This is an in-depth critique of the City of Tucson’s preliminary General Plan for 2025. A better name for the plan would be “manifesto.”
What do I bring to this discussion? Along with my experience as an activist in Arizona and metro New York, I bring years of helping large businesses and nonprofits develop operational and strategic plans, usually to save them from going under.
Typically, the challenge is not writing a plan, per se, but with overcoming the politics, self-interest and hubris that keep decision makers from being honest about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
A lot of honesty is missing in the city’s plan.
The General Plan is an umbrella plan, or summary plan, that speaks to priorities for the coming year, in line with the city’s longer-range plans, or strategies, but without measurable specifics to hold officials accountable. The following are Tucson’s longer-range plans:
Complete Streets Policy (written in 2019)
Housing Affordability Strategy (2021)
Move Tucson Master Transportation Plan (2021)
Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (2022)
Thrive in the 05 Transformation Plan (2022)
Tucson Resilient Together Climate Action Plan (2022)
Electric Vehicle Readiness Roadmap (2022)
Green Fleet Transition Plan (2023)
One Water 2100 (2023)
Tucson Community Forest Action Plan (2023)
Zero Waste Roadmap (2023)
Heat Action Roadmap (2024)
Prosperity Initiative (2024)
People, Communities, and Homes Investment Plan (2024)
Tucson Fire Department Strategic Plan (2024)
29th Street Thrive Transformation Plan (in development)
Tucson Floodplain Management Plan (in development)
Equity Action Plan (in development)
Tucson Norte-Sur (in development)
Somos Uno (in development).
Is your head spinning? Mine has unscrewed and is spinning across the floor.
Almost all of the foregoing plans list “equity” as a key objective.
If success were determined by the number of plans, Tucson would have the tech industry of Silicon Valley, the buzz and hype of Austin, the wealth and innovation of Palo Alto, the financial industry of New York, the music scene and economic boom of Nashville, the Latin American trade of Miami, the transportation network and business mecca of Dallas, the test scores and SAT scores of the Millburn Township School District in New Jersey, the hospitals and universities of Boston, the nicely paved and landscaped roads of Scottsdale, the low crime and growing tech reputation of Provo, and the rocket scientists of Huntsville.
Whew, there’s a lot of competition out there.
Let’s turn now to the General Plan, which, again, summarizes the key points of the longer-term plans and lists the top goals for the coming year. All 265 pages can be found here. You can read the whole thing and risk getting lost in the weeds, or you can allow me to pull the weeds in order to see the big picture.
The plan is not lacking in interesting statistics and slick graphs and charts. The problem is the gloss put on the information, the ideological spin put on the information, and the misleading conclusions drawn from the information. Take the treatment of the economy.
The Economy
There are a lot of statistics and verbiage about job growth and population growth, but not many on the fact that the city has a low-wage economy and a corresponding low median household income.
Much is made about Tucson’s tourism industry. That’s well and good, but it should be kept in mind that hospitality jobs tend to be low-wage and seasonal, and that the industry competes with the tourism powerhouses of Las Vegas, Orlando and other cities.
Likewise, there is much ado about the building of low-wage distribution centers, as if that’s not happening across the country due to e-commerce.
And there is cheering over the revitalization of downtown, which on the surface is certainly better than having a crummy-looking downtown. The downside is that the revitalization began as an extremely expensive fiasco, has tended to generate low-wage bar and restaurant jobs, and has come at the expense of neighborhoods in outer rings. Also, downtown revitalization is not something new in the US. It seems that just about every city has done so, and some have done so long ago with mixed success.
Money may be the root of all evil, but it is also the root of progress and an improved quality of life. Tucson has high tax rates but low revenue for needed improvements, due to having a low tax base from not being a center of innovation, entrepreneurism, dynamism, business incubation, and corporate headquarters.
Unsurprisingly, the General Plan considers it a positive that the wage gap between rich and poor in Tucson is smaller than the national average.
One reason for the smaller wage gap is that Tucson isn’t home to the uber-wealthy. One doesn’t have to like such rich people as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates to appreciate that they bring capital, jobs, tax revenue, and sometimes philanthropy to a community.
