Newsreel

Funny how some weeks the editor gets lucky and can come up with an overarching theme. It turns out, purely by accident, that every story in this issue's Currents section addresses the conflict between growth and heritage.

This happens most obviously in Dave Devine's look at how downtown neighborhoods may get the short end of the stick as the carrot dangles in front of Rio Nuevo developers. At least, that's what will occur if history repeats itself. Rio Nuevo is, in general, a fine thing, but not if it contributes to the erosion of the surrounding residential blocks.

The University of Arizona has been aggressively chomping into its adjacent neighborhoods for years, and its grazing south of Sixth Street has much to do with a struggle within the Delfakis family to decide what to do with its Marathon restaurant there. Chris Limberis meets the family in court, in a follow-up to last autumn's feature "Greek Tragedy."

As Tucson grows, so grows the asphalt, but we're $20 billion short of keeping up with our transportation needs over the next two decades. That means, of course, higher taxes. Jim Nintzel looks at various schemes to pay the price of the city's Phoenix envy.

Now, is the recent vandalism at San Xavier really a growth issue? Until the iconoclasts are nabbed, we won't know exactly why they've been smashing and spray-painting parts of the place. But we do have more and more people living near there with less to do, and the Tohono O'odham police can't quite keep up with them. Margaret Regan looks into it.