South Phoenix, an area long overlooked by developers and planners, has emerged as one of metro Phoenix’s top markets for growth with the extension of light rail and more homebuyers, renters and retailers moving there.
The area that stretches from the Salt River bed south of downtown to South Mountain is at a turning point for growth, with billions of dollars of investment expected to come. It’s part of the city’s high-speed growth, partly fueled by a boom in the microchip industry that’s bringing tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in investment.
But in south Phoenix, this era was decades in the making for its many longtime Black and Latino residents who have dealt with many challenges. Housing discrimination and a lack of infrastructure have hurt the area…