Growth is good, they say, reciting like an incantation the prime article of faith of the official American religion: Bigger is better and best is biggest. Growth, they
tell us, means more jobs, more bank accounts, more cars, more people, leading
in turn to the demand for more jobs, more economic expansion, more industrial
development. Where, when, and how is this spiraling process supposed to reach
a rational end — a state of stability, sanity, and equilibrium?
Edward Abbey, One Life At A Time, Please
Abbey made those comments in about 1984, in part in response to growth projections he’d heard for Phoenix and Tucson. I grew up in Phoenix. Scottsdale, really, but it’s all the same now. One day soon I’ll share some stories of growth from a town that, in 1950, was about the same size as Lisbon.