In Phoenix, Signs of a Downtown That’s Ready to Thrive Again

Phoenix, infamous for its cookie-cutter sprawl, is enjoying its most robust downtown building boom in decades. Compared with superstar cities, it’s a modest growth spurt: About 645 new apartment or condo units recently opened, another 1,830 are under construction, and more than 2,765 are in some form of pre-development. But for a downtown that saw almost zero apartment or condo construction from the early 1960s to the 2000s, this residential upswing is a source of local pride. Something is happening in America’s sixth most populous city.

What isn’t happening, though, is the classic “back to the city” phenomenon at work in many other urban areas. No big companies have announced moves to downtown, as has happened in Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, even Detroit. Most of the area’s economic assets are far from downtown, especially in the suburbs of Scottsdale, Tempe, and Chandler. Instead, Phoenix is seeing the benefits of an unusual combination of drivers, especially the growing downtown campus of Arizona State University.