The same people who are making decisions today are some of the same people who fought against “The Man” in decades past. How do they feel about being the ones in power now? Are they happy with where we’ve come to?

I got to thinking about this when I went to the Cityscape topping off event downtown last month, which followed the news that Cityscape was going to have all locally owned establishments as tenants. This was great news for Arizona. Purchasing locally provides as much as 75% more tax revenue for our state.

It was a testament to the many people who communicated to the Cityscape planners to remind them that to support local businesses. I wonder if if Cityscape developers, Red Development, pushed for local tenants because their planned franchisees bailed on the project, or because they really wanted local ownership.

So, as I watched the proceedings and tried not to sweat too much, I got to thinking about all those folks who have been working at Phoenix redevelopment since the 1980s or before.

These folks got started in a time when politics in Phoenix was dominated by the mysterious “Phoenix 40,” only a few years after Don Boles was assassinated outside the Clarendon Hotel for exposing mob connections around town. (Read more about that group here.)

What was it like to “come up” in that time? What did they fight against? What are the parallels and lessons for today? Is the downtown they see today what they were hoping for almost 30 years ago?

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The city of Phoenix is working on a new General Plan. They do a new plan every ten years. Their last one was adopted in 2001. See here for a little history.

City general plans were required under “Growing Smarter”. This was former Governor Hull’s very weak attempt in 1998 to pretend to think about actually preventing sprawl in Arizona.

Of course, she was forced in to this by all the pressure from the environmental community, which at the time had a public initiative that was going to limit sprawl. Growing Smarter was such a weak document, in large part, because of the strangle-hold that developers have on this state. But, I digress.

The City of Phoenix General Plan, while not preventing sprawl, is actually a good way for regular folk to have a say in the direction of our city over the next ten years.

The good folks at the Downtown Phoenix Journal and Radiate Phoenix put on an event this week at which the city’s planning office staff took thoughts and ideas about the General Plan, as they get ready for the process of passing the next plan. It was a really great event.

I want to share one suggestion and one challenge with you and I’m asking for your support on both.

1) Shade. The old City General Plan suggested that every new parking lot should have “at least 51% shade coverage at maturity of tree.” In other words, if you look at the parking lot from the air when the trees are fully grown, you should see a maximum of 49% of that space in asphalt. When I was on the Encanto Village Planning Committee, this was my constant mantra. It got quite repetitive. Ask Councilman Simplot. He was on that committee when I was.

However, the problem is that this is just a suggestion. There is no ordinance that requires this. So, here we sit with higher summer and overnight temperatures. People drive around longer, emitting carbon, so that they can find any little bit of shade outside the regional Wal-Mart Super-Country.

Nobody seemed to have the necessary intestinal fortitude to stand up to developers and tell them what they need to do to preserve some semblance of livability in the valley. That is why the suggestion never became an ordinance.

Before the next General Plan comes out, this needs to be an ordinance, not the city government equivalent of a courteous suggestion over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

2) Wiki General Plan. The General Plan is a huge document. It was over 200 pages, as I recall. I remember getting a massive binder and our Village Planning Committee broke it in to bits to read over.

Let’s update that process. Wikipedia mastered the use of “crowdsourcing” to allow millions of people to report, suggest and check each other’s work. Universities, private industry and the government all use wiki site, which are really inexpensive to build and maintain, to allow a crowd of thousands of people to build things that are greater than the sum of their parts.

The City of Phoenix should demonstrate just how advanced it can be in this process. I guarantee that the city will get a much broader participation than it did in 2000, when only city staff and village planning committee members had the time to work on this.

The General Plan is perfect for this type of project. We can break it down in to its sections and subsections for review, comment and writing. The city can recruit volunteers to monitor each section’s postings to prevent spamming, etc.

Hey, maybe out of all of this we will create even stronger and broader connections in our community.

What do you think?

Call your city Councilman.

Sunnyslope is a little north of CenPho, but they are doing a great job of community building.

My friend Chritina Plante with John C. Lincoln Hospital, who helps out with the Sunnyslope Art Walk wants you to know that there is a call for art for their October 10th Art Walk.

The application deadline has been extended to September 11th.

Have a look at the Sunnyslope website for submission details.

If you missed it on my F.B. Fan Page, please have a look at this invite for the League of Conservation Voters new office opening.

If you did not miss it, this is your reminder. I really hope you can make it!

The League has recently moved its offices from Tempe to downtown Phoenix; specifically to 3rd Ave and Roosevelt.

We are proud of our new office as it stands as a symbol to the importance of dense growth as a way to conserve that which we have for so long neglected.

So, I am hosting a reception on August 27th to welcome our new Executive Director, Steve Arnquist and officially open our new office.

