Selling the Eco-Entrepreneurial City: Natural Wonders and Urban Stratagems in Tucson, Arizona

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how urban entrepreneurs socially construct nature to promote tourism and growth. Using textual analyses and interviews, I study one state-sponsored booster in Tucson, Arizona as it sells the city as "natural" landscape. The literatures on entrepreneurialism and place promotion are replete with cities sold as culture and history, suburbs sold as the pastoral, or rural spaces sold as countryside. There is another alternative, however: a metropolis "themed" as pristine desert. In response, this paper offers two modest contributions. The first is a detailed study of place marketing in a scenery-obsessed city. Second, I consider the possible contradictions of selling a growing city with images of its desert periphery. Only by understanding the "eco-entrepreneurial city" might we better theorize the ironies of a Tucson sold as "Real. Natural. Arizona."