Text version of APC 98: The Machine in the Garden

Morrison Institute for Public Policy conducts research which informs, advises, and assists
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This document is copyrighted ©1998 by the Arizona Board of Regents for and on behalf of Arizona State University
and its Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
Rob Melnick
Morrison Institute for Public Policy

John Stuart Hall
Arizona State University N. Joseph Cayer Arizona State University Nancy Welch Morrison Institute

Paul J. Babbitt
Coconino County

David S. Baron
Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest

David R. Berman
Arizona State University

Steve Betts
Gallagher & Kennedy

James M. Bourey
Maricopa Association of Governments

Roger A. Brevoort
van Dijk Pace Westlake Architects

Brent Brown
Arizona State University

Elizabeth K. Burns
Arizona State University

John M. DeGrove
Florida Atlantic University

Grady Gammage, Jr.
Gammage and Burnham

Patricia Gober
Arizona State University

Doug Henton
Collaborative Economics

Norm Hicks
City of Bullhead City

Peter Iverson
Arizona State University

Jeffrey James
Arizona State University

Kim Knowles-Yanez
Arizona State University

Rick C. Lavis
Arizona Cotton Growers Association

Dickinson McGaw
Arizona State University

Sara Moya
Arizona State University

Sharon Megdal
MegEcon Consulting

Jack Pfister
Arizona State University

Tom Rex
Arizona State University

Tanis J. Salant
University of Arizona

Tom Simplot
Home Builders Association of Central

Arizona
Vernon D. Swaback
Vernon Swaback Associates

Kim Walesh
Collaborative Economics

James P. Walsh
Lawyer

Contributors
About The Machine in the Garden
A Continuum of Choice
Arizona's Growth Continuum and Policy Choices
John Stuart Hall, Professor, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State
University
Arizona's Growth in Context
Always an Urban Place Peter Iverson, Professor of History,
Arizona State University
Overview of Growth in Arizona: Critical Statistics

The Demographics of Urban Growth in Phoenix
Patricia Gober, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University

State of the Desert Biome-Uniqueness, Biodiversity, Threats
and the Adequacy of Protection in the Sonoran Bioregion
Gary Paul Nabhan and Andrew R. Holdsworth © The Wildlands Project

Rural to Urban Land Conversion in Metropolitan Phoenix
Patricia Gober, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Elizabeth K. Burns, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Kim Knowles-Yanez, Adjunct Professor of Planning, Arizona State
University Jeffrey James, Graduate Research
Assistant, Geography, Arizona State University

Travel in Metropolitan Phoenix Elizabeth K. Burns, Professor of
Geography, Arizona State University
Growth Brings Uneven Benefits for Arizonans
Tom Rex, Research Manager, Center for Business Research, Arizona State
University

Yesterday's Growth: The Market Reigned
Phoenix and the Vision Thing Grady Gammage, Jr. , Partner,
Gammage and Burnham Adjunct Professor, School of Planning
and Landscape Architecture, Arizona State University

Housing Marketplace Determines Design, Not Other Way Around
Tom Simplot, Deputy Director, Home Builders Association of Central
Arizona
Let's Hear It for the Suburbs Samuel R. Staley, for Reason Public
Policy Institute
Agriculture: Growth's Architect and Its Victim
Rick C. Lavis, Executive Vice President, Arizona Cotton Growers
Association
Barriers Won't Help Growth Patrick S. Sullivan, for St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Counties That Growth Forgot Brent Brown, Associate Professor,
School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Restore the Focus on Planning Larry Landry, ©Landry & Associates
Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response
Smart Growth Takes Off Neal R. Peirce, ©Washington Post
Writers Group
State Responses To Urban Growth: Lessons for Arizona
John M. DeGrove, Director, Joint Center for Environmental and Urban
Problems Florida Atlantic University/ Florida
International University
Growing Smarter in Arizona Steve Betts, Attorney, Gallagher &
Kennedy

Growth in Arizona: The Machine in the Garden

Initiative Gives Voters Control Over Growth
David S. Baron, Assistant Director, Arizona Center for Law in the Public
Interest
Growing Smarter in Arizona: The Northern Arizona Experience
Paul J. Babbitt Member, Coconino County Board of
Supervisors
Sprawl Philip Langdon, ©Builder

The Growth Management Challenge in Arizona
David R. Berman, Professor of Political Science, Arizona State
University
Arizona Must Recognize Limitations as it Grows
Sharon Megdal, President, MegEcon Consulting

From Rural to Suburban: Five Regions in Greater Arizona
Tanis J. Salant, Director of Government Programs, University of
Arizona
Losing Ground: Land Fragmentation in Rural Arizona
James P. Walsh, Lawyer
Historic Preservation Rebuilds Communities
Roger A. Brevoort, Director of Historic Preservation, van Dijk Pace
Westlake Architects
Growth Focuses Attention on Infrastructure, Public Safety, and
Community Norm Hicks, Mayor, City of Bullhead
City
Valley Vision 2025: A Plan for the Next Generation
James M. Bourey, Executive Director, Maricopa Association of
Governments

Tomorrow's Growth: New Forces and the Future
The New Economy and Growth Doug Henton, President, Collaborative
Economics, Inc. Kim Walesh, Director, Collaborative
Economics, Inc.
Home from Nowhere © James Howard Kunstler

The Art and Craft of Growth Jack Pfister, Distinguished Research
Fellow, Arizona State University
The Emerging Built Environment Vernon D. Swaback, AIA, AICP,
President, Vernon Swaback Associates

Reviving Cities: Think Metropolitan Bruce J. Katz, ©The Brookings
Institution
Nine Steps to Growth Leadership Dickinson McGaw, Professor, School
of Public Affairs, Arizona State University
Sara Moya, Doctoral Candidate, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State
University
To Conserve Farmlands: An Amazing California Alliance
Neal R. Peirce, ©Washington Post Writers Group

Growing Smarter and the Citizens Growth Management Initiative: Early
Lessons Rob Melnick, Director, Morrison
Institute for Public Policy, Arizona State University

6 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy
About The Machine in the Garden
Arizonans have been divided in their feelings about growth and what to do about it, especially during the past two decades. To complicate matters, the debate over the best responses to growth has been drawn along overly simplistic lines¾the economy versus the environment. Arizonans who follow the myriad issues related to urban growth closely are becoming convinced that the discussion needs to be recast in a new light. Scholar Leo Marx coined the phrase "the machine in the garden" in 1964 to describe
the relationship between nature and technology. Considering much of the writing
about Arizona's growth, it seemed an apt title for this volume of Arizona Policy
Choices. The Machine in the Garden presents growth policy choices for Arizona
along a continuum: Yesterday's Growth¾the policies that have been used in the
past; Today's Growth¾the "smarter" approaches from around the country; and
Tomorrow's Growth¾cutting edge thinking about the economy and
experiments in urbanism and governance.

Our approach is illustrated through original articles and reprints from
national sources that are categorized according to the three points on
the continuum. Morrison Institute for Public Policy is pleased to present this wide
variety of viewpoints and to sponsor a lively "debate in print." As you read the articles,
ask yourself: What policies will serve Arizona best in the next century? How can we
keep our economy strong and preserve what we value about the state?

Ten years ago, the Arizona Legislature asked Morrison Institute to write a book
entitled, Urban Growth in Arizona: A Policy Analysis. It included the following
description of Arizona's future.

Arizona can expect more of the same relatively rapid growth which fluctuates
according to economic cycles and is largely sprawling, mostly unplanned, and may
be counter to the lifestyle interests¾if not the pocketbooks¾of most Arizonans.
An object in motion stays in motion.

Ten years from now we hope that this volume of Arizona Policy Choices is viewed as
a tool that significantly helped our leaders to shape the state's growth policies so that
Arizona's momentum truly benefits its residents.

Rob Melnick
October 1998

A Continuum of Choice
Arizona's Growth Continuum and Policy Choices
John Stuart Hall
Professor, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University
A Continuum of Choice
Arizona's Growth Continuum and Policy Choices John Stuart Hall, Ph. D.
Editor, Arizona Policy Choices
Professor, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Growth has been a topic of resounding importance in Arizona since statehood. The
facts of Arizona's astounding growth are fairly clear. But like all significant topics of
public policy, the meaning of these facts demands further investigation. This issue of
Arizona Policy Choices explores how the growth machine has functioned in the
garden of our state, and it presents a new paradigm for future discussion.

For decades, observers of the state's public policy have discussed and debated the
implications of amazing increases in population, jobs, and development. It was often
said that "growth to Arizona is like cars to Detroit," a comment that reflected the
generally accepted importance and inevitability of growth.

Naturally, growth of the magnitude experienced in Arizona also has raised questions
and doubts. Any thoughtful person would wonder about the consequences of more
than a quadruple increase in the state's population over the last four decades.
Powerful, complex, and invasive, growth raises big questions that will not go away.
Should sustained growth be viewed as evidence of the fulfillment of or the deferment
of the "American dream?" What is the price of progress? With characteristic
eloquence, historian Marshall Trimble addressed the latter question:

Early pioneers braved sandstorms, droughts, hostile Apache, and blistering heat to
carve out a living in the inhospitable environment. Building highways, cities, and
dams, they learned to harness the rivers and create energy, thereby making the
turbulent land inhabitable for large numbers of people. However, as with all things
in the environs of nature, something is lost when something is gained.

Despite the many obvious personal, economic, social, and environmental aspects of
growth, the debate has been vastly oversimplified to be just developers versus
environmentalists. It is through this very narrow frame that policy choices have been
examined. This edition of Arizona Policy Choices moves beyond such a simple
approach to growth and offers additional choices for discussion and action.

