Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Phoenix, etc. I can understand part of the appeal (like Las Vegas), and it’s not like people haven’t lived in desert cities for millenia, but looking at them from Google Earth, they’re absolutely massive and sprawling. How can these places be viable to live in and grow so huge? What’s so appealing to them?
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Phoenix began as a farming and mining community, but it grew on the strength of industrial development during and after World War II. Albuquerque is primarily industrial thanks to a neighboring military base, with military development providing the same sort of seed. Vegas was a mix of industrial development (also thanks to the Air Force), proximity to the Hoover Dam, and legalized gambling in Nevada (which helped it become an entertainment hub).
In more modern times: land. Those areas (well, Vegas and Phoenix; Albequerque less so) have vast tracts of open, unused land around them that allows those cities to grow and expand very cheaply, unlike cities near the coast (particularly cities on the *west* coast, which are all surrounded by mountainous areas). That results in a low cost of living and doing business, which attracts businesses fleeing higher cost of living in coastal cities like New York or San Francisco.
Air conditioning. And in the case of Phoenix and Las Vegas, access to cheap power. Even Southern cities like Miami and Atlanta benefited from the proliferation of AC, and their population expanded rapidly in the least half of the 20th century.
2,000 years ago the indigenous people in the Phoenix area started building an extensive irrigation system making the land arable. Was actually flooding which collapsed the Hohokam society.
A couple addition things. One being that the trip west took a long time weeks even mo this depending on the size of the convoy so they would need to stop regularly to rest. Those rest stops would be around where you would have to stop and those stops would usually be relatively close to some water source. Over time those rest stops started becoming towns then the other things took over like cheap land/ “freedom” etc. Las Vegas specifically grew because of A. The Air Force base employing a lot of people and B. It was a town where anything goes (more or less) but other desert town sprung up because of mining
Air Conditioning. If somehow air conditioning vanished these places would empty out real quick.
Vegas was once just a middle of nowhere remote town that had next to nothing. It was a train stop on the way to Los Angeles for fuel and a hiding spot for criminals who were trying to keep a low profile since there was no local police or sheriffs. Then when the Hoover Dam began being built some Mafia opportunists started to open up casinos in Las Vegas. This would be a way for them to both earn and launder money easily since gambling was legalized very recently and only in Nevada at the time. Now as the population grew, a city was formed with basic services like police funded by taxes. This forced the mob investors to move their casinos just slightly outside the city into the unincorporated territory called Paradise Nevada which is right outside Vegas. Is technically next to it and surrounded by Vegas, but isn’t Vegas. They built their new fancier casinos there and it became known as the Vegas Strip despite not legally being in Vegas, allowing them to evade city police and use their own form of security and avoid taxes. They also sued several times when the city tried to absorb the area successfully so Paradise technically remains separate to this day. So the Vegas Strip, while located in the Las Vegas valley and being the city’s most famous attraction is not even part of the city. Nowadays with big corporations running the casinos instead of Italian gangsters, the area functions seamlessly with the rest of the city and cops do exist there. It’s still separate though.
Good question. Was thinking the same (but opposite) about Australia. We have a vast central desert but no significant cities and no one would want to live there if there was. I guess if we’d had massive subsidies in the form of huge military bases then maybe Alice Springs would be a million person metropolis but I can’t see it.
Currently in Phoenix. The main driver here according to those who live here is the houses are actually empty half the year. Many are a second house owned by people in WA or other northern states. They come here in the winter when the weather is really nice, and the cold is fairly mild. Obviously this isn’t all of them but that is apparently why things keep growing, all th money the the 2+ houses folks bring in is significant.
There’s the Colorado river which provides water to the area but it’s gonna run dry sometime this century
My ex’s grandmother and her family moved to Albuquerque because she had tuberculosis and at the time the only treatment for it was a dry climate. Because it was a desert area, there was also less pollen that could be a problem. That’s changed with the increase in population. More people moving there meant they also wanted plants they were familiar with and those introduced species needed water and produced pollens.
Back in the 80s my FIL said the city was on top of an aquifer and they would never run out of water. I don’t think that’s the case now.
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