water security, and conservation.
26.2 Background
While the European settlers were busy building up the eastern and midwestern urban
communities of the United States, the desert Southwest was largely an uninhabited region.
This rugged desert landscape has been molded by the natural hydrologic and climatic
cycles, which always seems to restore the land to a state created by the thousands of years
of navigating a delicate balance of hydrologic processes and climate. Over the last century,
this fragile landscape has turned into some of the most intensely developed areas in the
United States. The Southwest urban center of El Paso, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix,
and Tucson has evolved over time to balance the struggles between life and death of the
biotic communities. This rapid pace of development brings to mind a concern about the pro-
cess of urbanization, which often irreversibly alters the complexity of the natural setting.
The Southwest desert region was once a highly desirable place to live for people with
health problems or those seeking a place with a closer connection to nature. By the turn
of the twentieth century, the quality of life of southwestern cities was once the highest
marketing aspect of the region for health seekers. Today, people move to the Southwest for
jobs, reasonable land values and affordable housing, among other factors. Urban sprawl
has altered an environment that once featured clean, dry desert air to one that has deterio-
rated to the point that the quality of the air can be detrimental for people with poor health
to live without discomfort in the urban centers.
Growth and development are expanding the land area of urban cities from the conversion
of native desert or agricultural land to urban developments. Urbanization is an irrevers-
ible process of transformation from the natural to the built environment. In his topic
entitled Urban Society: An Ecological Approach , Hawkley states that “movement from the
simple, highly localized unit to the complex and territorially extended system is a growth
process. We use the term urbanization to refer to that process.” 1 Southwest cities are now
rapidly expanding into their urbanization process faster than most people could have
previously imagined. While some older, industrialized cities in the East and Midwest are
experiencing decline in population and vitality, Sunbelt cities are blessed with newfound
prosperity and development. Growth is not always achieved from the most noble and eco-
logically sound reasons. Speculation and profit have been drivers of Western land devel-
opment for many decades. Some cities have actively taken on the community's role in