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Few American cities wear their landscape as openly as Phoenix. Spread across the Salt River Valley and ringed by desert mountain preserves, it sits at an elevation of just over a thousand feet in the Sonoran Desert, where saguaro cacti punctuate the skyline alongside glass towers and the jagged ridgeline of Camelback Mountain. The city grew with extraordinary speed through the twentieth century, transforming from a small agricultural settlement into one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, and that rapid expansion gives it an energy that is expansive rather than layered, horizontal rather than vertical.

The greater Phoenix area is made up of distinct cities that have grown into one another over the decades. Scottsdale, to the northeast, carries a reputation for galleries, resorts, and a walkable Old Town district that draws visitors looking for a more concentrated street-level experience. Tempe, anchored by Arizona State University and the banks of Tempe Town Lake, has a younger, more collegiate character. Downtown Phoenix itself has changed considerably since the early 2000s, with the Roosevelt Row arts district establishing itself as a genuine creative neighbourhood, its warehouses and low-rise buildings given over to murals, independent studios, and small restaurants. The Heard Museum, dedicated to the history and art of Native peoples of the American Southwest, sits just north of downtown and remains one of the most significant cultural institutions of its kind in the country.