Moving to Tucson??
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10/2/2008
My wife and I lived in Tucson from 1999 through 2004. We made tons of friends and enjoyed the mountains and climate very much. But, in all fairness, much of what J, from the Midwest wrote above is very true. We eventually left after trying to find work in our professional fields. Most of the job market in Tucson is service industry that caters to the snowbirds. The largest employers are the University, the Air Force Base, and the Real Estate/Construction Industry. City Planners and City Elected Officials lack the expertise and knowledge to create a vibrant, low impact, diversified economy. The many failed attempts to revitalize the downtown area,is quite franly a joke that is often written about in the local newspapers. Many Tucsonians are Hispanic, and there is an unhealed resentment toward City leaders for having demolished a section of Tucson, displacing Hispanic families and tearing down older historic buildings in favor of an ugly modern City Administrative Building. In short, a whole section of the city was removed and with it the historic remains of the founding members of Tucson went up in dust. This, in my opinion, was very disrespectful. Those buildings could have been historically restored and the City Hall building could have been built elsewhere. The haze that is often referred to is actually a combination of desert dust and car pollution. Tucson is one of the few cities who does not allow independent air monitoring. They do their own air monitoring and reports, and these often say that the air quality is good, even when one can clearly see a brown haze covering the city and surrounding areas for miles. Water is also a big concern. Yet golf courses and large scale urban sprawl tract-housing developments can be seen in all areas of Tucson. They don't have a "smart growth" plan in place, nor do they require 100 year water plans on these developments, as many other communities in Arizona do--again, incompetence on the part of elected officials. And speaking of these tract housing developments, many of the homes built within the last few years are in, or close to being in, foreclosure. As our nation faces the biggest economic crisis in history, one can not help but reflect on Tucson and Phoenix, and the high percentile of foreclosures in these cities, as being a major contributor to the crisis.
Aycee | Portland, OR