24 United States The Economist March 12th 2022
EconomicdevelopmentA tale of two cities
“W
hen I was born, the population
here was 1,200, and that included
every dog, chicken and cat in the commu
nity,” Jackie Meck says with a soft chuckle.
Mr Meck is now in his 80s, and his city,
Buckeye, has come a long way. A whiff of
manure from nearby dairy farms still
hangs over the main street, but giant new
housing developments sprawl out for
miles into the scrubby Arizona desert,
making it one of America’s fastestgrowing
cities. Buckeye today has a population of
100,000, up 15fold over the past two de
cades. Its planners want at least 1m.
A couple of thousand miles to the
northeast is Youngstown, Ohio, a city
moving in the opposite direction. “The
majority of younger people who can leave
do leave, whether because they want to or
they feel they don’t have any opportunity
here,” says Ian Beniston, a community or
ganiser. Once a manufacturing power
house, Youngstown today is one of Ameri
ca’s fastestshrinking cities. Its population
of 60,000 is down by a quarter over the
past two decades and is about onethird of
what it was at its peak.
At first glance this is an alltoofamiliar
story. Since the founding of America, its
people and its economy have moved
steadily westwards and, later, southwards.
The pandemic has sharpened the shift.
People and businesses have flocked to
places like Buckeye in sunbelt states.
Youngstown, like dozens of other cities in
America’s old industrial heartland in the
Midwest and the northeast, is strugglingto hold onto its residents and companies.
However, look a little closer, and the
story is more complex. There are questions
about the limits to growth in Buckeye, an
arid corner of a region short on water. And
there are hopes that Youngstown may be
turning a corner, thanks to a revival of
manufacturing. How such cities manage
their challenges could determine the fu
ture shape of the American economy. Desert dreams
In the vast beige expanses around Buckeye,
the only immediate obstacle to growth is
the speed of construction work. Plots for
new homes are pegged out alongside the
highway, awaiting diggers for their foun
dations. Median home prices have nearly
doubled over the past three years.
Buckeye is less a cohesive city than it is
an archipelago of suburban communities.
The government has divided the hard
scrabble land into massive zones sold to
property developers, to build “master
planned communities” (mpcs). Most are,
in effect, standalone towns, with schools,
shops, libraries and homes galore on neat
ly designed streets. Buckeye consists of 27
mpcs, spread out across 639 square miles
(nearly 30 times larger than Manhattan).
Just 5% of the land has so far been built on.
The Howard Hughes Corporation, a real
estate firm, is planning to build the biggest
mpc, Douglas Ranch, with homes for
300,000 people.
It is easy to see the attraction of Buck
eye, not least in the winter, when daytimehighs are around room temperature and
the sky is a deep blue. In Verrado, one of the
first mpcs, golf carts cruise along the roads
in the evening as the sun sets behind the
craggy White Tank Mountains. The click
clack of pickleball, a tennislike game pop
ular with retirees, echoes off walls.
Yet Buckeye is more than a retirement
colony. The median age of its residents is
34, younger than the national median of38. Many of the newcomers are attracted by
its affordability compared with Phoenix,
Arizona’s capital, a 45minute drive to the
east. That has made Buckeye a bedroom
community with little local enterprise.
More than 90% of residents with jobs work
elsewhere, mainly in Phoenix, enduring
traffic jams to make their commutes.
So the city has been trying to woo busi
nesses, and is making progress. korePow
er is building a factory for lithiumion bat
teries, used in electric vehicles and grid
storage. It aims to eventually have more
than 3,000 employees. Parker Fasteners,
which produces highquality screws for
everything from military equipment to
semiconductor plants, arrived in 2020.
Matthew Boyd of Parker says Buckeye had
two big selling points: plenty of land and
plenty of labour. Nearly 70% of the workers
in the factory are aged 40 or under.
But Buckeye lacks another critical re
source: water. Arizona relies on the Colora
do River, now in its 22nd year of drought. It
requires new communities to show that
they have enough water for a century be
fore beginning construction, which
should, in theory, guarantee sustainable
development. In practice there has long
been a workaround. Developers can regis
ter their properties in a “groundwater re
plenishment district”, a government entity
that commits to pumping into the ground
whatever water is removed. But as the Col
orado dries up, the water for recharging
aquifers may itself run out. Mr Meck, Buck
eye’s longestserving mayor, now retired,
is withering in his criticism of the pledges
for replenished groundwater: “I call it pa
per water, and I can’t drink paper.”
The current mayor of Buckeye, Eric Ors
born, thinks a solution will be found. One
hope is a possible desalination plant in
Mexico on the Gulf of California, just 170
miles south. But that will be costly and
Buckeye may find itself competing with
richer cities such as Phoenix for whatever
it produces. In its search for businesses, it
prioritises firms that use less water, a strat
egy which is smart environmentally but re
strictive for its industrial ambitions. Still,
Mr Orsborn is confident that Buckeye will
eventually secure enough water to allow
its continued growth. “It’s about putting
our destiny in our own hands,” he says.
Youngstown’s focus is less on building
new infrastructure than about cleaning up
the pieces that have fallen into disrepair.
B UCKEYE, ARIZONA, AND YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO
What a boom town and a bust town say about America’s economyBuckeye’s master planning in action