Originally Posted by Mutt

Cities like Phoenix remained very small because of the horrible heat, once home air conditioning became available in the 50's cities in the Sun Belt had explosive population growth. Phoenix only had 65,000 people in 1940, I wonder what LA had.

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In 1940, Phoenix?s population had still only reached 65,000. A continuing impediment to
growth was the oppressive heat which was not really solved until the arrival of air
conditioning. When the FHA [Federal Housing Authority] accepted central air
conditioning as part of its home mortgages in 1957, installation exploded. In part, central
air penetrated the market so quickly in Phoenix because of the arrival of Motorola with its
high tech manufacturing plants in the early 1950s. Those plants had been refrigerated
from the outset and the engineers who moved to Phoenix to work for Motorola thought
their homes should be just as comfortable as their factories.

With the arrival of air conditioning, Phoenix population surged. During the 1950s it was
the fastest growing city in America, rising by 311%. In 1959 alone, there were more
houses built than in all the years from 1914 to 1946. By 1960, it was the largest city in
the southwest with a population of 439,000.