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Tucson Culture
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A significant percentage of Tucson’s
population are temporary residents, contributing to the sense
that the city is a holdover of the transient Old West, when
communities could be built, settled, and then abandoned for
ghost towns in just a few years. These passers through include
the student body of the University of Arizona and a host of
people known familiarly as “snow birds”: those who
have bought a second house in or around the city and reside
there only during the clement winters. |
 But
of course the number of year round Tucsonans grows, and grows steadily
more diverse. On the fast-developing outskirts of town are families
in subdivisional suburbs, the wealthiest of whom live high in the
foothills of the Catalina Mountains. Around the city center, in
the Warehouse District and Barrio Viejo, there is a vibrant collective
of young artists, painters and musicians whose work is enjoyed in
the galleries and clubs that dot the downtown. South Tucson, not
even a mile from City Hall, is an autonomous township peopled almost
entirely by Latino Americans, making it an indispensable pilgrimage
point for Mexican food and Mariachi music. Indeed, with the border
city of Nogales only forty-five minutes away, Tucson is strongly
influenced by Mexican culture.
Finally, quite unique to the city, there are an amazing number
of people who first came to Tucson with the intention of seeing
the sights and moving on – and then simply stayed. They are
not exactly settlers and not tourists, but men and women who have
seemingly suspended their lives for the love of this peculiar and
beautiful setting, with its big sky and small town friendliness.
Almost everyone who visits Tucson seriously considers the feasibility
of staying there.
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