A Continuum of Choices and Ideas
Think about Arizona's growth as a continuum which runs from yesterday to tomorrow
with an intermediate stop at today with choices and ideas all along the way. This
overview presents the reader with our new framework for policy discussion and
describes articles that illustrate the essence of a particular policy choice. Although not
every one of the more than 30 articles in The Machine in the Garden is previewed
here, they all contain important, often provocative ideas and context.

Yesterday's Growth¾The Market Reigned
Policy Choice: Let the Market Continue to Govern
Arizona was one of the nation's fastest growing states in recent decades because
many key players believed that growth was beneficial. A recent study of growth in
the Southwest determined that "the aggressive pursuit of growth dominated the
policy agendas" of private and public leadership in the southwest for much of the
twentieth century and that private sector leadership in Arizona was particularly
assertive and effective in this role even when compared to the pro-growth stances of
neighbors such as New Mexico, Texas, and California. The prevailing view was that
growth was good for Arizona and, despite growth's multiple challenges, there were
few naysayers.

The bottom line of this policy choice is that market-driven growth has been good to

Arizona and should be continued and enhanced. Several contributors to
this section emphasize the need to build on our existing growth patterns and processes.

Historian Peter Iverson's article in this volume makes the case that Arizona has always
been an urban place, because economic and environmental factors required its
residents to organize in communities. He sees no real change in this general theme:

More varied voices are heard now in regard to the price of progress, the
consequences of construction. Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom, established
a century ago, prevails. Growth remains linked to progress and prosperity, to
individual freedom and voluntary separation form social and economic ills. Most
Arizona citizens still accept the dichotomy offered by the Gazette a century ago. If
dry rot appears to be the only alternative, than there can be little doubt about the
contours of the future in this urban place called Arizona.

Growth in one form, such as population, begets growth in another, such as housing
construction or service aspects of the economy. Authors Tom Rex of the ASU Center
for Business Research and Patricia Gober, Professor of Geography at ASU, provide
thorough and thoughtful descriptions of the economic and demographic aspects of
urban growth in Arizona and Phoenix regional contexts. Both demonstrate that
growth can be defined in different ways, but that its essential components¾
population, land area, housing units, jobs¾are highly correlated.

Attorney and Arizona land expert Grady Gammage argues that as the "prototypical
post-industrial city" Phoenix should embrace its present form, and rather than
importing standard growth management solutions from elsewhere, build on an
understanding of the nature of desert communities and "capitalize on our multi-centered
form to further disperse and diversify work activities." Similarly,
representatives of home builders (Tom Simplot) and agriculture (Rick Lavis) offer
strong arguments in support of the power and promise of market forces. And, this
policy theme¾that individual choice and market forces should drive development
decisions¾is also promoted by Samuel Staley of the Reason Public Policy Institute
in his provocative article about the virtues of suburban life.

Today's Growth¾The Smarter Growth Response
Policy Choice: Adopt New Tools and Processes to Manage Growth
As people have grappled with the challenges of growth in Arizona, a long list of
ideas, tools, and processes has been explored. A centerpiece of this exploration is the
so-called "smart growth" movement described in several of our articles. The
principle tenet of the smart growth position is that it is possible and desirable to

manage growth in a way that sustains its benefits while minimizing its

social, economic, and environmental costs.
For some smart growth proponents, simply assigning this critical balancing function
to either the market place or government alone is not enough. Rather, they suggest
that insuring a proper balance between the costs and benefits of growth should be
achieved by "enlightened" public management and governance of growth.

One way to govern growth more effectively is to build on existing institutions,
processes and laws that are already active parts of Arizona's growth management
process. Arizona State University political scientist David Berman's article provides
an overview of existing state and local growth governance roles and responsibilities.
He notes that in Arizona, as in other states, state government has delegated much of
the responsibility for regulating land use and other growth-related policy issues to
local governments. Berman describes many growth management techniques available
to Arizona cities, the constraints that the state has imposed on them, and the fact that
each local unit has tended to consider its own needs to the exclusion of others.

National growth policy expert John DeGrove's article examines states' responses to
urban growth pressures and offers lessons for Arizona. Both Berman and DeGrove
suggest that holistic state frameworks are needed to guide growth while sustaining
the economy and environment. This concept is also a part of the theme pursued by
attorney Steve Betts in his description of the state's "Growing Smarter" legislation.

It is clear that smart growth requires collaboration among governments and other
interests. This is illustrated by stories of growth challenges and responses told by
Coconino County Supervisor Paul Babbitt, Bullhead City Mayor Norm Hicks,
University of Arizona researcher Tanis Salant, and historic preservation expert Roger
Brevoort. Similarly, Philip Langdon, writing for Builder, describes active and
innovative growth management collaborations around the country.

According to environmental advocate David Baron of the Arizona Center for Law in
the Public Interest, Arizona should get smarter via direct democracy in the form of a
citizens initiative to develop growth boundaries. Finally, dean of the nation's urban
journalists, Neal Peirce assesses the smart growth movement and network and
underscores the importance of "unconventional learning" among all participants if
the movement is to succeed.

Tomorrow's Growth¾New Forces and the Future
Policy Choice: Craft Growth to Support the New Economy and Quality of Environment and Life

At the far end of the policy continuum explored in this edition of Arizona Policy
Choices is the cutting edge. Here are some of the most creative ways of thinking about
policies for tomorrow's growth. As in the other sections, authors of these articles
represent different backgrounds and interests. Yet they are linked by themes including
the need to look more inclusively and comprehensively at growth and to focus on the
issue of quality in light of new realities. They recognize that the growth machine can
function in Arizona's garden, providing it does more harmonizing than harm.

Strategies that are characterized in this policy choice are big and bold. This
perspective attempts to align old concerns about balancing costs and benefits of
growth with new economic, environmental, design, and governance realities. The
goal of this policy choice is to achieve significant and wealth-producing growth that

is also community and region friendly, that helps communities

compete in the global economy and achieve high quality of life standards while protecting land and the environment.

One of the clearest statements about this "tomorrow's growth" goal was made by
Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce leader James Vaughn Jr., who said:

We believe some things must grow¾jobs, productivity, income and wages, profits,
capital and saving, information, knowledge, education. And others must not¾
pollution, waste, poverty, energy and material use per unit of output.
Internationally known experts on the New Economy, Douglas Henton and Kim
Walesh of Collaborative Economics, Inc. provide a compelling framework and logic
for achieving this goal. They argue that the profound shift from an industrial
economy to a knowledge-based economy has equally profound impacts on the
structure of growth. Henton and Walesh describe a New Economy and realities for
growth based on:

· Economic regions conducive to economic clusters

· Distinctive quality of life to attract knowledge workers

· Vital centers to offer lively amenities and opportunities for interaction

· Choices for living and working to increase diversity of careers and life paths

· Speed and adaptability for quick access to decisions and resources

· Natural environment as an important element of community

These values fit neatly with New Urbanist goals such as preserving heritage and
developing a built environment out of a "dialogue of design" and goals of
comprehensive and meaningful participation of all institutions and stakeholders.

Essentially, the authors of articles with this perspective argue that Arizona has
reached a point of crisis that requires bold thinking. Therefore, this policy choice
requires comprehensive, inclusive, and coherent approaches to deal with the
extremely complex set of resources, challenges, and values covered by the growth
umbrella. This alternative stands in stark contrast to "band-aid" measures that have
so often proved ineffective in the past.

Former Salt River Project CEO and advisor to Governor Jane Hull, Jack Pfister
contends that growth can be viewed as a raw resource with immense potential that
needs to be carefully crafted. But, who will do the crafting? Not, according to Pfister,
government alone, because of public skepticism about past government performance
in this area. Rather, he calls for new craftsmanship composed of visionary leaders
working with coalitions of dedicated citizens.

A starting point for crafting new growth governance processes in Arizona is provided
by ASU's Dickinson McGaw and former Paradise Valley city council member Sara
Moya. Far more than a checklist is provided in their explanation of nine steps that
could be pursued to form a coherent response to the challenges of growth.

In large part, connecting the New Governance and New Economy is about starting
from common ground and working together to create better ways of growing.
Morrison Institute director Rob Melnick's article says this is one of the lessons that
should be derived from Arizona's recent competition between a citizens growth
boundary initiative and the smarter growth initiative.

Arizona's Growth And the Power of Choice

This brief introduction provides an alert to the complexity and multiplicity of growth
issues and policy choices that appear in this volume. Some significant points of
agreement among authors are reached:

° No one seriously thinks we can stop growth. As author Vernon Swaback puts it,
"with respect to both our local and global histories, other than by way of death, no
one has ever succeeded in stopping growth."

° Growth is multi-dimensional and complex, with impacts that spill over
jurisdictional boundaries.

° Because growth effects often spill over, policy responses to growth should be
larger and/ or at least more coordinated than those developed by single local
governments or other lone institutions.

° Governing growth will always require a perspective and process capable of
balancing strong and independent values such as the pursuit of happiness,
economic freedom, environmental preservation, and the sacred nature of the land.

° Arizona's historical growth and response patterns, coupled with forecasts of
growth and problems of sustainability require proactive attention and clear
responses to the question: "What are the policy choices we need to make now to
ensure quality growth in the 21st century?"

Notes
Anthony Downs, New Visions for Metropolitan America, Brookings Institution and Lincoln Institutes for Land Policy,
1994. Samuel Kaplan, The Dream Deferred: People, Politics, and Planning in Suburbia, Vintage Books, 1977.
Marshall Trimble, Arizona, Doubleday, 1977. p. 377.
Amy Bridges, Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest, Princeton University Press, 1997. Chapter 4.
Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson, Boundary Crossers, University of Maryland, 1997.