To that point, it is not surprising that Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered, has a median household income that is nearly three times Tucson’s median household income. Nor is it surprising that 74.7 percent of Redmond’s residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, versus 30.2 percent of Tucson’s residents.
Or take Arlington, Virginia, where RTX (Raytheon) is headquartered, along with the headquarters of Boeing and the second headquarters of Amazon. Arlington’s median household income is nearly $150,000, and 78 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
The General Plan goes on to suggest that Tucson has a notable presence in aerospace, technology, and patents. Really? Compared to what cities?
The General Plan doesn’t ask why there is a paucity of technology transfer, venture capital, and high-potential startups in Tucson, in spite of a major research university being located in the city. Comparisons aren’t made to other cities or regions on this subject (or on other subjects.) How does Tucson compare in economic development and innovation to Pittsburgh, to Austin, to Provo, to Berkeley, to Huntsville, to the Research Triangle of N. Carolina, or even to tiny West Lafayette, Indiana, where Purdue Univ. is located?
Comparisons to the competition are essential in strategic planning and in establishing benchmarks.
The plan claims that Tucson’s “creative economy and arts and culture industries” generate 52,184 jobs, $49.5 million in tax revenue, and $4.1 billion for the local economy. It also claims that out-of-town visitors spend $431 million on “cultural tourism.”
These numbers stretch credulity, especially the $4.1 billion.
For comparison: Up the road in Scottsdale, the annual Waste Management golf tournament draws about 600,000 people, with an estimated economic impact of about $450 million. That comes to $750 in economic impact per tournament attendee.
If Tucson has the same or similar $750 impact per person for its so-called arts and culture industries, it would take the spending of about 5.5 million people to generate $4.1 billion for the local economy.
In any event, Tucson has a lot of competition for tourist dollars beyond Scottsdale, Las Vegas and Orlando. Take St. Louis. Yes, St. Louis! Its world-class zoo, which is located in a gorgeous 1,300-acre city park, draws 2.9 million visitors a year. In addition, the St. Louis Arch draws 2.4 million, and the world-class St. Louis Botanical Garden draws a million. Those are impressive numbers for a city with a lousy climate and a bad reputation.
Incidentally, in spite of the bad reputation, St. Louis has a diverse economy and a thriving metropolitan area outside of the city limits, where the population is ten times greater than within the city limits. The suburban town of Ladue, for example, has a median household income of more than $250,000. Oh, one other point: Revitalization efforts downtown, including a new baseball stadium, have done nothing for the crime and blight in surrounding neighborhoods—conditions that have their roots in decades of a political monopoly running the city.
None of the above is to suggest that Tucson shouldn’t try to make the most out of tourism, but it is to suggest that the city should be realistic about its competitive strengths and weaknesses.
A key question is this: If cultural tourism and the arts and culture industries bring so much money to Tucson, then why does the city have a poverty rate of nearly 20 percent?
Strangely, in the face of this high poverty, the goal of economic development ranks a lowly twelfth out of fourteen goals in the city’s plan. Granted, as noted in my prefatory remarks, there is a separate long-term plan for economic development. But if the General Plan is any indication of what is in this separate plan, it misses the mark.
What explains this?
Perhaps hubris. Perhaps provincialism. But, more likely, government money.
Government Money
Of the top ten employers in Tucson, five are government entities, and a sixth is a defense contractor. They are: Pima County, the Tucson Unified School District, the State of Arizona, the University of Arizona, the US Air Force, and RTA (Raytheon). These account for 46,080 jobs out of the 63,510 jobs in total for the top ten employers. Assuming that each of the 46,080 job holders is in a family of 2.1 people, that means that 96,768 people are dependent to a large extent on government employment or subsidies.
That’s a significant number for a city of 550,000 people, in rounded numbers. (The population of the entire metropolis is just shy of 1.1 million.)
Actually, the number of Tucsonans dependent on government money is much higher. That’s because a large but undetermined number of Tucsonans receive Social Security, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, and other transfer payments. Given Tucson’s high poverty rate and large number of retirees, the percentage of people receiving transfer payments is probably above the national average.
