Phoenix, Arizona during the Population Boom


This past weekend I heard a song that I hadn't heard for a long time that mentioned something that I recall from when I was a kid - the "Population Boom". The song was from 1972, and it was called "Stone in Love with You" if you want to go listen to it. And it makes me think of the various things at the time that were warnings that the population of the earth was just too much, that we were all gonna die, run out of food, have to stand on each other's heads. There were other cultural references to it, such as movies about over-population, such as "Soylent Green", which came out at about the same time. And what it was was the Baby Boom Generation, born after World War II, coming of age. Many Baby Boomers, who are now in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, still think a lot about the Population Boom. You don't hear much about it nowadays, so let's go back to the 1970s in Phoenix, Arizona.

There are few cities in the world that grew as quickly as Phoenix, Arizona did after World War II. Phoenix had always had a steadily-growing population, but in the late 1940s through the 1950s it did more than boom, it exploded. It started with severe housing shortages right after the war to some of the greatest building booms ever seen, and by the 1960s and early 1970s people were really starting to notice.
Support Arizona history by becoming a patron on Patreon

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring blog posts are shared there daily, also there's "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, and super high-resolution photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona
I'm too young to have seen all of this happen in Phoenix, but it must have been amazing, and more than a little bit frightening. What was once a city with plenty of space seems to have been jammed with people, and traffic, virtually overnight. I have friends who remember the days before the 1960s and '70s, and what they have seen in their lifetime tells me everything I need to know about the Population Boom of Phoenix.

Unfortunately, many of these people see no other solution than time-traveling, and miraculously going back to a time before their generation (the Baby Boomers) grew up and started needing houses, and cars, and freeways. And while it's nice to time-travel in your imagination (I do it all of the time) it makes me sad to think that so many people my age have given up, and see no future for Phoenix, because it's so big and crowded.

I respectfully disagree with these people. The Population Boom happened, and the world didn't come to an end. The world didn't run out of food, or space. Yes, Phoenix is much, much larger than it was in the 1960s, and many people have chosen to move away, maybe to somewhere less crowded - and there are plenty of places to go (Montana springs to my mind, for example). But I like it here. I see a bright future for my favorite city, which continues to grow. Before the "Population Boom" the word boom was a good thing, as in a "booming city" or a "building boom". It meant that a particular place was where people wanted to live, to raise their families.

I'm part of the Population Boom, I'm proud of it, and glad to be in Phoenix.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more

The history of the street names in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
The early layout of Phoenix was a simple grid. The major streets running east-west were named for the U.S. Presidents, with Washington in the middle. Map of the Town of Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona Territory in 1881 The streets that went east-west were named after United States presidents, beginning with Washington and alternating, first to the north, then south, in order of office. Adams was the first street to the north of Washington, Jefferson the first south, and so on. Things get a little out of order, especially when they came to John Quincy Adams (they already had an Adams street) so they skipped him and went directly to Andrew Jackson. Indian tribe names were used mostly for north-south streets: Montezuma, Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Arivapai, Tonto, Apache, Cortez, Mojave, Papago, Yuma, Cocopah, Hualpai, and Yavapai. Central Avenue, originally called Centre, later becoming Center followed by Central, is a north-south avenue which was at the center of the origina...
Read more