14 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy 13

Arizona's Growth in Context
Always an Urban Place
Peter Iverson, Professor of History, Arizona State University

Overview of Growth in Arizona: Critical Statistics
The Demographics of Urban Growth in Phoenix
Patricia Gober, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University

State of the Desert Biome-Uniqueness, Biodiversity, Threats and the Adequacy of Protection in the Sonoran Bioregion

Gary Paul Nabhan and Andrew R. Holdsworth © The Wildlands Project
Rural to Urban Land Conversion in Metropolitan Phoenix
Patricia Gober, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Elizabeth K. Burns, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Kim Knowles-Yanez, Adjunct Professor of Planning, Arizona State University
Jeffrey James, Graduate Research Assistant, Geography, Arizona State University

Travel in Metropolitan Phoenix
Elizabeth K. Burns, Professor of Geography, Arizona State University

Growth Brings Uneven Benefits for Arizonans
Tom Rex, Research Manager, Center for Business Research, Arizona State University

Always an Urban Place Peter Iverson, Ph. D.
Professor of History, Arizona State University
We prefer to portray Arizona as a rural environment. In art, photography, travel
descriptions, and other imagery, Arizona is depicted primarily through the features of
its extraordinary terrain. Painters are more likely to try to evoke the Sonoran
landscape than downtown Tempe on Friday night. Arizona Highways features
Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon instead of Peoria and Yuma. Postcards
emphasize sky, not Sky Harbor. The land and sky of Arizona do demand attention.
The inimitable Edward Abbey once put it this way: "Ninety per cent of my state," he
noted, "is an appalling burned-out wasteland, a hideous Sahara with few oases, a
grim, bleak, harsh, over-heated, God-damned and God-forgotten inferno." "Arizona,"
he added gleefully, "is the native haunt of the scorpion, the sidewinder, the tarantula,
the vampire bat, and cosenose kissing bug, the vinegarroon, the centipede, and three
species of poisonous lizard: namely the Gila monster, the land speculator and the real
estate broker."

Abbey did his best to discourage growth. Despite his protestations¾Nobody in his
right mind would want to live here¾growth, and particularly urban growth, has
been a constant in the history of Arizona. Indeed, from the beginning, Arizona has
been an urban place. And from the beginning the fate of "city" and "country" has
been intertwined. People living in town have always used the resources from outside
the city limits, whether it be for profit or for diversion. Those residing in more rural
locales have always employed towns to purchase or trade for supplies, to sell their
products, and to search for sin or salvation. A harsh and demanding environment has
always encouraged people to live in proximity to each other and to work together in
organized communities.

These generalizations apply to the Indians (the true pioneers) and to those who
followed. The Anasazi created impressive communities in the Four Corners area. By
living and working together in compact settlements they enjoyed longer and better
lives. Their ability to sustain relatively stable communities surely may be measured
in their jewelry, pottery, and other forms of art possible only in a reasonably secure
environment. The Hohokam carved out the first canals in what became Maricopa
County; they employed irrigated farming and sustained a substantial population for
centuries. The Hopis constructed their villages beginning at least a thousand years
ago. One of these, Oraibi, is considered to be the longest continuously occupied
community in the United States.

When the Spaniards entered Arizona, they established additional urban centers.
Tubac and Tucson were both founded in the 1700s. Presidios offered greater security

to early civilians. In addition, missions such as Bac and Guevavi encouraged Indian
resettlement into new communities that represented another form of urbanization.
Potential and actual confrontations with Indian nations limited Spanish and Mexican
farming, ranching, and mining. Prior to 1848 the Spanish and Mexican presence in
Arizona remained primarily urban.

The conclusion of the war with Mexico through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in
1848 coupled with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 ushered in the next chapter of
Arizona history. The demographic expansion of Arizona depended significantly upon
use of natural resources. Mining played a key role in this stage of urbanization. Gold
brought both miners and merchants to La Paz and Prescott. Silver mines bearing
such melodic names as the Lucky Cuss and the Tough Nut prompted the growth of
Tombstone. Copper brought in corporations like Phelps Dodge and fueled the
development of Clifton/ Morenci, Bisbee, Globe/ Miami, Jerome, Douglas, and other
towns. In the process Arizona emerged as the leading copper producer in the country.
The significance of mining is evident from the censuses for 1900 and 1910. Table 1
lists the ten largest towns in Arizona territory in these years:

Table 1: Top 10 Towns and Population in Arizona 1900 and 1910 1900 1910
1. Tucson (7531) 1. Tucson (13200) 2. Clifton/ Morenci (6000) 2. Clifton/ Morenci (12850)
3. Bisbee (5800) 3. Phoenix (11150) 4. Phoenix (5544) 4. Bisbee (9050)
5. Prescott (3559) 5. Globe/ Miami (8500) 6. Jerome (2681) 6. Douglas (6450)
7. Nogales (2761) 7. Prescott (5100) 8. Globe (1495) 8. Nogales (3550)
9. Yuma (1409) 9. Yuma (2950) 10. Winslow (1305) 10. Jerome (2400)

Mining not only played a vital role in Arizona's growth, but it also continued to
diversify Arizona's population. Immigrants from Mexico, England, Scotland, Ireland,
and Germany contributed their skills to early development of the industry.
Technological advances allowed copper mine owners to bring in men from other areas
who may have lacked the knowledge about hard rock mining possessed by their
predecessors, but who were willing to work for less money under adverse conditions.
Czechs, Serbs, Italians, Spaniards, and others from southern and eastern Europe as
well as Chinese came to the mining camps. There they helped build Arizona as they
also suffered to varying degrees from the ethnic and racial hostilities of the era. 4

Another people who had also known hostility contributed as well to 19th century

urban growth in Arizona. From their base in Salt Lake City and recruited through
vigorous missionary efforts in England and Scandinavia, Mormons fanned into
different sections of the region. They founded towns along the Little Colorado, the
Salt, and the San Pedro, knowing that access to reliable water sources offered their
best chance for survival. Some of their fledgling communities did not survive, but
many endured and eventually prospered, including Snowflake (its name drawn from
the LDS family names of Snow and Flake), St. David, Thatcher, and Mesa. 5

The Mormons, of course, were not the only ones who established agrarian-based
communities. Others began to build along the Rio Salado, recognizing the prescience
of the Hohokam and realizing the opportunities for modern agriculture in this
location. Either Englishman Darrell Duppa or Confederate army deserter Jack
Swilling thus called one new town Phoenix. Swilling, the so-called father of Phoenix,
is described in the most recent history of the state as "a morphine addict and a violent
drunk who died in Yuma prison in 1878 after being accused of robbing a stage."
Thanks to the efforts of its first mayor, John T. Alsap, and other stalwarts, Phoenix
quickly signaled that it intended to live up to its name, regardless of the character of
one of its pioneering promoters. Established in 1870, it became the seat of the newly
established county of Maricopa in 1871 and by 1889 it had succeeded in wresting the
territorial capital from Prescott.

Gaining a county seat, let alone the capital, represented a major step in guaranteeing
future expansion for a particular municipality. Like all states, Arizona's history is
filled with examples of ambitious town founders whose dreams far exceeded the
subsequent dreary reality of obscurity or extinction. When a territorial legislature
divided up the spoils, communities vied with each other to obtain the best possible
prize. After the state capital, the insane asylum seemed to promise the greatest
financial return to a community, followed by the prison. The university and a school
to train teachers appeared far less desirable. They would be tiny enterprises and as a
Tucson bartender put it, "What do we want with a university? What good will it do
us? Who in hell ever heard of a University Professor buying a drink?"

Tucson attorney and territorial legislative representative C. C. Stephens returned to
town with the news that Tucson had not reacquired the capital, that he had supported
Phoenix's bid for the asylum and Tempe's effort to obtain the normal school, and that
Tucson only had procured the university. For his troubles, Stephens was accused of
"disloyalty" and lectured by the Citizen that he now was viewed with "loathing and
contempt," and that he made "a horse thief look respectable by comparison."
Stephens met with his constituents at the Opera House in an effort to defend his
record but was routed from the stage by a torrent of tomatoes, rotten eggs, and, for
good measure, a dead cat. Tucson nearly lost the university by refusing to donate
land for the enterprise, before a last minute donation of forty acres by two gamblers

and a saloon owner saved the institution for the city.
Urban rivalries of a century ago remind us that a number of developments of decades
past echo into the present. The gospel of growth started to be preached well before
our own time. The central role of the federal government, the importance of
transportation, tourism, and health care, and the challenges of race relations and
demographic expansion all loomed long ago. These parallels remind us that although
the dilemmas and the opportunities of the present are formidable, they are not new.
Indeed, they are formidable in part because they are rooted in the past.

Statehood, after all, was delayed by the impression that Arizona could not sustain
growth. When Senator Albert Beveridge, chair of the Senate Committee on the
Territories visited Arizona in 1901 to examine its viability for statehood, he judged
its population too limited, its economy too undeveloped, its landscape a desert. The
census figures of 1900 and 1910 remind us that Arizona's population did not exactly
equal that of New York. Leading citizens in the state concurred that Arizona had to
grow in order to gain some small measure of respect. The Arizona Gazette of
Phoenix in 1894 equated growth with progress, declaring that nations, cities, and
towns that did not expand were "marked for decay.... Those which do not progress, go
backwardÑ there is no standing still. It must be either growth or dry rot." The
Gazette admonished: "When opportunities for expansion present themselves they
must be taken advantage of at once or the opportunities may not come again." 9 Those
opportunities included use of natural resources, promotion of tourism, and
encouragement of individuals to relocate to Arizona.