On top of that, myriad federal grants go to various nonprofits.
Even healthcare, which seems on the surface to be a private industry, is dependent on government money to a significant degree. For example, reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid probably pay half of the payroll costs for the 10,970 employees of Tucson Medical Center and Banner University Center.
No doubt, this reliance on government money affects local politics and attitudes toward private industry. No wonder economic development ranks twelfth in the General Plan.
Equity is in first place and is mentioned throughout the General Plan. That’s particularly ironic given that such thinking is probably coming from those with government sinecure and university tenure; that is, from those with better pay, benefits and job security than the average Tucsonan. Maybe they feel guilty.
The city (and county) has been run by a political monopoly for decades, resulting in Tucson being poorer than it would otherwise have been under visionary leadership and political competition. In another irony, the monopolists are now preaching about equity.
Education
Although the city doesn’t run schools, a section in the General Plan addresses education. It makes platitudinal statements like this:
The City of Tucson recognizes the critical role of education in fostering equity and will work to ensure access to quality educational opportunities for all, regardless of age or ability. The City’s initiatives will prioritize underserved communities to bridge educational gaps and empower lifelong learning.
The plan also recommends early childhood education programs, although longitudinal studies have shown that they are not effective over time.
It continues with such obligatory buzzwords as “diversity” and “culturally relevant,” and it recommends educational programs outside of core subjects, such as these:
Expand partnerships with organizations and other jurisdictions to provide natural resources management and education.
Expand community outreach, education, and training efforts about water conservation and best practices.
Meanwhile, only a third of students in Tucson’s largest school district are meeting standards in math and English.
The cause of this poor result is not that some communities are underserved or their schools are underfunded. It is that the primary determinants of educational outcomes in Tucson, as well as in the rest of America and much of the world, are social class and race/ethnicity, not spending.
It was the same for my poor immigrant grandparents and millions of other Italians migrants. Their children didn’t excel in school, on average, even though many had the option of attending a parochial school in their neighborhood. That wasn’t because they were genetically inferior or lazy but because they had landed at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, due to speaking a foreign language and arriving with little skills, education and money.
Academic outcomes improved in successive generations as Italians climbed the ladder, along with other ethnic minorities. They took advantage of higher-paid opportunities in a diverse, growing economy instead of an economy of government jobs and low-wage service work.
It went like this: Grandpa was a coal miner, and Dad was a tile setter who later worked in the office of a tile company. I surpassed my dad with a master’s degree and other accomplishments, and my son has surpassed me. Neither Grandpa nor Dad nor others in their close-knit Italian community ever spoke about equity or being underserved and disadvantaged.
Nearly half of Tucson’s population is Hispanic, or more accurately, of Mexican descent. Many of them are recent migrants or second- or third-generation. Mexican migrants can quadruple their income by crossing the border and working in a low-wage job in Tucson. However, the bad news for them and the Tucson economy is that it will take them longer, on average, than the ethnic immigrants of yesteryear to climb the socioeconomic ladder. This is due to many factors, including the state of the Tucson economy.
Social class and race/ethnicity are such minefields today that politicians, school boards, city hall, and other institutions have to tiptoe around the subject and speak in euphemisms and clichés. The plan is full of these.
Transportation
The plan says that Tucson has a good network of different modes of transportation.
Compared to what? Is the comparison to countries in the developing world where people can be seen hanging from the sides of buses, riding on the top of trains, and riding four to a motor scooter?
Crosstown freeways are non-existent, arterial roads and neighborhood streets have deteriorated from decades of deferent maintenance, and the downtown streetcar line sends a message of copycat hipness but was outrageously costly to build, runs too short of a distance to be of much value, and replaced cheaper buses that are more flexible because they aren’t nailed to the street.
The Regional Transportation Authority, of which the City of Tucson is the 800-pound gorilla, is an underfunded mess and a half-century behind the regional transportation planning agency in metro Phoenix.
Tucson’s General Plan gives credit to Tucson Airport for being one of the first municipal-owned airports in the nation. The airport theoretically saves costs by sharing runways with the National Guard, and it is convenient and easy to get in and out of. Unfortunately, it is located in a rundown part of the city and ringed by ugly, unkempt roads—conditions that send the wrong message to tourists and visiting business executives.