We are going to have some help from a very special guest on that day. Phillip Allsopp, the immediate past President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation will discuss the interplay between architecture, density, growth and society health, something he calls Transpolis.

Far from being an academic discussion alone, this is an event that I hope will stimulate discussion among those of us who are working so hard to define how Phoenix will look in the next 50 years.

Beatrice Moore, one of our great arts leaders downtown, sent me this call for entries for the Trashy Sculpture Show.

This show will be hosted in the main room of the Bragg’s Pie Factory on Grand during the September 26th Grand Ave. Festival.

Works can hang from the rafters, be free standing, be attached to the walls, be attached to the parking lot fence or be hung from the trees in front of the building.  Work must be made primarily from trash or recycled materials.  Work will be exhibited through October.

I was thinking of submitting my 20-year old collection of used toothpaste tubes. They are my pride and joy.

This is going to be a great festival and a fun community-based show. I really look forward to it.

Here’s the document: Trashy Sculpture Show

I want to give a little shout-out to Tazmine and Paul over at Blooming Rock Developments. Have a look at this post about a renovation project that they did earlier this year. It demonstrates that even the most drab and uninspiring structures can be sharp, fresh and unique. Their project, 3 Palms, is over on Cheery Lynn, east of 16th St. They are in a great place to serve as a catalyst to residential property redevelopment.

I’m waiting for more photos of the work they did inside and some information on the costs and lessons from the project. I’ve seen inside, but you should, too. They did a great job of balancing modern and warm.

There is an intriguing situation playing out at the legislature, and I’m not talking about the budget.

A little background: In AZ, if you go in to foreclosure,  the bank takes back your property and sells it at a loss, they can’t come after you for the difference. The act of coming after you for the difference is called “deficiency.” Therefore, Arizona is an “anti-deficiency” state.

In other words, let’s say you bought a house for $200,000, but could not make the payments and the bank forecloses. They can only sell it for $150,000. They can’t come after you for the balance of $50,000.

That is why Arizona is such a great place to get a fresh start. We’ve been that way for a while. Banks don’t like it, but people do.

So, along comes freshman Republican Senator Steve Pierce, R-Prescott. He passes a bill that makes Arizona a deficiency state, so that banks can come get the balance from people. Well, actually, the bill allows deficiency only in those cases where the owner has owned the property for less than 6 months. He was trying to target people who flip houses.

Well, the bill has caused quite a few problems. Most importantly, it will encourage more foreclosures and bankruptcies. Here is why: Arizona has a relatively short foreclosure period (90 days). If banks know that all they have to do is wait out an owner in order to foreclose and still be able to go after the deficiency, then they are more likely to do that. This will impact more than just people who are flipping homes. This could impact all kinds of buyers, not just “flippers.”

So, the Arizona Association of Realtors (AAR), who did not see the implications when the bill first passed, have jumped in to action. They asked the governor to put the topic in the call for special session (which we are in now). They also convinced the original bill sponsor to advocate for the repeal of his own bill –a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me.  See the letter to the governor here.

So, now we are in a real pickle. The original bill goes in to effect on Sept. 30th of this year. Yet, despite several attempts, the AAR has not been able to get the repeal through the legislature. See the Arizona Republic article here.

What does this mean for you? Well, if the repeal does not go through, watch for more foreclosures starting in about December. I don’t expect a dramatic increase in foreclosures, but this will add to the mix. There will also be a suppression of investment purchases.

In my opinion, we’ve done well with anti-deficiency in Arizona. Sure, there are folks who should not be lending money. But, perhaps the banks should look inward to consider why they keep lending to people who default within six months of purchasing a property.

I encourage you to call your legislator and ask them to support a return to our traditional anti-deficiency status.

Stay tuned.

The folks over at Downtown Voices Coalition posted this yesterday.

Last month videographer Efrain Robles shot this time lapse video of downtown Phoenix as the sun sets and the traffic is heavy.

Phoenix Sunset from Efrain Robles on Vimeo.

The City of Phoenix today announced that Entrepreneur.com named out little town as one of the top ten best places in America to start a new business.

Like Las Vegas, some of this has to do with the very cheap rents that resulted from the commercial real estate market crash and the very low home ownership costs right now. See the article here.

But in poking around on that article, they had a very nice series on how to start your own business. This would have come in handy! Why didn’t anybody tell me that I should have done a logo first, before I started selling homes?

Still, useful…

The Advocacy Institute for Behavioral Health is accepting applications for the 2009 Eric Gilbertson Advocacy Institute for Behavioral Health.

The Training can help you broaden your skills in the area of behavioral health advocacy. There are 6 training days starting in September.

Learn more at the Foundation’s Website.