Crowding out Arizona
Monday, July 15, 2002
By: Dan Stein

Arizona Republic

If it's starting to feel a bit crowded in Arizona, you're not imagining it. According to the 2000 Census data, the state's population--now 5.1 million people--was the second fastest growing in the country during the 1990s. During the 1990s, nearly 1.5 million new residents settled in Arizona--an increase that is larger than the entire population of the state in 1960.

As a result of this massive growth, centered in a few sprawling urban areas, Arizonans have begun to experience many of the symptoms of congestion familiar to Americans in the nation's traditional population centers - traffic, pollution, overcrowded schools, and lack of affordable housing. Arizona also faces another concern that is not as critical in many other parts of the country. The state is a desert that is in constant search of new water sources to quench its growing population.

There are many reasons to explain Arizona's staggering growth, not only over the past decade, but over the past half century. Like many other Sun Belt states, Arizona simply became an attractive place to live as post-War improvements in transportation, communications, and air conditioning made these places more accessible and hospitable. But some of Arizona's explosive growth is a direct and indirect result of rapid immigration-induced population growth nationwide.

Nearly 26 percent of the state's population increase during the 1990s was a result of people moving to Arizona from other countries. But studies, such as one done at the University of Michigan in the mid-1990s, indicate that a good deal of the domestic migration to high growth states like Arizona are a result of Americans being "pushed" out of other regions as immigration-fueled population growth has made these places less attractive to the native-born population.

Demographers, hydrologists, politicians, and social scientists are certain to have a field day analyzing and assessing the impact of Arizona's recent growth, and whether continued growth of this sort is sustainable. What never seems to be considered in these sorts of debates, however, is whether explosive population growth in Arizona, or nationally, is desirable. As Luther Probst of the Sonoran Institute observes, "Arizona grew by 40 percent in the past decade, but I haven't seen anyone argue that the state is a 40 percent better place to live."

While no one can determine precisely how much of Arizona's growth is attributable to the direct and indirect impact of immigration, it is clear that it played a significant role in the dramatic growth of the 1990s. While we cannot (and should not) attempt to curb runaway growth in places like Arizona by regulating movement within the United States, we can (and should) restore moderation to movement to the United States.

The lack of meaningful limits on immigration - the decade of the 1990s saw the greatest number of immigrants settle in the U.S. in our nation's history - has created a ripple effect across our nation. This purely discretionary growth has had an impact not only in areas with the highest concentration of immigrants, but in cities like Phoenix, where erstwhile residents of Los Angeles, New York, and other high impact areas have sought refuge from rising costs and deteriorating services.

The irony, of course, is that this phenomenon becomes cyclical. As cities like Phoenix and Tucson experience rapid growth themselves, they begin to take on the characteristics of the places that their burgeoning populations left behind. Arizona's population growth should eventually level off. The only question is whether growth will abate because the conditions that are driving many people to settle in the desert are ameliorated, or because people in Arizona tire of the sprawl, congestion, lack of affordable housing, skyrocketing water costs, and other phenomena of that nature and begin to seek refuge elsewhere themselves.

The good news is that we do have a choice about which scenario will ultimately lead to a cessation of rapid population growth in Arizona and nationally - if we exercise it. Population growth in the United States is nearly all a product of immigration and the children born to immigrants. If we, as a nation, want to preserve our frontiers from the ravages of endless sprawl, we can choose to do so.

If we do not make that choice, however, it is certain that sometime in the not too distant future, demographers and social scientists will find themselves analyzing why people are leaving Arizona in search of a better life in some other part of the country.