Another problem is that the airport has relatively few direct flights, thus necessitating connections in another city and increasing the chance of missing a connecting flight. This is a drawback to business travelers, many of whom drive two hours to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix to take a direct flight.
Granted, as a third-tier city, there isn’t much that Tucson can do about having fewer direct flights than a larger city like Phoenix.
Speaking of Phoenix, its airport reflects visionary thinking. Going back a half-century, the City of Phoenix was well ahead of the curve in building terminals and other infrastructure in anticipation of population growth. This forward thinking set the stage for Sky Harbor to become a major hub, one of the busiest airports in the country, and a major economic engine for metro Phoenix.
Totally befuddling is Tucson’s plan (fantasy?) to turn Stone Ave. into a rapid bus corridor, running from the Tucson Mall near River Rd. to the airport. Stone winds through high-crime areas, and hardly a week goes by without a news report of a shooting in the vicinity or an impaired pedestrian being run over. Some spots near the mall look like a dystopia, and homeless encampments are common near where Stone intersects with River.
A threat to Tucson is the new interstate that is being considered to bypass the city to the west and serve as a trade corridor from I-19 just north of Mexico to the Canadian border. Given that Tucson voted against Trump, it would be ironic if he were stop it.
Neighborhood Crime and Blight
Sections of the General Plan are devoted to neighborhoods, and recognition is given to neighborhood groups and volunteers that work closely with the city. The narrative is interspersed with maps of the city, highlighting neighborhoods, wards, parks, walking/cycling paths, in-fill, and historic districts.
Kudos to the volunteers for their civic-mindedness.
There is a contradiction, however. In spite of the city’s expressed interest in neighborhoods, and in spite of the volunteerism, conditions in many neighborhoods don’t show it and, in fact, show the opposite.
The plan doesn’t talk about it, but there is widespread crime and blight in the city, in addition to the aforementioned crumbling streets, which could use not only repaving but also beautification. Most cities have seedy, shabby, rundown sections, but they seem to dominate in Tucson. So do security bars on doors and windows.
Tucsonans have a 1 in 28 chance of being a victim of property crime. The chance of being a victim of violent crime is 1 in 157. These chances are significantly higher than national averages. Neighborhood Scout has a full report.
A color-coded map of crime rates in the city can be found here, but such a map is not included in the General Plan.
Since the safety of residents is a critical responsibility of city government, one would think that crime reduction would be a top goal, but it is not one of the plan’s fourteen goals.
Again, equity is a top goal. High crime isn’t very equitable, however.
Another contradiction is that voter turnout for local elections is only 33 percent. Does that mean that residents are happy with conditions, or does it mean that they have given up hope?
Whatever the answer, something is clearly amiss.
Zoning and Land Use
A lot of the General Plan is devoted to zoning and land use, as is the case for the plans of most municipalities. These are always contentious issues and thus require careful and extensive communications and compromises with neighborhoods.
The contentiousness has been seen with the uproar over the proposed route of a new power line in the center city of Tucson. The line is needed to replace aging lines and to meet increased demands for electricity.
Tucson is trying to catch up to a national trend that began decades ago of mixed-use, high-density development, whereby high-rise condos, shops, entertainment, and offices are clustered together and walkable. In a similar vein, the city recently passed a zoning ordinance allowing casitas to be built in backyards of certain neighborhoods in order to increase population density and provide more housing.
Done right, such initiatives are a positive, in that they provide different housing options and lifestyles for people with differing needs and interests at different stages of their life. Done wrong, they result in gentrification in a center core, which often comes at the expense and neglect of surrounding neighborhoods, as can be the case with downtown revitalization.
Still, for parents with children, their preferences haven’t changed over the decades. Their preferences continue to be good schools, safety, and good upkeep. A neighborhood park is a plus, but only if it doesn’t become a magnet for deranged people, homeless encampments, and criminality.
Heaven knows, better urban planning is needed in Tucson. Major thoroughfares are marred by a proliferation of strip-malls and convenience stores. The unsightliness is made worse by narrow setbacks, tacky signage, and barren parking lots that come within several feet of the street.
