I don't care for the Southwest

My cousin got married this weekend in Phoenix, and we went out there for the wedding. It was very nice. The bride looked pretty in her dress. It was funny that the only people not bowing their heads in prayer or reciting the Lord's prayer were the Jews (my cousin has Jewish relatives on his dad's side also, so we weren't the only Jews there). And we got to sit with people who were actually interesting at the reception, so we could have a conversation over dinner that wasn't awkward and wierd.

But I hadn't been out to Arizona since I was 10 (my relatives usually come east for things instead of us going west), and there were some things that I had forgotten about the Southwest, or didn't notice when last I was there, and I found them disconcerting:
A) It was an outdoor ceremony at which I was concerned that I was going to get sunburned because I didn't bring any sunscreen. Why did I not bring sunscreen? Because it's November. Veterans' Day isn't the holiday where you should be worried about getting too much sun.
B) Arizona is a desert. If people are going to live in the desert, they should embrace it. That means there should not be a giant waterfall at the entrance to every subdivision. There also do not need to be huge water traps and grass so green as to make the Irish jealous on every golf course. There should be desert landscaping that conserves water.
C) While I understand that there are no natural boudaries to the urban sprawl out there, it is unnecessary to make things so far apart. There will be a subdivision, and then miles of desert, and then another random subdivision just randomly plunked down in the middle of nowhere. If things are built nominally closer together, it makes them more convenient and requires less driving (since it's not like anything there is built to have a pedestrian area).