Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
And as biggus I think pointed out before, this isnt totally uncommon in a large metro I think its particularly bad here especially when you still hear people be like "Oh well X or Y is a "real City"" I have been all over the world there is nothing un-city like about Phoenix unless you think a "real City" has to be Manhattan, or Hong Kong
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As someone who moved here from the East Coast, my main complaint of a "real city" is the lack of public transportation and walkability. Phoenix suffers heavily from being car centric due to the way the city was built (for cars), and it's trying to bounce back from that for sure and doing a decent job at it. But the metro as a whole has a looooooooong ways to go, DTPHX, Old Town/North Scottsdale and Tempe are all stepping in the right direction in terms of walking but the rest of the metro... that's a different story.
In terms of public transportation, we have the expanding light rail, which is convenient if you live in Tempe or DTPHX anywhere else... again... not so much lol. And then there's the bus... which I'd prefer to not even talk about the bus because from what I've noticed with the routes, and running it through google maps it takes 2x as long as driving yourself and requires way too many transfers to get to where you need to go. i.e. (sourcing google transit here, correct me if I'm wrong), to go from Tempe to DTPHX it would take 3 buses and 1 hr 44 minutes... for what would normally be a 20 min drive... Whereas when you look at the footprint of other what people tend to call "real cities" outside of the two you mentioned, they all have much better public transportation (which we're getting there with light rail) and this is including cities that are smaller than us.
For comparison's sake, Phoenix was neck and neck with Philly up until last year or the year before is when it finally passed in population. Similar size population for both cities but DRASTICALLY different feeling of a "city" ignoring, climate, environment, and architecture.
And another major thing I see being brought up in here with regards to international flights (and to stray my post back on topic) is culture. There's a lack of culture that is unique to Phoenix, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't give the city an identity. Everyone is from everywhere and brings those cultures, but Phoenix is just a hodgepodge of people, it doesn't have it's own identity... at least not yet. As it stands, the major cultural influence here is Mexican, then I'd say Asian, and then maybe give a slight nod to Indian, but outside of those main 3... good luck trying to find something that isn't American food or Italian American cuisine. I've struggled finding authentic Eastern European food, African food, and Caribbean food/shops here in the valley since moving from back east and the ones here that I have found, don't offer nearly as much as the others. Soul food is also scarce here, which is something that is more mainstream in cities of similar size elsewhere in the country. And correct me if I'm wrong, but when majority of Phoenicians seem to go somewhere "international" it's either Hawaii (still the states lol) or Mexico. With some venturing to the Caribbean here and there...