The federal presence and continuing federal investment proved crucial to the
evolution of territorial Arizona. Army camps and forts did more than offer protection
and security to non-Indian residents; they furnished a market for farmers, ranchers,
and other business people that permitted initially struggling little enterprises like
Phoenix to grow. By the turn of the century, an expanding economy in the Salt River
valley and other locations in the West depended upon a more reliable and consistent
water supply. After prior private or local efforts failed, the federal government once
again came to the rescue. Passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902 authorized the
construction of major dams and accompanying canals. Thanks to the tireless efforts
of local boosters like Benjamin A. Fowler, the Salt River Project, including Roosevelt
Dam, became one of the first initiatives funded through the Act. Federal dollars thus
underwrote urban growth in the early 20th century.

When the Depression plagued Phoenix in the late 1920s and 1930s, the Works
Progress Administration allowed for the construction of North Phoenix High School
and Phoenix College, and the expansion of the Pueblo Grande Museum. The Civilian
Conservation Corps helped develop Papago Park and South Mountain Park. Federal

investment made Encanto Park a pleasing reality and encouraged the city of Phoenix
to buy Sky Harbor Airport; additional federal dollars allowed Sky Harbor to expand.
In the Tucson area comparable funding built Sabino Canyon Dam, constructed the
Mount Lemmon highway, and added to the runways at Davis-Monthan. Federal
assistance made possible a science building, greenhouse, women's gymnasium and
recreation building, an auditorium, a classroom building, the State Museum, and
improvements to the farm at the University of Arizona.

The outbreak of the second world war funneled further federal funding into the
Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. Luke, Williams, and Davis-Monthan
boosted the local economies but also inspired individuals to make Arizona their
home when the war ended. Work in war industries prompted others to move to the
state as well. After the war Federal Housing Administration and Veterans
Administration loans permitted many of these migrants to own their first homes;
without such federal assistance, far fewer would have taken this important step. In
turn, the housing construction business constituted a vital component in the post-war
boom in urban Arizona.

In addition to aviation, trains and automobiles were critical elements in fostering
growth. The arrival of the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe in
the late 19th century not only allowed Arizonans to ship and receive goods, but
permitted tourists and prospective residents to travel more comfortably to the territory.
Both railroads elevated the fortunes of existing communities on its routes and created
new towns. Automobiles quickly encouraged low-density settlements and suburbs.

Many newcomers were urban people, with no interest in becoming cowboys, miners,
or farmers. With the advent of the automobile, they could explore more of rural
Arizona. The Arizona Good Roads Association in Prescott published in 1913 a tour
book boasting that "Engineers from the Office of Roads, at Washington and other
highly qualified experts agree that Arizona has not only the best natural roads in the
Union, but that here are to be found accessible deposits of the best natural road
materials known." That is to say, you were essentially on your own, but things
promised to improve in the near future.

In the 1920s Arizona Highways, initially a newsletter of the Highway Department,
started to present current information about the state's road conditions and promote
travel to and within the state. Residents in rural Arizona surely had mixed emotions
about urban interlopers, but if these intruders were going to come, they at least
wanted to achieve a profit from their presence. Tourism progressively became more
essential to the local and state economy. Under Raymond Carlson's leadership,
Arizona Highways blossomed in the 1930s as an exceptionally attractive reflection of
Arizona. The Salt River valley in the same decade was dubbed the "Valley of the

Sun." Technological innovation yielded the miracle of air conditioning, luring still
more tourists and new residents, and making summers more bearable. 13

Arizona's dry climate beckoned people suffering from tuberculosis and other
illnesses. Barry Goldwater's mother, Josephine Williams, was one of countless
individuals who came to Arizona for this reason. The health care industry began in
territorial days, with St. Joseph's and St. Luke's in Phoenix and St. Mary's and St.
Luke's-in-the-Desert in Tucson representing early hospitals that attempted to assist
the afflicted. The less prosperous among the ill founded urban centers of their own in
the form of tent colonies: Sunnyslope in Phoenix and Tentville near the University of
Arizona campus in Tucson. Health seekers formed a significant portion of
Scottsdale's first residents. Winfield Scott numbered among those who realized that
the search for good health could nourish town growth. Older residents of snowy
climes also began to flock to southern Arizona in search of a more pleasant spot to
wait out winter back home.

Not all the immigrants to Arizona lived happily ever after. Health seekers did not
always locate what they had hoped to find. Many disliked the eternal summers or
failed to obtain satisfactory employment. If Arizona started to become noteworthy for
a population willing to make a new start, it then also illustrated that people who were
willing to move to it were also willing to move on from it, either "back home" or to
neighboring California. Arizona thus remained one of the states with the highest
percentages of people born elsewhere. A more transient population found it harder to
invest, financially and otherwise, in where they resided and in Arizona's future.

For peoples of color, urban Arizona prior to the second world war did not necessarily
resemble the promised land. Although boosters of tourism in the first decades of the
20th century realized the potential appeal of Indian country to visitors, few Native
individuals actually resided in off-reservation towns and cities. Reservation border
towns such as Flagstaff, Winslow, Holbrook, and Globe benefited from selling Indian
arts and crafts and from trade with Indians, yet Indians frequently faced hostility and
discrimination in these communities. Phoenix boosters were delighted to obtain a
federal boarding school, but only a handful of students from the school remained in
town after they completed their education.

African American soldiers at Fort Huachuca numbered among the first Black residents
in Arizona. The Black civilian population remained minuscule until after World War II.
African Americans from the South, Oklahoma, and Texas found work but also
segregation in Arizona. Small Black communities formed in towns like Eloy and
Safford, centered on the cotton industry; African Americans also were recruited by
Louisiana Pacific to McNary, where they worked in the timber industry. Others made
their way to Phoenix, where the largest African-American community became situated.

In the early days of the territory, Mexicans and Mexican Americans in southern
Arizona were an important part of the region's society and economy. In the 1870s
many prominent Anglo men in Tucson, Yuma, and Florence married Mexican
women. But with the arrival of more and more "Anglo" newcomers, Mexicans
increasingly were pushed toward the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder,
particularly in Phoenix, where community leaders expressed pride in their town's
emergence as an "American" city.

The push of Mexican political turmoil and economic instability and the pull of
irrigated agriculture accelerated migration of more Mexicans to Arizona in the early
20th century. At this time and throughout the twentieth century, Mexican Americans
hardly constituted a monolithic group; more established and more prosperous
Mexican Americans sometimes had mixed emotions about more recent arrivals from
Mexico, believing that the newcomers only heightened discrimination against them.
But regardless of education, income, and social standing, all confronted the
indignities of segregation.

Chinese Americans came to Arizona to work in the mines and on the railroads.
Pushed out of California, they found temporary residence in Phoenix and other
towns, where they established truck farms, laundries, and other businesses. Chinese
Americans constituted 4.6 per cent of Phoenix's population in 1880, but the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882 and prejudice against their presence forced out most
individuals; by 1910, only 110 Chinese Americans remained in Phoenix. This tiny
but determined group continued, as did an equally limited Japanese American
community, which also suffered under discriminatory land laws. The internment of
Japanese Americans during World War II created Arizona's third and fourth largest
towns at Gila River and Poston. Some of the internees remained after the war,
working with others who had not been interned to work together toward what they
hoped would be a more tolerant future.

All peoples of color fought for the United States during the war. When these veterans
returned, they contributed in a significant way to the effort to change deplorable
conditions. Social change, of course, came slowly. But it did come, in the schools, at
the ballot box, and in public accommodations. Their victories were recorded in an
era of dramatic increase in the state's population. Consistent with the folk saying that
with refrigeration came Republicans, Democratic dominance of state politics became
a progressively more distant memory.

Because of immigration and annexation, Phoenix's population quadrupled from
106,000 in 1950 to 439,000 in 1960. "The growth figures," Abbey observed, "would
shock even a banker." Tucson grew "from a population of 45,000 (counting dogs) in
1950" to over 300, 000 in the 1970s. 17 Such statistics initially delighted rather than

alarmed native sons like Barry Goldwater. In 1964, he commented: "Very few people
my age have had the opportunity of seeing a country transformed the way I've seen
Arizona." Goldwater added:

“Once it was wild land and desert and open spaces¾and there's still plenty of that. But
I've seen this land transformed into productive land, with great industry and great people
and great promise of a great future. Take Phoenix. I get the greatest thrill thinking that in
a small way I helped it grow, that I had something to do with its growth. And yet I can
go home, get away from the city itself and get out where there's plenty of space and
sunshine, and great, fresh pure air. I love walking in the desert, especially at night. Out
there at night, the stars just saturate the sky. You feel close to God.”

As early as the 1970s, however, Goldwater began to reassess this uncritical embrace
of growth. He remained proud of Arizona's accomplishments, but he expressed
publicly his regret over the ecological costs of Glen Canyon Dam, and he complained
about the "brown crap" in the air. Yet he and others hesitated to endorse major
alterations to established practices. Being able to drive, live, and golf where one
wanted had become sufficiently entrenched in the cultural landscape that such
traditions could not easily be altered.

Historians who view the matter of urban growth perceive mixed emotions and
conflicting signals. In Mesa city planning director Frank Mizner noted, "Growth is
almost a religion in Mesa. Nobody, with rare exceptions, stops to think about the
negative impact of the growth." Citing loss of farmland, more traffic, and the demand
for more schools, Mizner worried about the tendency of people to ignore such
consequences or to "deal with them in piecemeal fashion." In the White Mountains,
some local residents groaned about the latest land rush, while real estate agents
celebrated the market for new homes "in the cool pines." The buyers often were
residents from Pima and Maricopa County, who thus continued to contribute to
urbanization. The same scenario prevailed in places like Prescott, Flagstaff, and Sierra
Vista. Even in Tucson, where local custom still endorsed disdain for developments
north of Arizona's Mason-Dixon line, the Gila River, one could observe a comparable
procession of tile roofs.

