Property Development under Environmental Constraints: The Social Logic of the Peri-urban Form in the “Desert Cities” of the American West

• Published in: Revue française de sociologie (English Edition) 2016-12, Vol.57 (4), p.522-549
• Main Authors: Benites-Gambirazio, Eliza, Coeurdray, Murielle, Poupeau, Franck
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: DOSSIER
• ISSN: 2271-7641

This article examines the peri-urban dynamics of the desert cities of the American West, where urban expansion has taken the form of spatial sprawl, first in the outskirts of new cities and then from the surrounding communities. In these remote peri-urban areas, property development, which throughout the twentieth century was based on the appropriation of water resources, is now called into question by the difficulties of supplying adequate water, exacerbated in the context of the current drought. This study analyses how relationships between municipal administrators, farmers, developers, and elected officials, shaped by “mutual interests,” lead them to develop different strategies to adapt to environmental constraints: securing scarce water resources and assimilating or circumventing the rules regulating the use of water. The particularity of the desert city peri-urban areas impacted by water scarcity thus lies less in the peripheral development of large cities (Phoenix, Tucson) than in the readiness to expand towns on their peripheries until they merge into each other. A particular form of peri-urbanity emerges from the meeting of water and city professionals: green sprawl, which reconciles the environmental standards of environmental conservationism with the economic imperatives of local growth.