Cities collect rankings the way generals collect medals, and in 1993 Scottsdale got the one it would quote for decades: one of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ City Livability Awards, which the city shortened to “Most Livable City” (other cities won them too). For a town that had been coining its own superlatives since “The West’s Most Western Town,” there was something deeply satisfying about an outside body doing the coining for once.
The award landed on real evidence. The Drinkwater years had assembled the flagship institutions — the mega-resorts, the Mayo Clinic, the TPC and its Open — and the city now paired them with a gallery-and-ArtWalk arts economy downtown and a citizens’ movement, two years old and gathering strength, organizing to save the McDowells. Meanwhile the growth machine did not pause for the ceremony: development kept pushing north along Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard as the city climbed toward the 167,277 people a special census would count in 1995.
“Most livable” became instant shorthand, chamber-of-commerce boilerplate but also a standard the town would be held to. The same year it became policy. On March 15 the council created a fifteen-member McDowell Mountain Task Force, chaired by the car dealer Virginia Korte, and on October 4 she reported its recommendations: the city should take the lead in saving the McDowells, find an equitable way to pay and create a standing commission. The council did all three within two years. The campaign is the hinge of the 1990s chapter; the buildup began with the Land Trust in 1991.