Last summer, Phoenix reached at least 110 degrees on 55 days. Heat officially contributed to the deaths of 644 people in Maricopa County. In those temperatures, a dwelling without air-conditioning can become unlivable within an hour; a woman received second-degree burns from falling on the pavement.
The Phoenix metropolitan area, now one of the fastest-growing regions in America, developed around water. In 1911, Theodore Roosevelt stood on the steps of what would become Arizona State University and declared that the soaring dam just completed in the Superstition Mountains upstream would provide enough water to allow 100,000 people to live in the Valley. There are now five million.
“Civilization in the Valley depends on solving the problem of water,” George Packer writes in the cover story of The Atlantic’s July/August issue, focused on climate change. “Because this has to be done collectively, solving the problem of water depends on solving the problem of democracy.”
Packer spent eight months speaking with politicians fighting the erosion of democracy, with people fighting homelessness and heat, with educators hoping to help the next generation of innovators, and with immigrants who want a better education for their children. “A vision of vanishing now haunts the whole country,” he writes. “Phoenix is a guide to our future.”
Read the story of the city that defines America, and more from the July/August special issue, when you subscribe to The Atlantic for less than $2 a week.
