Why does the US have huge cities in the desert?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

Large desert cities aren’t especially rare. Universally they are near some source of water like a river or a lake. Cairo, Tehran, and Karachi, and Lima are all bigger than Chicago and are all in various deserts. In fact, aside from Antarctica, which doesn’t have any cities, the only continent that doesn’t have a major city in a desert is Europe. Even then Almería is a decent sized city in Europe’s only desert (The Tabernas Desert)

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