Tucson’s New Shtick

The latest mantra is that cultural tourism brings billions of dollars to the Tucson economy

romero
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. (Photo by Ryan Knappenberger/Cronkite News)

Tucson has a new shtick: cultural tourism. A recent story from KOLD-13 News said that the city’s arts and culture scene brings in billions.

Billions!

This latest shtick follows two other shticks.

The first is the oft-repeated claim that big bucks stem from Tucson being the supposed gastro capital of America. What this really means is that the city has a lot of low-wage restaurant jobs.

The second is the notion that the revitalization of downtown Tucson into a center of hip bars and restaurants will be a game changer for the local economy. Time will tell, but for the time being, the tax breaks behind the revitalization have come at the expense of surrounding neighborhoods, many of which are impoverished and crime-ridden.

Meanwhile, it’s a cultural taboo to ask why poverty, crime and neglect remain so widespread—or specifically, why the City of Tucson’s poverty rate is stuck at seven percentage points above the national average.

If cultural tourism brings in billions, where has the money gone? It doesn’t seem to have gone into crime reduction, into roads and other infrastructure, into the maintenance and beautification of neighborhoods outside of downtown, or into sorely needed improvements in K-12 scores and personal income.

If tourism, a food scene, and a hospitality industry in general are all that’s needed to make a city prosperous, the tourist magnet of New Orleans would not be one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in the U.S., with a poverty rate ten percentage points higher than the national average.

Even the gleaming tourist boomtowns of Orlando and Las Vegas have poverty rates a couple of percentage points above the national average.

Or take my boyhood home of St. Louis. The world-renown St. Louis Zoo has 2.9 million visitors a year. And the zoo sits in the middle of one of the largest and prettiest city parks in the nation, a park with so many amenities and attractions that it would take visitors three days to experience all of them. The Gateway Arch and the world-class St. Louis Botanical Gardens attract millions more. Still another attraction is the food scene in the Italian section of the city, where my family tree and my culinary preferences have their roots.

But none of this has kept the city from losing so many residents and high-wage jobs to the suburbs that its population now accounts for only 10 percent of the three million people in the metro area.

It’s a similar story for the U.S. as a whole. The greatest employment growth has been in the hospitality industry, in government, and in medical care, which relies to a large extent on government money via Medicare and Medicaid. At the same time, the nation is in decline on key socioeconomic indicators.

Some cities have bucked the trend and are doing very well. For example, the Phoenix metropolis has attracted something like $100 billion in investments for its semiconductor industry alone, albeit with much of this coming from the federal government.

Another example is Scottsdale, a prosperous Phoenix suburb with a population of nearly a quarter-million people. Among other big events, Scottsdale hosts the Waste Management golf tournament, which draws more people than the population of the City of Tucson. This is in keeping with Scottsdale’s reputation as a tourist destination, backed by a vibrant culinary and arts scene, especially as reflected in its wonderful Musical Instrument Museum and in its Old Town of art galleries and restaurants. At the same time, however, the city has diversified its economy beyond tourism.

What’s the point of these anecdotes? The point is that Tucson should be realistic about its pluses, minuses, opportunities, and competition, so that it can plan accordingly and enact public policies for greater prosperity.

Considering that Tucson is the home to not only a major research university but also to RTX’s missile division, it should be able to move beyond cultural and gastro tourism to a higher-wage economy. Something is keeping it from doing so.

Maybe it’s falling for too many billion-dollar shticks.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.

About Craig J. Cantoni 89 Articles
Community Activist Craig Cantoni strategizes on ways to make Tucson a better to live, work and play.