ANCHORAGE — This city often walks with a swagger as the metropolis of America’s far north, the high-rises of its oil-based economy glittering against a backdrop of mountain peaks and the ocean inlet named for Capt. James Cook, the English explorer. While Anchorage still occasionally glances south for approval, or for signs of a slight, it has recently carved a place of its own, residents say, with exciting art, dining and theater scenes, and job opportunities that go beyond energy.
The great question now is whether maturity and diversity will provide shelter from the economic storm barreling fast in the city’s way.
Six months of falling oil prices have come with some bitter and frightening memories of Anchorage in the mid-1980s, when the wild economic party ushered in by the Trans Alaska Pipeline shut down. The 800-mile pipe, from the northern oil wells of Prudhoe Bay to the shipping port of Valdez, had been completed in 1977 and was in its first gusher phase then until a price collapse not unlike the current one brought it all to a whooshing end.
–
Part of the economic calculus is that Anchorage is also the state’s marketplace for goods bought by other Alaskans, who by and large pass through on their way to smaller cities or rural villages. And the rest of the state lacks the diversified economy of Anchorage, making those places more vulnerable to the impact of cuts in state spending or revenue sharing.
“What’s good for rural Alaska is good for Anchorage,” said Anchorage’s mayor, Dan Sullivan. “It’s a symbiotic relationship.”
A version of this article appears in print on February 9, 2015, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Matured Anchorage Struggles to Shake Haunting Memories . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
