Golf Courses in the desert

This NYT Magazine article about an exurb near Phoenix is a pretty well written account of the real estate bubble in general too. Some things make you laugh like the fancy irrigation for grass growing in the middle of the desert. It is sad to see the lack of planning and it seems rather typical of quite a bit of the developer planned burbs. In the gold rush to develop the mass subdivisions of single family American dream homes no one thought about high schools or traffic planning at all. You would think there would be rules for this sort of thing, kind of minimum planning requirements for communities. It doesn't seem to be the case though it makes me curious how many similar places there are that are basically speculator established with no planning other than how to squeeze in the most fancy homes and golf courses and bar&grilles.

It's tempting to enjoy the misery of the people who bought there hoping to make a quick buck, but it is unfortunate too that the buyers and the banks will take much of the losses in situations like some here where the developers have already sold most of the land and made their money and left.