Tucson... Doomed by the Backward Thinking...
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3/24/2008
I've been in Tucson for almost 20 years, originally from St. Louis County. Great place if you hate freezing and as a hater of the extreme heat, you really do get used to the hot, hot summers (but not burning your hand on the steering wheel after your car has cooked in the sun).
But... the natives and backward liberals want to keep Tucson from growing although the city and surrounding Pima County are now over a million people, HELLO? McFly?!?!? It already has grown and will continue to grow! I've been to a lot of cities on a lot of states in this country and can think of no other metro area as big, spread out and as populated as Tucson that only HAS ONE MAJOR HIGHWAY SYSTEM because the backwards way of thinking is that if WE DON'T build the highways, TUCSON WON'T BECOME A LITTLE PHOENIX. Nope, we're already WORSE than a Little Phoenix--at least THEY pour concrete and asphalt to accommodate the thousands of people moving to AZ each month.
A recent stat showed that AZ's 6 million people will double to 12 million over the next 15 years. Traffic will become MORE of a problem unless the liberal elite are voted out. But that won;t happen because many of the California thinkers are moving here, snapping up our "cheap" land with their over-inflated home sales treasure chests. Not whining--these are the facts.
Tucson also has a very small middle class and wages are much lower than normal. Not sure how most people afford the housing here since there really aren't many higher paying jobs. $10.00 to $12.00 an hour jobs are in abundance here for call-centers, etc., but manufacturing is almost non-existent.
Still, I do love that my home continues to appreciate in value, even int he downturn (doubling population over next 15 years, supply and demand, you do that math, I'll sell this house in 10 years for a nice profit).
The high crime rate you see is relative on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis and it rarely spills over. Thankfully, the bad neighborhoods like to keep their violence to themselves usually.
Summary: the people overall are nice, I wear shorts in the winter, no lawn to mow (unless you're an idiot and plant grass), no snow to shovel, rare icy windshields, and 7 months out of the year the weather is darn nice. However, the summers do suck (but nights are still nice), lots of drug trafficking (but can be avoided), perpetual road construction (and they cannot figure out how to do it quickly here even though weather is rarely a problem), traffic SUCKS--I mean is SUCKS, and job market is much worse than most of the nation.
Well that's it. Hope this helps.
Abhd | Tucson, AZ