Another Phoenix?

 Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you with that. But it's true that this exclamation is making the rounds today in discussions about Palm Springs and The Coachella Valley. I'm not going to disrespect Phoenix, for its setting is lovely and some of the nicest people I know live there or in the surrounding communities. But it's not blasphemy to acknowledge that in many ways it has become another Los Angeles.

The sprawl is endless, the air often murky with dust, urban ills of every kind dominate their news on many days. Will this happen here? Not likely.

Oh sure, of course we already have our own growth issues. If you'll excuse the dated cliché, years ago we stopped being "God's waiting room" and became a year-round full-fledged city (or combination of several little cities, if you will). The place where one once came to replace a hip became hip! Yes, it seems ages ago that when people thought of Palm Springs they thought of a quaint little town in the desert where the elderly and rich and famous took getaways.

But Palm Springs has always been progressive on growth issues, including height restrictions and light pollution issues, and many of the other valley cities have followed suit. So we are still, even with nearly 400,000 people living here, blessed with gorgeous panoramas as far as the eye can see, wide open spaces, uncrowded public areas, roomy parks and endless recreation. And in an odd way, the many years it took the desert to catch up with the rest of California, in the housing market, actually helped the Coachella Valley.

Because, although I started this post on Phoenix, we all know what's happened to places like Orange County and The San Fernando Valley and even much of the rest of California. I call it "spent"; others might call it built-out. But whatever you call it, we aren't anywhere near that level of overdevelopment here. And with those places and others as a-less-than-desirable template to build a city on, most of our current planners are cautious to do the Coachella Valley right.

It may not still be the darling little garden town it once was, but it's all relative, and by many measures we are the most beautiful and livable place in California.