Plight of Phoenix: How Long Can the World’s ‘least Sustainable’ City Survive? | Cities | The Guardian

GR:  Taking a longer view of this subject, the demise of Phoenix and its satellite towns might be good for the land and for people because it will give natural systems an opportunity to recover. Recovery might not occur, however, because of the intensity of our impacts. The vegetation preceding Anthem, for instance, was hardly “virgin” when the bulldozers came. Intense livestock grazing had gone on for decades. Invasive fuelweeds from Eurasia are well established in the desert and were already at work replacing native plants when Anthem was just a gleam in a developer’s eye.

Source: Plight of Phoenix: how long can the world’s ‘least sustainable’ city survive? | Cities | The Guardian