Half a century after the end of World War II, Arizona citizens faced variations on the
same issues apparent before the war. Federal investment and involvement in the
Central Arizona Project, public lands, and other key matters remained extremely
important. Transportation continued to be at the center of questions about sprawl.
Tourism still bolstered the local and state economy, and in the process, helped spur
additional migration. Mayo Clinic and other health care institutions prompted people
to come to Arizona. Peoples of color still confronted segregation, even if it had
become de facto rather than de jure, but they, too, looked to urban centers as places

that offered their best chance for better jobs and a better future. On Indian
reservations, the population became increasingly urban, as old subsistence economies
waned, and the needs and demands of a contemporary wage work economy, including
in some instances the opportunity to obtain employment in the new casinos, pushed
people into town. Within major cities, recently arrived and established members of
neighborhoods did not always see eye to eye. As they had in decades past, they often
differed about a number of concerns. However, those who were members of "minority
groups" encountered ongoing patterns of discrimination, both brought into the state
and nourished by the unhappy local legacy of prejudice. Such divides constituted one
of the most crucial of all the challenges apparent in contemporary Arizona society.

By century's end, Arizona's population reached four and a half million people. To
paraphrase what Gerald Ford once said about Abraham Lincoln, if Albert Beveridge
were alive today, such a statistic would cause him to turn over in his grave. More
varied voices are heard now in regard to the price of progress, the consequences of
construction. Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom, established a century ago,
prevails. Growth remains linked to progress and prosperity, to individual freedom and
voluntary separation from social and economic ills. Most Arizona citizens still accept
the dichotomy offered by the Gazette a century ago. If dry rot appears to be the only
alternative, then there can be little doubt about the contours of the future in this urban
place called Arizona.

Notes
Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977), 147.
See William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). See James E. Officer, Hispanic Arizona, 1536-1856 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987).

Thomas E. Sheridan, Arizona: A History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995), 145-186; James Byrkit, Forging the
Copper Collar: Arizona's Labor-Management War of 1901-1921 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982). See, for example, Charles S Peterson, Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing Along the Little Colorado River, 1870-1900

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973). Sheridan, Arizona, 199; Bradford Luckingham, Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), 12-39. 7 C. L. Sonnichsen, Tucson: The Life and Times of an American City (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982), 136.
Sonnichsen, Tucson, 136-137.
Arizona Gazette, February 4, 1894, and January 2, 1900, quoted in Luckingham, Phoenix, 48. Luckingham, Phoenix, 434-48. See also Karen L. Smith, The Magnificent Experiment: Building the Salt River Reclamation

Project, 1890-1917 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986). Luckingham, Phoenix, 104-113; C. L. Sonnichsen, Tucson, 255.
12 For the impact of the war on Arizona and the west, see Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own:" A New
History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 496-533. 13 This discussion is based on Peter Iverson, Barry Goldwater: Native Arizonan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,

1997), 21-24. 14 See Robert A. Trennert, "Phoenix and the Indians: 1867-1930," in G. Wesley Johnson, Jr., editor, Phoenix in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Community History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 53-68. 15 Luckingham, Phoenix, 31-35.
Luckingham, Minorities in Phoenix, 79-118; Eric Walz, "Japanese American Communities in the Interior West," Ph. D.
dissertation, History Department, Arizona State University, 1998. Abbey, Journey Home, 148.

Iverson, Goldwater, 189.
See my chapter on "Building Arizona" in Goldwater, 189-220. For an analysis of the anti-growth movement in Tucson and Albuquerque, see Michael F. Logan, Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest (Tucson:

University of Arizona Press, 1995).

26 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy
Arizonans have gotten used to being the "fastest growing" whether that phrase is
describing the state or specific counties and cities. The following data provide a
foundation for the remainder of this volume.

State and County Population Change 1950-1995
1950 1995 % change 1950-1995
Arizona 749,587 4,228,900 464
Apache 27,767 64,300 132
Cochise 31,488 112,300 257
Coconino 23,910 109,400 358
Gila 24,158 44,075 82
Graham 12,985 30,025 131
Greenlee 12,805 8,450 -34
La Paz a 16,550 a
Maricopa 331,770 2,454,525 640
Mohave 8,510 124,500 1,363
Navajo 29,446 82,425 180
Pima 141,216 758,050 437
Pinal 43,191 139,050 222
Santa Cruz 9,344 33,875 263
Yavapai 24,991 129,500 418
Yuma 28,006 121,875 335

a. La Paz County was part of Yuma County until 1983 Source: Arizona's Growth and the Environment, Arizona Town Hall, 1996

Overview of Growth in Arizona: Critical Statistics

Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 27
Arizona's Growth in Context
Projected Population of Arizona's Counties
1990 2000 2020 % change 1990-2020
Arizona 3,665,228 4,961,950 7,444,625 103.1
Apache 61,591 67,925 85,775 39.3
Cochise 97,624 121,825 150,000 53.7
Coconino 96,591 123,325 169,350 75.3
Gila 40,216 48,625 60,750 51
Graham 26,554 35,175 50,675 90.8
Greenlee 8,008 8,975 10,275 28.3
La Paz 13,844 20,350 29,075 110
Maricopa 2,122,101 2,954,150 4,516,100 112.8
Mohave 93,497 147,525 236,400 152.8
Navajo 77,658 88,900 111,950 44.2
Pima 666,880 854,325 1,206,250 80.9
Pinal 116,379 161,625 231,225 98.7
Santa Cruz 29,676 38,225 55,100 85.7
Yavapai 107,714 152,975 240,850 123.6
Yuma 106,895 138,025 290,850 172

Source: Ensuring Arizona's Water Quantity and Quality into the 21st Century, Arizona Town Hall, 1997

Population Density 1950 and 1995 (persons per square mile)
1950 1995
United States 42.6 74.1
Arizona 6.6 36.8
Apache 2.5 5.7
Cochise 5.1 17.8
Coconino 1.3 5.9
Gila 5.1 9.3
Graham 2.8 6.8
Greenlee 8.6 4.6
La Paz a 3.7
Maricopa 36.0 263.4
Mohave 0.6 9.5
Navajo 3.0 8.3
Pima 15.4 81.3
Pinal 8.0 25.4
Santa Cruz 7.5 26.8
Yavapai 3.1 15.7
Yuma 2.8 22.3

a. La Paz County was part of Yuma County until 1983 Source: Arizona's Growth and the Environment, Arizona Town Hall, 1996

Overview of Growth in Arizona: Critical Statistics
Population of Selected Arizona Cities
City 1980 Population 1997 Population % change 1980-1997
Phoenix 789,704 1,205,285 53
Tucson 330,537 458,675 39
Prescott 19,865 33,695 70
Yuma 42,481 65,130 53
Nogales 15,683 21,075 34
Payson 5,068 12,125 139
Bullhead City 10,719 27,800 159
Clifton 4,245 3,005 -29
Parker 2,542 2,975 17
Casa Grande 14,971 21,945 47
Springerville 1,452 1,895 31
Show Low 4,298 7,480 74
Safford 7,010 9,320 33
Sierra Vista 24,937 39,405 58
Flagstaff 34,641 58,145 68

Source: Arizona Department of Commerce, 1997

Arizona Non-Agricultural Wage and Salary Employment

0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
550
600

(Thousands) 1970 1990 1997

TCPU 1 Trade FIRE 2 Services Government Manufacturing
1 Transportation, communications and Public Utilities
2 Finance, Insurance and Real Estate

Source: Arizona Department of Economic Security

Overview of Growth in Arizona: Critical Statistics 26
26 Page 27 28
Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 29
Arizona's Growth in Context
State Trust Land Uses, 1994 (Percent of total State Trust Lands)
*Other 7%

Grazing 93%
*State Trust Lands are used for
rights of way, commercial uses,
agriculture, and institutional
uses and similar purposes in
addition to grazing.

Land Ownership and Administration in Arizona
Other Public Lands 8% Forest Service 15%

Bureau of Land Management 20%

State of Arizona 13%
Indian Reservations 28%

Individual or Corporate 16%

Acreage of Major Irrigated Crops in Arizona 1960-1994
1,264,000
Millions

1,297000
936,000
0.5

Overview of Growth in Arizona: Critical Statistics
Source: Arizona's Growth and the Environment, Arizona Town Hall, 1996
Source: Arizona Agricultural Statistics, 1997

The Demographics of Urban Growth in Phoenix Patricia Gober, Ph. D.
Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Phoenix is on the cusp of becoming one of the nation's largest urban areas. Between
1990 and 1997 Maricopa County or Greater Phoenix grew by 574,000 people, more
numerical growth than in any other single county in the nation. 1 A 22.7 percent rate
of growth moved metropolitan Phoenix from its 1990 status as the 19th largest to the
16th largest metropolitan area in the nation in 1996. 2 This explosive growth has
altered local land, housing, and labor markets; transportation patterns; accessibility to
open space; riparian habitats; and other aspects of the human, built, and natural
environments of central Arizona.

Population growth is, by no means, the only indicator of urban growth. Cities grow
in land area, housing units, and jobs, but population is related to all three. Although
there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between land and population, cities
do annex land in anticipation of future population growth. Phoenix-area communities
annexed a total of 214 square miles, the land mass of El Paso, Texas, between 1990
and 1997. Growth in housing also is related to population growth. The number of
housing units grew faster than the population from 1960-1990 because people's taste
for more space and privacy resulted in smaller households. Since 1990, average
household size has stabilized at approximately 2.6 persons per unit. Population and
housing, at least for the Phoenix metropolitan area as a whole, now grow in tandem.

