Quote:
Originally Posted by southtucsonboy77
Albuquerque is a small town fighting to be a big city...and Tucson is a big city fighting to be a small town. They have a strong mayoral system...just like Phoenix...where Tucson is a Council/Manager run city with a competitive and massive unincorporated County with a strong County manager. We're all f@#$ed up. Rio Rancho is a nice complement to Albuquerque...we have Marana/Oro Valley.
The 2000s was a good decade for Albuquerque (I lived there in the 90s and it was not a cool place to be). They re-developed their downtown, fought to bring back their AAA Isotopes and have strongly supported that team. cdsuofa pointed out alot of good attributes to the city. I remember Gov. Richardson and the mayor of Albq. declaring that they were gonna bring an NFL team to the Duke City! It was a pipe dream...but I loved the enthusiasm. They want big things for the city.
However, I feel the 2010s has been a good decade for Tucson thus far. I hope we can close it out even stronger. Albuquerque is isolated, for good and bad, Tucson is not. Tucson needs to build on the good we have and not let the loonies ruin it all. IMHO, for the region...I feel Marana is gonna be the key.
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Granted, I haven't lived in Albuquerque, like you have, but I think your characterization of the ABQ. is a little unfair. The city's population was over 545,000 in 2010, while Tucson's was a little over 520,000. In fact, with a growth rate of 21.7% between 2000 and 2010 (Tucson's was 6.9%) the city passed Tucson to become the 32nd largest city in the country. The city has an estimated 2012 population of over 555,000 (an increase of 1.8% since 2010), while Tucson's 2012 estimated population was over 524,000 (an increase of only 0.8%). Now, they're metropolitan area population is about 90,000 less than Tucson's, but they have a larger metropolitan area population than El Paso (which had a population of almost 650,000 in 2010 and has a growth rate of 3.6% since then and is now over 672,000). ABQ has a Triple-A baseball team, we don't even have a single-A team. Though like Tucson International Airport they don't have any international flights (though I did see an article this last week saying TIA may soon have flights to Hermosillo), they do have flights to JFK in NYC (we have no flights to NYC). In fact, their airport had over 5.8 million passengers in 2010, TIA had less than 1.8 million in 2011.
This actually leads me to another point. Though I think we have many advantages because of our close proximity to Phoenix, I think there are some advantages to Albuquerque's relative isolation. If you're a business or company (or a touring musical act for that matter) and you want to locate in Arizona, where do you go? Most likely Phoenix. We usually don't stand a chance against that behemoth up the road. Albuquerque is 445 miles - over 6 hours drive (on I-25) south of Denver, and 268 miles - about a 3 hours 40 minute drive (I-25) north of El Paso. You want a foothold in New Mexico, you go to Albuquerque. You want a foothold between El Paso and Denver, you go to ABQ. Now, many businesses start out in Phoenix and eventually open offices or restaurants or whatever down here, but many don't. They stay in Phoenix. If you're flying into tucson, many people fly to Phoenix and drive down I-10. If you're flying to ABQ, you're flying to ABQ (or if you're flying to Santa Fe, which is a pretty big tourist destination).
But the main reason I'd say ABQ is just as big a city as Tucson -
the metro GDP. ABQ's metro GDP in 2012 was 38.784 billion, an increase of 2.416 billion since 2009 (a 6.64% increase). Tucson's metro GDP in 2012 was 33.353 billion, an increase of 1.754 billion since 2009 (5.55% increase). So, even though the ABQ MSA has almost 100,000 less people, it has a higher GDP than the Tucson MSA (I'm assuming they're using the ABQ MSA and not the ABQ-Santa Fe-Las Vegas, NM Combined Statistical Area - which had a population of almost 1.15 million in 2010 - since they list Santa Fe's MSA separately).
I love Tucson, but I think it's safe to say if you're going to say Tucson is a big city then you have to say Albuquerque is too.