Bird on Fire

Phoenix, Arizona is one of America's fastest growing metropolitan regions. It is also its least sustainable one, sprawling over a thousand square miles, with a population of four and a half million, minimal rainfall, scorching heat, and an insatiable appetite for unrestrained growth and unrestricted property rights.

In Bird on Fire, eminent social and cultural analyst Andrew Ross focuses on the prospects for sustainability in Phoenix--a city in the bull's eye of global warming--and also the obstacles that stand in the way. Most authors writing on sustainable cities look at places that have excellent public transit systems and relatively high density, such as Portland, Seattle, or New York. But Ross contends that if we can't change the game in fast-growing, low-density cities like Phoenix, the whole movement has a major problem. Drawing on interviews with 200 influential residents--from state legislators, urban planners, developers, and green business advocates to civil rights champions, energy lobbyists, solar entrepreneurs, and community activists--Ross argues that if Phoenix is ever to become sustainable, it will occur more through political and social change than through technological fixes. Ross explains how Arizona's increasingly xenophobic immigration laws, science-denying legislature, and growth-at-all-costs business ethic have perpetuated social injustice and environmental degradation. But he also highlights the positive changes happening in Phoenix, in particular the Gila River Indian Community's successful struggle to win back its water rights, potentially shifting resources away from new housing developments to producing healthy local food for the people of the Phoenix Basin. Ross argues that this victory may serve as a new model for how green democracy can work, redressing the claims of those who have been aggrieved in a way that creates long-term benefits for all.

Bird on Fire offers a compelling take on one of the pressing issues of our time--finding pathways to sustainability at a time when governments are dismally failing in their responsibility to address climate change.


Bird on Fire...has done something more than nail a list of fundamental problems, both societal and environmental, with our big city. Unlike author Richard Florida, who likes to lecture about what a city like Phoenix should be doing to set things right, Ross describes what led to our less-than-sustainable straits, then outlines what's in place for us to rectify the many mistakes local government has made. - The Phoenix New Times

Ross's conclusion - that if sustainable urbanism is not directed by and toward principles of equity, then they will almost certainly end up reinforcing patterns of eco-apartheid - is a bracing challenge. Publishers Weekly

If Phoenix could be greened, any place on earth could do it. And as this book makes clear, democracy and social justice will be every bit as key as solar panels.-Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

Books by Andrew Ross are always exhilarating adventures at the cutting edge of social thought, but Bird on Fire is particularly fascinating. Rather than recounting the green virtues of some demi-paradise like Vermont or San Francisco, he descends directly into the ecological and economic hell fires of Phoenix. The result is a landmark study of the micropolitics of the struggle for urban sustainability where the stakes are the highest.-Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

Bird on Fire is a stunning report from the front lines. Ross vividly shows how and why our big cities are one of the top places where the fight to contain climate change will either be won or lost.-James Gustave Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World and co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council

This is a superb and important book. With a sweeping command of the subject, Andrew Ross reads from the entrails of Phoenix a story with hopeful insights for all of humane civilization. His graceful prose and political clarity make Bird on Fire not only useful but also very compelling and pleasurable to read.-Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence

Bird on Fire is a triumph. The future and sustainability of Phoenix are not local questions, but ones of national and global importance. Andrew Ross examines them with a keen radar for the interplay of power, class, greed, prejudice and the mythology of both the American West and the great Sunbelt migration. In the process, he has also given us the finest history we have yet of modern Phoenix, a massive metropolis whose consequence is cloaked by its reputation for sun, golf and right-wing politics. This is a must-read.-Jon Talton, author of South Phoenix Rules and former columnist for The Arizona Republic

A must-read for anyone who thinks that city transitions to more sustainable policies and practices are a snap. --American Scientist

Examines the troubling prospects for sustainability in the sprawing city of Pheonix, Ariz.; draws on interviews with 200 planners, developers, politicians, and other influential residents.--The Chronicle Review

...terrifying, maddening, depressing and hopeful all at once. Kind of like Phoenix itself. - Tucson Weekly