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?
In: 15164
A lot of “why is the US different” boils down to the fact that we’re populated by Europeans, but mostly *after* Capitalism, irrigation, and transportation were established.
Manifest Destiny can’t be understated, either. “Go west and grab land that’s ‘free’ for the taking (those natives don’t count)”.
So why do we have large cities in the desert?
* Because someone saw an opportunity for profit there, and there was nobody able to stop them from claiming it.
* Irrigation and Transportation (rail, then cars) made it feasible.
And, of course, the Colorado River is a very important piece of the puzzle.
These cities were not necessarily established in the ancient way of, “gee, this looks like a nice place and I could live here”, they were settled after it was possible to look at a large scale map and say, “hmmm, we can bring the water from here and rail from here and hire workers from there with promises of land out there…”
Most European cities had to be somewhat self-sufficient and defensible. US cities never did.
Latest Answers