The strong association between jobs and population stems from their mutually
reinforcing properties. Job growth stimulates in-migration, and population growth in
turn creates a larger labor pool and market for local goods and services, creating
more jobs in the process. The wild cards in this equation are elderly migrants who
are generally immune to signals in the labor market but who do, in fact, stimulate job
growth when they purchase food, housing, and clothing; eat in local restaurants, use
financial services, and consume public services such as streets, libraries, and parks.

Three demographic forces determine the pace at which populations grow (or
decline). First, the balance between births and deaths determines growth in the
existing population base. Second, the difference between domestic in-migrants and
out-migrants results in more residents from areas outside metropolitan Phoenix, but
inside the United States. Third, the difference between international immigrants and
emigrants accounts for growth from the rest of the world.

Natural Increase Natural increase is simply the difference between the number of births and deaths in a
population. During the recent past, natural increase has contributed between 20,000

and 25,000 persons annually to metropolitan Phoenix's population base. 3 It accounted
for about 30 percent of all growth between 1990 and 1997, ranging from a high of 45
percent in 1990-91 when domestic migration was on the wane to a low of 22 percent
in 1994-95 when migration was on the rise . Even if migration were to drop to zero
tomorrow, Maricopa County would continue to grow through natural increase.

Maricopa County's substantial natural increase occurs for two reasons. The first
involves the nature of the county's age structure (See Figure 1). Maricopa County's has a bulge in
people aged 25 to 39 where the odds of giving birth are high, but a small number in older age
groups where the likelihood of death is high. As a result, the population produces many more births
than deaths. Modern populations with little or no natural increase do not have a reproductive-age
bulge in their age-sex structures, and they are more top heavy with older people. Contrary to
conventional wisdom, metropolitan Phoenix is not disproportionately composed of elderly persons. In
1996, Phoenix's proportion older than 65 years was exactly the same as that of the nation as a whole¾
12.7 percent. Higher-than-average fertility also contributes to the natural increase experienced by the Valley. One key
population indicator is its total fertility rate, meaning the average number of children that a woman will have

given current age-specific birth rates. Apopulation is at replacement fertility when the total fertility rate is slightly higher
than 2.0. Maricopa County's 1996 total fertility rate of 2.41 is well above replacement.
Women are, on average, producing more children than are needed to replace
themselves, and the next generation will be larger than the current one. These
averages are somewhat deceptive, however, because fertility rates differ across racial
and ethnic groups. The total fertility rate among non-Hispanic whites in 1996 was
only 1.86, matched by Asians at 1.86, and followed closely by Blacks at 1.93. These
groups are, in fact, at below replacement fertility. Without migration, their next
generation will be smaller than the current one. An extremely high fertility rate
among Hispanics has driven the countywide average up to 2.41. Current age-specific
birth rates indicate a total fertility rate of 4.26 for Hispanic women¾considerably
higher than current levels in Mexico where the total 1998 rate is 3.1 according to the
Population Reference Bureau. Hispanic fertility also results in an age structure with

International increase 8.3% Residual 13%
Natural increase 30.1%

Domestic migration 48.1%
1990 to 1997 Sources of Population Growth: Total to Maricopa County: 574,097

0-4 5-9
10-14 15-19
20-24 25-29
30-34 35-39
40-44 45-49
50-54 55-59
60-64 65-69
70-74 75-59
80-84 85+

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Percent of total, by age and sex

Total Population by Age and Sex, Maricopa County: 1996 Age
Figure 1

many children and few elderly. This age structure is having a substantial impact on
schools and services. Native American women also have higher-than-average fertility
but, because they represent less than two percent of the county's population, their
demographic impact is limited.

High fertility and population growth among Phoenix-area Hispanics has significant
demographic and policy ramifications. Hispanics produce a disproportionate share of
all births. Hispanic women account for 17.6 percent of metropolitan Phoenix's
population in 1996 but produce 36 percent of all births. Despite the fact that non-Hispanic
women younger than 25 years outnumber Hispanic women by a factor of
2.5 to one, there are more Hispanic than non-Hispanic births in this age group.

High fertility among Hispanic women is changing the face of Phoenix area delivery
rooms, child-care settings, and school districts. some local school districts now have
a predominantly Hispanic school-aged population at the same time that their voting-age
population is predominantly non-Hispanic white. The willingness of local
districts to adequately support public education will be challenged by the ethnic
mismatch between their voting-age and school-age populations.

Domestic Migration Migration from other U. S. locations is the main source of growth in the Phoenix
metropolitan area. The migration experience¾having moved here from someplace
else¾is one of the defining personal characteristics of those who live in the Phoenix
region. In 1990, only one-third of the Valley's residents were born in the state, and
most of these are children. Two-thirds have made a long-distance migration at some
point in their lives, a proportion far higher than what is found in places like New
York, Chicago, or Pittsburgh.

Net migration, or the difference between in-migration and out-migration, results in
population growth. Net migration to metropolitan Phoenix is a highly cyclical process,
dependent upon national economic forces, the pace of economic expansion in
Phoenix, and growth trends elsewhere. Demographers use Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) data to assess migration annually. Each year, the IRS compares a household's
address on its tax return with that on the previous year's. If the address matches, the
household is considered a non-migrant. If the previous year's address was outside
Maricopa County but the current address is inside the County, the household is

considered an in-migrant. If the previous year's address was inside of Maricopa
County, but the current year is outside, the person is designated as an out-migrant.

The peaks and valleys of domestic migration have been especially notable during the
last 15 years (See Figure 2). The 1980s began with modest net in-migration. The
national recession of 1981-82, characterized by high unemployment and soaring

interest rates, had a dampening effect on national mobility and migration rates. During periods of
economic uncertainty and decline, people tend to stay put. The end of the recession brought increased
mobility nationwide and large net migration to the Valley between 1984 and 1988. Economic
problems in Phoenix at the end of the decade brought plummeting in-migration and rising out-migration.
IRS records show out-migration slightly exceeding in-migration although the ASU Bureau
of Economic Research did not show a situation that severe. The speedy return to favorable net in-migration
shows how quickly migration can respond to changes in the economy. By the
mid-1990s, in-migrants again outnumbered out-migrants by a large margin.

The current migration picture is symptomatic of the health of the local economy and
to conditions elsewhere. What happens in one place sends shock waves through the
system affecting many others. California is by far metropolitan Phoenix's major
migration partner. California contributes more in-migrants to the Valley than any
other state, and it absorbs more of our out-migrants than any other. When California
fell into a deep recession early in the 1990s and was slow to recover, migrants to
Arizona and other western states increased, reinforcing the already bright in-migration
picture here. Urban growth and in-migration in central Arizona were, in
part, the counterpoints of urban decline and out-migration in California.

Migration, like natural increase, affects certain segments of the population more than
others. One of the universal laws of migration is that younger people are more apt to
move than are older people. Individuals make half of all of their lifetime moves by age
25. It is during these young ages that people leave their parents' homes to attend school,
join the military, or take a job; leave college to find employment or change jobs; marry,
and begin families. All these events are commonly associated with changes in
residence. Movement rates are also high among young children who typically have
parents in their 20s 8 . The heightened tendency for migration is seen among both in-migrants
to and out-migrants from Maricopa County. The typical in-migrant is a young
person in his or her 20s, and the typical out-migrant is a young person in his or her 20s.

Young persons also contribute more than any other age group to net migration, or
the difference between in-and out-migration (See Figure 3). Between 1985 and
1990, net migration was highest among those between 20 and 29 years of age.
Migration overall adds young adults to our population base and lowers the average
age of our population. A secondary effect is to add elderly to our population base.
Although people in their 60s are far less likely to move here, those who do are far

more likely to stay put than younger persons. Although greatest for young adults, the
amount of in-and out-migration is high across all age groups, except the elderly. In the
Phoenix area, like in most other western cities, people come and go with great
frequency, leading to rapid through-put of the population. During an average year between
1990 and 1997, a total of 194,000 moves (114,000 in-migrants + 80,000 out-migrants)
were needed to change the population by 35,000.

Rapid population growth in a region like Phoenix also results in high levels of
internal mobility. Newcomers often initially select temporary
accommodations and later move to more permanent residences within the same
metropolitan area. In addition, growth begets local movement by creating new
opportunities for current residents. These opportunities trigger chains of future
adjustments and create a multiplier effect for the local housing market.

Table 1: Annual Mobility Rates in Selected Metropolitan Areas: 1994 and 1995
Percent of household heads who moved in last year
Metro Area All moves Moves within Metropolitan Area

Dallas (1994) 24.6 19.9
Phoenix (1994) 23.8 17.0
Fort Worth (1994) 23.0 17.3
San Diego (1994) 22.2 17.8
Anaheim (1994) 20.1 15.4
Portland (1995) 19.8 14.5
Columbus (1995) 19.0 15.4
Kansas City (1995) 18.4 13.9
Milwaukee (1994) 17.6 15.2
New Orleans (1995) 14.8 12.0
Buffalo (1994) 13.0 11.1
Pittsburgh (1995) 10.2 8.6
Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census. 1994b and 1995

The implications of high mobility for a community are controversial. Some argue
that high levels of migration and population turnover lead to personal isolation, lack
of a shared history and sense of community, and the failure to invest in the future.
Others see migration as freedom from the familiar, family obligations, and expected
behaviors. Migrants are risk takers who seek out new places and opportunities.
Innovation and new ideas result from the synergism of people with diverse

backgrounds and ways of doing business.
Immigration The component of population change in the Phoenix area that is the most
complicated and difficult to measure is immigration from abroad. The Census
Bureau estimates the number of net international migrants during the 1990s as
between 6,000 and 7,000 per year. These estimates reveal that immigration directly
accounted for 8.3 percent of the county's total population growth between 1990 and
1997, far less than the percentages for natural increase and domestic migration, but a
substantial percentage nonetheless.

