Ken Scoville is a retired teacher and historian in Tucson.

Other articles by Ken Scoville:

CON: Health-care mission, stewardship balance is vital New TMC plan imperils its connection to Tucson

Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Mechanical
Komatsu Equipment Co
Resident Field Mechanic Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor

The growth and development of a city is a uniquely human endeavor and the values of this endeavor are readily apparent throughout the city. Tucson has not valued its desert environment and has denied this reality since the arrival of the railroad in 1880 and bermuda grass in 1900.

I am sure that anyone who then opposed the planting of a lawn was labeled to be against progress and their viewpoint was readily dismissed.

Councilwoman Shirley Scott's responses to questions from the March forum Tucson Growth: Decision at the Crossroads ("Give private sector space to be creative," July 13), continue her own 21st century perspective.

"If the citizens of Tucson of yesteryear had adopted a no- or slow-growth policy, then perhaps where you live today would never have been built and the job you have today might never have been created," Scott wrote.

For more than a century, the cry from vested interests has been, "Why do you opposes progress for Tucson? Are you a no-growther and a NIMBY?"

The politics of polarization have caused Tucson to become an ugly and unsustainable city in one of the most beautiful desert settings in the United States. The issue is not how many people should come here but what kind of city Tucson is when they arrive.

We could have had a city with a regional population of 1 million where the washes were preserved with setbacks for flooding, recharge and recreational parks. We could have had a transportation system that went beyond the automobile with commercial developments as destinations rather than strip centers.

We could have had historic buildings incorporated into new developments for sustainability and heritage, a mix of residential configurations within the desert, and an emphasis on parking garages with significant landscape watered by harvesting on site to reduce the heat-island effect.

Land use and rezoning has always been the issue, not the rhetoric "we can't close the door to new arrivals." Mass grading that began in earnest in the 1950s boom has doomed much of residential Tucson to be forever in weeds. Instead of carefully building into the desert, miles of creosote and cactus were scraped away, with washes entombed in concrete to maximize profit behind the masquerade of progress and affordable housing.

The housing industry adopted the same business model as the fast-food industry with essentially all housing products the same and pricing based on location. Those with concerns were "no-growthers" and, the 1950s twist, had communist leanings.

Ironically, our latest growth forum aligns with the aspirations of our first effort when concerned citizens met and produced the Tucson Regional Plan in 1938. Two years later, an outside expert was brought in to develop a master plan for orderly expansion.

Each decade would see more area plans, and the tilt was always to respond to growth with leap-frog rezonings but not necessarily where growth should occur.

In the 1970s, the first attempt at greenbelts resulted in the creation of Catalina State Park, but a more extensive approach was seen as unaffordable. The discussion as to where growth should occur had begun.

Human endeavor in the growth of Tucson over decades has institutionalized the devastation of the desert. Our 21st century relationship with the desert is within a preserved area or behind a security gate. The only way we can afford to live in the desert is to destroy it.