Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
In the East there's usually a legacy settlement. In the West often there wasn't.
I haven't been to Mesa (unless you count flying over it!) but it sounds like it's just suburbia for the most part that happens to have larger than usual boundaries. Like a handful of smaller suburbs that happened to be one government.
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The larger Phoenix Suburbs were independent small farming towns that had been around just as long or even longer than phoenix, Whoever compared it to LA is exactly correct.
By the time phoenix took off in pop growth in the 1960's, it was the largest town in a region of several farm towns (Scottsdale, Glendale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert etc.)
All of these just short of grew into each other just Like LA, Long beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Anaheim, etc etc. Modern car centric Suburban development allowed these towns to massively grow out and run into each other before ever developing urban cores to match.
Its the reason LA has a downtown, as discussed before, that is relatively small given the region it anchors and why LA has many separate city cores, town centers and downtown's spread out over the metro region.
This is true in all regions to a degree but older (mostly east coast cities) have a much more dominant central core with very minor secondaries, newer cities have weaker central cores and several moderate and small secondaries.
Its simply a matter of the time these places developed and the technology/trends available at the time they did.