Making Sense of Place Film Series A documentary film and educational outreach project launched by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Making Sense of Place – Phoenix: The Urban Desert

Desert Environment and Preservation

Quotes From the Film | Commentary by James P. Burke | Lincoln Institute Publications | Related Links and Resources

Quotes From the Film

". . . Look at this land. It's magnificent, and it sells just like that. If we pave over every bit of this, we have lost our history, we have lost our connection to nature, we have lost our escape from urban pressures, and we have lost our soul."
--Carla, Executive Director, McDowell Sonoran Land Trust

"The Sonoran Desert is the second most diverse ecosystem on Earth. We have more plant and animal species here than anywhere else on Earth, except the rainforest. . . .So that's why we talk about the developers all the time, and give them such a bad time. Because once they develop this little desert, it's gone, and a whole ecosystem goes with it that can never be replaced and exists nowhere else."
--Tom Tucker, Walk Softly Tours

"The desert is the essential magic of Phoenix. And we have the most spectacular and beautiful desert in the world."
--Grady Gammage, Land Use Attorney

Commentary by James P. Burke
Deputy Parks and Recreation Director, City of Phoenix

Preservation in a Desert City

Over the last 80 years the City of Phoenix has been actively involved in desert preservation. During the 1920s, 1,300 original acres of South Mountain Park, now 26,000 acres and the largest municipal park in the country, were set aside seven miles outside the city limits. In the 1960s, the icon of the valley, Camelback Mountain, was acquired through a purchase and donations. In the 1970s, the Phoenix Mountains Preserve was created and now includes 7,500 acres and the most highly used summit trail in the country. In a city of converted orchards and alfalfa fields, all of these preserve properties represent the upland Sonoran Desert community of Saguaro Cactus and Palo Verde trees. All of these efforts have in common one central theme: citizen activists drove the process and brought city leadership on board for implementation. Funded mostly by general obligation bonds, the desert preservation programs took decades to accomplish. Today, these parks and preserves are surrounded by development and provide visual relief for the entire Valley of the Sun and an estimated three million visitors each year.

In the mid 1990s, citizens again began calling for an expanded preserve as Phoenix's growth and development pushed out towards previously undisturbed desert lands. The mayor and city council responded and directed city staff to develop a community planning process and partner with Arizona State University (A.S.U.) School of Planning and Landscape Architecture. Over five years of field research and public outreach led to the Sonoran Preserve Master Plan being adopted in 1998. Almost 80 percent of voters approved a sales tax in 1999 to fund acquisition for this plan.
Today, the city has set aside over 3,000 additional acres. The difference is that these lands are a mixture of upland and lowland Sonoran Desert, hillsides, washes, and creosote flats and the lessons of previous acquisition efforts have been applied. Public access, urban form, neighborhood design, and recreational values are balanced with preservation and wildlife habitat goals.
Edge treatment is the latest effort in which the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department has taken the lead. Rather than focusing on the outer fringe of urban development and its impact on rural landscapes, edge treatment focuses on the line between suburban subdivision and public preserves within the city. Again, we turned to our colleagues at A.S.U. and after several years of stakeholder and community involvement have completed an interdisciplinary design studio report on Exploring the Edge. With this in hand, the city has launched a set of design guidelines that will influence how the city is to be built, how people will live, work, and access their preserves.
The ultimate goal is to create a desert city; one that is special and unique to this region and not just allow another city to be built on the desert. Edge treatment has raised questions and concerns, but has been embraced by the design community, the environmental community, and even the development community is starting to recognize the value of these guidelines. In Phoenix protecting habitat, open space, recreational lands, and influencing urban form and subdivision design are not mutually exclusive.

Lincoln Institute Publications

Dealing with Change in the Connecticut River Valley
Author(s): Yaro, Robert, Randall G. Arendt, Harry L. Dodson and Elizabeth A. Brabec
Publication Date: June 1988

Using Assisted Negotiation to Settle Land Use Disputes
Author(s): Susskind, Lawrence and the Consensus Building Institute
Publication Date: July 1999

Managing Land As Ecosystem and Economy
Editor(s): Ingerson, Alice E.
Publication Date: November 1995

Mediating Land Use Disputes
Author(s): Susskind, Lawrence, Mieke van der Wansem and Armand Ciccarelli
Publication Date: April 2000

Open Space Conservation
Author(s): Tibbetts, John
Publication Date: February 1998

A Methodology for Valuing Town Conservation Land
Editor(s): Brown, Pamela J. and Charles J. Fausold
Publication Date: January 1998

Public Values and Conservation Land
Editor(s): Fausold, Charles J.
Publication Date: September 1999

Land and Biodiversity Conservation
Editor(s): Levitt, James N.
Publication Date: July 2002

Transfer of Development Rights for Balanced Development
Author(s): Lane, Robert
Publication Date: March 1998

The Economic Value of Open Space
Author(s): Fausold, Charles J. and Robert J. Lilieholm
Publication Date: September 1996

Buffers and Natural Areas
Author(s): Lilieholm, Robert J. and Aaron R. Kelson
Publication Date: January 1996