Reviews & Comments
Tucson, AZ
Tucson? The Town Too Dead to Die -
11/29/2019Tucson: "The Town Too Dead to Die."
You've been warned: the weather is awful. Only four months in a typical year Tucson has gorgeous weather. Anyone moving here will need to prepare for this.
Tucson’s traffic is horrendous. The city refuses to build a highway that would get people across the city within a reasonable amount of time. Years ago, Tucson's City Council actually justified not building a freeway because the growth the city was anticipating did not warrant it. They basically told Tucsonans to deal with the traffic. The soft bigotry of low expectations is real here.
Tucson's schools are also terrible. Its main school district is failing and, year after year, it is the district and the teachers' faults for the poor scores. Never mentioned in the news reports are the crime-ridden neighborhoods, the broken families and meth being cooked at houses across the city, making whole neighborhoods dangerous. It is always the teachers' fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. (This is the another sign of a sick city. When the people fail, blame someone. There is always someone else you can point to—and blame shifting is what Tucsonans do really well.)
Tucson voters' response is to not fund the local schools. Voters shoot down bonds and propositions that would put more money into buying books, technology like computers and increasing teacher pay. The school board has responded in kind, by making the superintendent's job so laborious and thankless that the job has high turnover and the only people wanting the job are narcissists.
The only time Tucson believes in stability and continuity is for the job of mayor. When you are elected mayor of Tucson, you retire when you want. You are not voted out, regardless of your job performance. This is sign number another of a sick city: low civic engagement.
Tucson, also, suffers from a small town mentality. Good jobs do not exist; anything remotely near being considered a good job takes 30 years of labor at a behemoth of a company like Raytheon. This creates an environment where the people are fighting over table scraps, jealously guarding who they let in for interviews. This is why someone, like a recent college student, can get a job, and you are called "overqualified." Both you and the college gal will both be paid a poor salary, but she knows the supervisor. Or the frat boy golfs with the hiring manager. It's like a third world country where it's more about who you know than what you know that opens up doors.
Fun fact: Did you know that Tucson has created 3 billionaires, more than all of Phoenix which has created ZERO? And 2 of the three want NOTHING to do with Tucson?
Tucson's prosperous areas come together to form a T shape--fittingly. The top of the T is the Catalina Foothills, with its nice homes, great views and fine dining. The long narrow corridor, straight down from the Foothills is Campbell Avenue. 1-2 miles east and west of Campbell is a total waste.
This T-shaped area of Tucson is the only nice area of Tucson. And the people here have noticed this. The Catalina Foothills made sure that the city bus does not have a stop anywhere near the 85718 zip code. And the Foothills is the richest zip code in the state of Arizona, besting Paradise Valley and Scottsdale. Also, out of 165 school district in the state of Arizona, Catalina Foothills sits at number 1! They have done their best to get away from Tucson and I predict, if pushed to integrate with the rest of the city, they will build walls with barbed wire. There are no poor people in the Foothills and by the University of Arizona. There are no failing schools in these areas.
From an urban planning professional: Tucson is the only city where if three sides of town were nuked, the economic activity would NOT fall. It's very much the city of the haves (retirees, "snow birds," and white collar professionals in the Foothills and by the University of Arizona) who talk about how nice Tucson is and the have-nots (everyone else) who have never seen a truly nice and functioning city. The have-nots, found on the east ("meth alley"), west (no bueno) and south (goodness gracious) are happy with call centers coming to Tucson. I ask them this: has anyone in the history of humanity ever made a career out of working at a call center? No. These are NOT good jobs. Raise your expectations.
And speaking of expectations, I bring myself to the main attraction in the city: Arizona Wildcats basketball. The former coach is the highest paid employee in the state of Arizona. His basketball teams played easier teams than Grand Canyon University. They have also lost to these teams too. And there was not been a peep from the community about playing a tougher set of teams and yearly underperformance in getting kicked out in March Madness in the first round or two--if the team even makes the tournament.
You're dealing with small-minded, small town people who have not seen nicer cities and been to cities with many attractions. If there was something besides the basketball program the city would be more skeptical about a coach allegedly caught on tape by the FBI for bribing a player and his family. But, no, the city became enraged with the FBI. "Why are they wasting resources investigating our coach?" "Doesn't the FBI have better things to do?" It's like the people of Tucson never realized that the FBI is conducting MANY investigations at any one time. The FBI can investigate the University of Arizona's basketball coach AND track the meth that is being cooked in houses across Tucson at the same time.
This blaming the FBI for a crooked coach is the another sign of a sick city.
Stay away from Tucson. It is "the town too dead to die." The grim reaper keeps stepping over Tucson, thinking it tapped Tucson's shoulder the day before.