Downturn may slow predicted 'Sun Corridor' boom

With a "lost decade" hanging over the region's economy, the "Sun Corridor" from Prescott to Tucson will grow more slowly and draw at least 900,000 fewer people than originally forecast, experts say. When the Sun Corridor idea first surfaced in 2006, planners predicted that what's known as a "megapolitan" area of 10 million people would exist there by 2040. The Sun Corridor is to be one of 10 megapolitan areas in the country. Now, prominent University of Arizona economist Marshall Vest predicts that 8.5 million people will live in a slightly scaled back Sun Corridor consisting of Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties by 2040. Robert Lang, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who helped coin the term Sun Corridor and offered the original 10 million prediction, now says those three counties, plus Yavapai County, will have 9.1 million people by 2040. These reductions may seem like small potatoes for a region that now tops out at about 5.7 million people. Lang and Vest agreed that 9 million or 8.5 million people won't seem that much different than 10 million when it comes to growth-related problems and issues such as traffic congestion, school overcrowding, water and open space. "Either way, it's more people than you have now," Lang said. "The state will be going from sort of a Maryland-sized state to sort of an Ohio-sized state. The question will be: Are you super big or just very big. Either way, you'll have very serious projected growth, one that the region has to address differently or suffer in the quality of life."

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