Blog Archives
Procter & Gamble deems Phoenix all-time sweatiest
Shameless plug for bestower of Phoenix honorific.
[Source: Lisa Biank Fasig, Phoenix Business Journal] — Phoenix has gone to the pits again, ranking as the sweatiest city in six of the past eight years. The dubious honor is handed out by the Procter & Gamble Co. brand Old Spice, which since 2002 has measured the country’s sweatiest cities.
Phoenix has led the Annual Top-100 Sweatiest Cities list for the fourth consecutive year. Over the time of the competition, the city has yielded an average summertime temperature of 94 degrees. The result? The average Phoenix resident producing 27.7 ounces of sweat per hour — the equivalent of more than five gallons of milk per day. Following Phoenix on the list are San Antonio, Texas; Las Vegas; Dallas and Houston. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
Latino arts groups call for a cultural home in downtown Phoenix
[Source: Jahna Berry, Arizona Republic] — When Elizabeth Gauna closed the Museo Chicano in January, it wasn’t just the end of a small Phoenix museum. It left a city of 1.5 million people, 40 percent of them of Hispanic descent, without a Latino art museum. While major Latino museums have sprung up in big cities, including Long Beach, Calif.; Albuquerque; and San Antonio, Phoenix has lagged behind. An alliance of 12 Arizona arts groups has an ambitious plan to change that.
The demise of Museo Chicano has fueled an effort to create a major Latino museum and cultural center in downtown Phoenix, said Martín Moreno, a local resident and nationally known muralist. Advocates for Latin@ Arts & Culture plan to begin efforts this month to raise $200,000 to open and operate a small Phoenix cultural center later this year. Five years down the road, the group envisions a $10 million facility. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” said Moreno, who sits on the consortium’s board of directors. He said Phoenix needs a center that preserves and nurtures Latino, Chicano and indigenous contributions to the arts. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
Census shows older U.S. cities hold on to more people, Phoenix slows
[Source: William H. Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution] — Newly released U.S. Census Bureau population data for U.S. cities show a new twist on a well-known theme that could be good news for older cities hoping to reverse population declines of the past. The familiar part of the report indicates that most of the nation’s fastest growing cities are located in the South and interior West. Places like McKinney, TX; North Las Vegas, NV; and Cary, NC, are registering growth rates that cities in baseball’s “American League Central” division (e.g., Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City) can only dream about. But the new estimates also show a clear retrenchment of the old “Snowbelt to Sunbelt” population surge, a turnaround that has brought modest gains to many older and coastal cities that lost population earlier in the decade.
Population trends in the nation’s nine largest cities (those with over one million residents) offer a glimpse at the story (Table 1). Three of these — Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego — flipped from population declines to gains in the past year, while their more high-flying sunbelt counterparts — Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas — showed reduced levels of growth. The growth slowdowns in Houston and Phoenix were substantial, while at the same time, Chicago’s modest gain was the first registered since 2001. Another notable flip occurred in Boston, which last year became the fastest growing city in the Northeast, after losing population the year before. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