The Census' emphasis on direct immigration to the Valley is misleading because it
ignores immigration's indirect effects on population growth through domestic
migration and natural increase. Immigrants who settle elsewhere upon their arrival in
the U. S., but later move to Phoenix, are called secondary migrants. They are included
in domestic migration flows because they come here from other parts of the United
States. The rapidly growing Mexican immigrant community in central Phoenix gives
the impression that substantial secondary migration, estimated to be largely from
California and Texas, is reinforcing the effects of the 6,000 to 7,000 added annually
through direct immigration.

Immigration also has an indirect effect on population growth through its influence on
birth rates and natural increase. Foreign-born women have substantially higher levels
of fertility than native-born women because they bring with them fertility traditions
of their native countries. In 1994, there were, on average, 64.7 births per 1,000
women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States as a whole. Among
Hispanics, this figure was 99.2 compared to 60.6 for non-Hispanics. Equally
significant are differences between Mexican-born and U. S. -born women of Mexican
ancestry. For every 1,000 Mexican-born women of childbearing age, there were
142.7 births compared to only 84.5 for U. S. born women of Mexican descent.
Immigrant women in Phoenix undoubtedly play a major role in the elevated fertility
levels of the local Hispanic population, and immigration's indirect effects on
population growth through natural increase are probably quite significant.

Lessons from Demographics Four major lessons can be learned from the demographics of urban growth in
Phoenix. First, migration from other parts of the United States is only one component
of population growth. While it is the major source of urban growth now, it has
fluctuated greatly in the past and undoubtedly will rise and fall again in the future.
Natural increase and immigration from abroad, while not as potent as domestic
migration, are steadier contributors to population growth in the Valley.

Second, migration does more than deliver growth to the Valley; it has a churning

effect on the population as well. Migration in Phoenix is a highly inefficient process
in the sense that a large number of people move to the Valley each year, and almost
as many leave each year. As a result, the Valley contains a large transient population,
people who stay briefly in route to some place else.

The third lesson is that we are not always the pilots of our own destiny. Migration
responds to economic signals here and elsewhere. A substantial portion of our recent
growth is related to out-migration from California. A decade earlier, during the mid-1980s,
the state was the recipient of many migrants from Texas as the domestic oil
and gas industry faltered and sent the Lone Star State's economy into a tailspin.
Immigration from abroad is as much triggered by economic conditions in Mexico,
India, and China as by economic opportunity here. In a free market economy and a
democratic society in which people are free to move, the fate of any one place is
intimately intertwined with others, especially places with which it has shared
migrants in the past.

And finally, there is considerable momentum for future growth built into the current
demographic situation. Births will outstrip deaths as long as migration continues to
add young people to our population and as long as immigration from abroad adds
people with significantly higher fertility than the native-born population. Internal
migration, through its effects on the local economy, has strong self-reinforcing
properties. Migration stimulates economic growth which, in turn, stimulates more
migration. To be sure, there are times when these engines of growth slow down, but
their positive feedback systems are so strong that it is difficult to see anything but
moderate-to-high population growth in the Valley's future.

Notes
U. S. Bureau of the Census. Estimates of the population of counties and demographic components of population change:
Annual Time Series, July 1, 1990 to July 1, 1997. PE-62, 1998. 2 U. S. Bureau of the Census. Estimates of the population of metropolitan areas: July 1, 1996. MA-96-9, 1997a.

U. S. Bureau of the Census. Estimates of the population of counties and demographic components of population change:
Annual Time Series, July 1, 1990 to July 1, 1997. PE-62, 1998.

U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1997b. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997 (117th edition) Washington, D. C.

W. P. O'Hare, "America's minorities" Population Bulletin 47( 4): 1-46, 1998.
U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1997c; 1996 Estimates of population by age, sex, and race¾Arizona by county. Population Estimates Program, Population Division, Washington, D. C. and Arizona Department of Health Services, 1997.

U. S. Census, 1990.
Patricia Gober "Americans on the Move" Population Bulletin 48 (3): 1-40, 1993. 9 Goodman, 1982; Moore and Clark, 1986; Gober, 1993

Gober, 1993.
U. S. Census, 1998. U. S. Census, 1994.

36 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

State of the Desert Biome-Uniqueness, Biodiversity, Threats and the Adequacy of Protection in the Sonoran Bioregion
Executive Summary
Gary Paul Nabhan and Andrew R. Holdsworth ©
The Wildlands Project, March 1998Ñ Excerpt reprinted with permission.

This report highlights (1) what is unique about the Sonoran Desert bioregion with
respect to its organisms, ecological interactions and landscapes and (2), what
threatens the future of this region's biological diversity. It is based on the compilation
of surveys of 54 field scientists who average twenty years of field experience in this
region of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

Since World War II, the Sunbelt of the U. S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico has
been the setting for the largest in-migration in human history. A century and a half
ago, indigenous communities still outnumbered European colonial communities,
both in number and in the amount of land and water they managed. Today, the
economic activities of the region are dominated by individuals who have lived in the
region for less than a decade. The region's population nearly doubled (+ 98%)
between 1970 and 1990 to a total population of 6.9 million. The greatest increases in
population occurred in coastal resort areas, state capitals, and along the border.
Currently, there is no sign that human population growth rates in the region will taper
off during the next few decades.

Between 1940 and 1990, the populations of Arizona, Baja California Norte, and
Sonora shifted from being one half to two-thirds rural, to over three-quarters urban.
The present inhabitants' unfamiliarity with desert land and water management poses
profound threats for most land, water, vegetation and wildlife resources within a half-hour's
drive of the region's largest metropolitan areas. The actual effects of this
urbanization on biodiversity are many and mutually reinforcing, including the
aggravation of the "urban heat island effect;" the channelization or disruption of
riparian corridors; the proliferation of exotic species; the killing of wildlife by
automobiles, by toxics, and by pets; and the fragmentation of remaining patches of
natural vegetation into smaller and smaller pieces that are unable to support viable
populations of native plants or animals.

Hydrological engineers in the Sonoran Desert have impounded and diverted water
flows from virtually all of the region's major rivers by constructing 41 major dams
and associated irrigation canals. Among U. S. Federal Register notices listing plants
and animals as endangered species, water impoundment and diversion are among the
most frequently cited threats mentioned. Inundating vegetation in reservoirs behind
dams and changes in river flow are among the most severe pressures on threatened
plants and nesting birds in the U. S. / Mexico borderlands. The regional decline of 36
of the 82 breeding bird species which formerly used riparian woodlands is a case in
point. In combination with water diversion, groundwater pumping has affected
nearly all river valleys in Arizona's portion of the Sonoran Desert. In the heart of
agricultural areas, groundwater overuse has been most precipitous, leading to ground
subsidence, salinization and the demise of riparian forests.

With regard to grazing, overstocking still continues on public and private lands in
Arizona and Mexico's CODECOCA statistics confirm that 2 to 5 times the
recommended stocking rates occur with regularity on the Sonoran side of the border.

Adequacy of Current Measures to Protect Biodiversity Although there are many

stresses on the region's biodiversity, we have witnessed more areas decreed as

protected (as international, national or state biosphere reserves) in the last decade

than any other decade in the history of the Sonoran bioregion.

In addition, there are now more resource managers working on both sides
of the border than there were a decade ago, although many more need training to
better manage their areas for biodiversity instead of for single species or for
recreation. For each Sonoran Desert subregion, vulnerable species and areas, and
areas that merit protection are listed.

When asked if protected area managers still allow activities which deplete
biodiversity, twenty-five of the surveyed scientists answered yes, nine answered no,
and seventeen answered that such harmful activities now occur less than before.

However, it is a hopeful sign that over one quarter of the respondents see fewer
harmful activities occurring within protected areas today than before¾meaning
either before the decree of these areas, or for early-established parks and wildlife
refuges, before 1975. A notable portion of the scientists felt that grazing was finally
being addressed sufficiently in discussions between resource managers, ranchers and
scientists. Others felt that the impacts of ecotourism and outdoor recreation were
being sufficiently dealt with at the local level. However, a majority of the scientists
felt that virtually no threat is truly being adequately addressed anywhere in the
Sonoran biome where they have worked.

Emerging Conservation Needs and Priorities

When field experts conversant with the Sonoran bioregion were asked what they felt
should be the number one priority for conservation, they responded in a variety of
ways, noting policy issues, research and education needs, action strategies, as well as
earmarking species, habitats or landscapes in critical need of conservation. The
extensive list includes the need to shift away from social and economic systems that
reward consumptive behaviors and short-term gain while damaging natural systems,
manage irrigation tailwaters and sewage effluent to restore the wetlands of the
Colorado River delta, and many other recommendations.

What's Next? It is clear that there is much reported by the field scientists surveyed here that bears
reflection, discussion, debate and action. It is also abundantly evident that scientists'
attention is not spread evenly across the biotic communities of the bioregion¾some
habitats such as mangrove swamps, riparian gallery forests and semi desert grasslands
south of the U. S. -Mexico border are irregularly visited by biologists and poorly
monitored relative to their significance.

There are four problems identified as the emerging issues which still require
considerable discussion if they are to be resolved for the region:

1. The need for urban planning and agricultural lands restoration to allow for continuous corridors for wildlife passage through urban areas where their movements are currently blocked. 2. The need for guaranteeing river flow into coastal lagoons and estuaries of the
Gulf of California (including the Colorado River delta) to ensure nutrient and fresh water flow essential to nursery grounds for invertebrates, fish, and waterfowl.
3. The need to redirect the management of critical habitats in state parks, wildlife refuges and national monuments away from recreation or protection of single species or features; focus needs to shift to overall biodiversity and the integrity of habitats, so that the interactions between species and natural communities persist.
4. The need for planning that reduces impacts of coastal and island development in the Gulf of California region where endemism is the highest.