Older neighborhoods extend from the thoroughfares in a monotonous grid and are dominated by squat, cookie-cutter houses of stucco and flat roofs. This is a legacy of the decades after the Second World War when Tucson became a boomtown and a magnet for transplants from the Frost Belt who wanted warm weather and inexpensive housing, including, in many cases, mobile homes.
Don’t take my word for the ugliness of major thoroughfares. Take Life Magazine’s word. (Note to younger generations: Life Magazine used to be what social media, the internet, and cable TV are today in terms of reach and influence.) A 1970 story in the magazine quoted the mayor of Tucson, who had called Speedway Blvd. the ugliest street in America. The story included a photo of the street as evidence.
To this day, Tucsonans say that the magazine used a telephoto lens to made the street look worse. Maybe that’s true, but Speedway and other arteries remain unattractive today. It doesn’t help that the city passed an ordinance years ago to require more attractive commercial signage but then allowed old signs to be grandfathered.
It also doesn’t help that a whopping 36 percent of the Tucson metropolis is unincorporated county, with much of it abutting the City of Tucson. Unincorporated county is better suited for rural areas than urban and suburban ones, especially a county that covers thousands of square miles, as Pima County does. Even it was perfectly run, Pima County doesn’t have the bandwidth to provide municipal-level services, amenities, upkeep, and transportation options.
Health
In a section on citizen health, mention is made that the city has high rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
Elsewhere in the plan, much is made of Tucson being designated a World Heritage gastronomical city for its food scene, particularly its Mexican fare, a cuisine that I particularly like, but not as much as Italian cuisine.
It is understandable that Tucson wants to make a big deal about the designation and use it as a tourist draw. Unfortunately, Mexican fare is at odds with the city’s interest in reducing heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The fare is a key reason for Mexico’s high rate of these health problems—problems that have carried over to Tucson.
Climate Change
The General Plan is fixated on climate change almost as much as it is on equity.
Before commenting on this, I’m going to digress into something that might sound like self-aggrandizement but is only intended to show my environmental credentials, so that I’m not accused of being a climate denier, or anti-science, or more of a numbskull than I normally am.
Years ago, I headed an influential environmental group in northern New Jersey that took on, among other powerful interests, the Port Authority of NY & NJ, which is one of the most powerful and hidebound agencies in the nation. Almost the entire NJ congressional delegation, including Senators Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg, testified with me before a House subcommittee in Washington. A NJ newspaper honored me on its Sunday front page as Community Service Volunteer of the Year, and deep pockets wanted me to run for Congress.
With that digression, I’ll now say what I think of Tucson’s initiatives to address global warming: I don’t think much of them.
The plans range from symbolic to silly. In the silly category is the initiative to plant a million trees, supposedly to absorb CO2.
It is beyond the scope of this commentary to give a treatise on all of the options and tradeoffs on lowering CO2 and adjusting for a potentially hotter city. Suffice it to say that a plan that doesn’t mention nuclear power is woefully incomplete—not only nuclear power for the electrical grid but also the possibility of using small nuclear plants to desalinate and pump water from the Gulf of California.
Speaking of water, the General Plan correctly says that Tucson has done a good job in reducing water consumption. However, it doesn’t mention that the state as a whole has done the same. I haven’t verified this independently, but some sources claim that the state uses the same amount of water it used in 1950, although the population has skyrocketed since then.
It shouldn’t go unmentioned that there is plenty of environmental hypocrisy in Tucson. Many citizens are opposed to increased copper mining in Southern Arizona, but at the same time, they support electric vehicles and battery storage, both of which require huge amounts of copper as well as rare earth minerals.
In any event, energy alternatives are going to require money, which takes us back full circle to the low priority given in the General Plan to economic development, and, by extension, to higher wages, greater prosperity, and increased tax revenue.
Conclusion
As I said at the beginning of this critique, the challenge is not writing a plan, per se, but with overcoming the politics, self-interest and hubris that keep decision makers from being honest about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
This is on full display in Tucson’s General Plan.
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at [email protected].
