Walking the World visits Phoenix

Written By H. Pike Oliver

"Chris Arnade Walks the World" is a project by photographer and writer Chris Arnade who shares dispatches and photos from his walks around the world. He documents his experiences and observations in a Substack newsletter. His work often provides a unique perspective on the places he visits, as seen in his documentation of homelessness and the drug crisis in Phoenix.

After visiting and lamenting the most downtrodden parts of Phoenix, this is how Arnade summarized the area: Phoenix is a large grid of mile-long four-lane sides, with shopping plazas at the corners and an inside of twisting single-lane roads and simple ranch homes on half-acre plots. Those residential insides are the nice parts, and showing that they’re nice is partly why I’d come to Phoenix: to highlight a version of the American Dream, which, while I might not love and isn’t necessarily “walkable,” is still very appealing to lots of people.

You may view his entire post here.

H. Pike Oliver

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, H. Pike Oliver has worked on real estate development strategies and master-planned communities since the early 1970s, including nearly eight years at the Irvine Company. He resided in the City of Irvine for five years in the 1980s and nine years in the 1990s.

As the founder and sole proprietor of URBANEXUS, Oliver works on advancing equitable and sustainable real estate development and natural lands management. He is also an affiliate instructor at the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington.

Early in his career, Oliver worked for public agencies, including the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research where he was a principal contributor to An Urban Strategy for California. Prior to relocating to Seattle in 2013, Oliver taught real estate development at Cornell University and directed the undergraduate program in urban and regional studies. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, the American Planning Association and a founder and emeritus member of the California Planning Roundtable.

Oliver is a graduate of the urban studies and planning program at San Francisco State University and earned a master’s degree in urban planning at UCLA.

https://urbanexus.com
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