Rural to Urban Land Conversion in Metropolitan Phoenix

Patricia Gober, Ph. D.
Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Elizabeth K. Burns, Ph. D.
Professor of Geography, Arizona State University
Kim Knowles-Yanez, Ph. D.
Adjunct Professor of Planning, Arizona State University
Jeffrey James
Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Geography, Arizona State University

At the forefront of public debate about the future of metropolitan Phoenix is the issue
of growth. The Phoenix region's growth typically has been at the urban fringe and
characterized by low population densities, leap-frog development, competition among
municipalities for new development, and aggressive annexation. Open desert is being
rapidly converted into homes, shopping centers, schools, industrial parks, and roads
with enormous implications for indigenous plants and animals. Also, irrigated
agricultural fields, some cultivated for a century or more, are turning over to urban uses
with dramatic effects on the local ecology. The conversion of open land into suburbs
can be tracked through housing completions and demolitions and population growth.

Geography of Residential Completions and Demolitions

Valley municipalities are required to report additions and subtractions to their
housing stock by location, size, type of unit, and date of completion to the Maricopa
Association of Governments (MAG). Between April 1990 and June 1997, MAG
recorded 179,483 residential completions and 3,024 demolitions. New homes are the
most visible sign of the urban growth process as they replace open desert and farm
fields. Demolitions reflect urban decline and the conversion of land from housing to
other urban land uses such as roadways.

Figures 1-3 show residential completions, residential demolitions, and net residential
completions by traffic analysis zones (TAZ) between 1990 and 1997. In Figure 1, a
TAZ is included in the highest category if there were more than 500 residential
completions per square mile between 1990 and 1997. This is the zone where
rural/ urban land use turnover is most intense. It is the crest of a wave of housing
construction that is preceded by a less intense zone where development is just getting
started and followed by another less intense zone whose wave of intense activity is now
past. Note the close correspondence between fringe development and the completed
and proposed freeway system, the lack of any significant development in the
southwestern quadrant of the Valley, and the lack of significant housing construction in
the interior of the metropolitan area where it is extremely difficult for a developer to put
together enough vacant land to meet our lower threshold of 500 units per square mile.

Figure 1 Residential Completions 1990-97

Figure 2 Residential Demolitions 1990-97
Figure 3 Net Residential Completions 1990-97

Figure 4 Population Change 1990-95
The demolition of 3,024 housing units between 1990 and 1997 (See Figure 2)
demonstrates that urban change is not a one way street. Units are subtracted from the
housing stock primarily because they are abandoned through decline or because they
are in the path of a major infrastructure project. TAZs with the most demolition are
concentrated in the path of the recently completed Squaw Peak Parkway, Loop 202,
and I-10 Expressways and are sprinkled throughout inner city neighborhoods of
Phoenix and Mesa. Demolition is a common process as strategically located
residential land is put to more intensive use as a transportation corridor. In other
areas, substantial demolition is a symptom of urban decay in which there is a decline
in the demand for housing. The "suburbanization" of population and economic
activity has robbed some inner-city neighborhoods of their economic vitality and has
undercut the normal processes that lead to the replacement of inefficient housing
units with more modern ones.

Freeways
Completed
Proposed 0 510
Miles

Residential Completions (in units per sq. mile)
Less than 20
20 to 500
More than 500

Freeways
Completed
Proposed 0 510
Miles

Net Residential Completions (in units per sq. mile)
Less than 20
20 to 500
More than 500

Freeways
Completed
Proposed 0 510
Miles

Small net gain (1 to 999)
Net loss (-1860 to 0)

Large net gain (1000 to 5189)

Freeways
Completed
Proposed 0 510
Miles

Residential Demolitions (in units per sq. mile)
0
Less than 20
20 or more
Net residential completion (Figure 3) is the difference between additions and
subtractions to the housing stock. The distribution of net completions vividly
illustrates the hollowing out of the inner city. Central or west Phoenix and older
neighborhoods in Tempe, Mesa, and Scottsdale had little to no net growth in housing
units. At the same time, growth has exploded at the outskirts of the built-up area,
especially in the southeast Valley and the north and west sides.

Geography of Population Growth The patterns of population change shown in Figure 4 are complex, but they illustrate
a number of points about the urban growth process. First, population change may or
may not be linked to changes in the housing stock. Many of the TAZs with
significant population gains are on the urban fringe, and growth there is clearly due
to the flurry of new home construction. But, population growth can also occur for
reasons other than new home construction. One major reason is racial and ethnic
change. Hispanics, new immigrants in particular, tend to have large families. When
they replace Anglos in a neighborhood, significant population growth can occur
without any increase in the number of housing units. Ethnic change in west Phoenix
has created pockets of high growth (more than 1,000 persons per square mile) in the
midst of little new construction activity.

Similarly, population decline can occur without demolition. The aging of
neighborhoods causes population declines. Because most of the housing in a given
neighborhood was built at the same time and inhabited by people at similar stages of
the life cycle, entire neighborhoods can be downsizing at the same time. This type of
demographic change is common in areas ringing the inner city and in some older
suburban neighborhoods.

A second lesson from Figure 4 is that population gains and losses occur all over the
urban area for a variety of reasons. Metropolitan Phoenix may be among the fastest
growing metropolitan areas in the nation, but this growth process is not a universal
characteristic of the area. Of the 1,267 TAZs in the metropolitan area, 449 lost a total
of 76,273 people.

What is universal is the capacity for change. Populations never stand still. In 1994, 23.8
percent of Phoenix-area households moved in the previous year, 17 percent of them
within the metropolitan area itself. 1 A second destabilizing influence involves one of
the simple and inexorable laws of demography¾people grow old one year at a time.
This aging process results in significant changes in family size and household structure.
And third, ethnic turnover can drastically change the population characteristics of small
areas within a very short period of time. These factors explain why small-scale
population loss is so common in an environment of growth, why school districts need
to build new schools in some areas while closing them in others, and why local

business must be constantly attuned to their ever-changing population bases.
Population and Land In order to gain a clearer picture of the dynamic relationship between population and
urban land and for the way different municipalities make use of their land resource,
we compared land consumption rates and land absorption coefficients for 13 cities in
Maricopa County.

Land Consumption Rate (LCR) ° LCR measures the urban land consumed per 1,000 people.
Land Absorption Coefficient (LAC) ° LAC is the change in urban land area per 1,000 change in population over a
period of time.
In general this comparison shows how much urban land is being consumed for every
1,000 people being added to the population. "Urban land" was defined as TAZs
where the population density exceeded 100 persons per square mile, excluding land
that MAG characterizes as undevelopable open space. At this threshold, homes are
beginning to be built, an urban infrastructure is in place, and traffic is on the rise. A
Geographic Information System was used to determine whether or not each TAZ in
our study area met the threshold for urban. Then the amount of urban land in a
municipality and the number of persons living on that land were calculated. These
data were used to calculate the LCRs, or the average amount of urban land for every
1,000 residents in each of the 13 municipalities in 1990 and 1995. An LCR differs
from the usual measure of population density because it limits the land base to urban
residential land only. Areas designated by MAG as undevelopable are excluded from
the base. The result is an indicator of how intensively available residential land is
being used.

LCRs differ quite substantially across the 13 municipalities included in this study
(See Table 1). LCRs in 1990 ranged from a high of 2.4 in Goodyear to a low of .23
in Tempe. This means that each 1,000 residents of Goodyear consumed, on average
2.4 square miles of urban land while 1,000 Tempeans consumed only .23 square
miles. Not surprisingly the lowest LCRs were in Phoenix and older suburbs like
Tempe that evolved when higher residential densities were the norm. Besides
Goodyear, high land consumption rates occurred in Fountain Hills and Paradise
Valley because of traditional emphasis on very low density development.

Table 1: Land Consumption Rates in 1990 and 1995
City 1990 1995 Pop. Land Area LCR Pop. Land Area LCR

Avondale 18,867 13.3 .71 22,858 13.3 .58
Chandler 94,793 43.5 .46 137,524 47.3 .34
Fountain Hills 10,012 14.0 1.39 13,802 13.9 1.00
Gilbert 34,571 26.3 .76 64,078 33.4 .52
Glendale 158,205 58.0 .37 187,496 66.5 .35
Goodyear 6,697 16.4 2.44 11,027 34.1 3.09
Mesa 321,796 105.5 .33 370,105 103.3 .28
Paradise Valley 12,259 14.3 1.17 12,638 14.3 1.13
Peoria 53,418 30.4 .57 76,445 33.3 .43
Phoenix 994,816 308.6 .31 1,146,069 333.9 .29
Scottsdale 130,668 63.1 .48 167,837 101.7 .61
Tempe 142,619 33.4 .23 152,670 33.0 .22
Surprise 6,148 4.9 .81 9,292 8.2 .88
Maricopa County 2,082,002 819.7 .39 2,487,512 991.2 .40
Source: Authors' calculations from MAG 1990 and 1995 population coverages

Land absorption coefficients measure the change in urban land area per 1,000 new
residents between 1990 and 1995. High coefficients are recorded by communities
that bring ever more land under development and low coefficients are indicative of
communities where there is little new urban land. Here development occurs by filling
in TAZs that were already designated as urban in 1990.

Low LACs are found in Avondale, Chandler, Fountain Hills, Mesa, Paradise Valley,
Peoria, Phoenix, and Tempe (See Table 2). In these communities, urban land was
largely fixed between 1990 and 1995. Additional population was funneled into
existing urban land. Quite a different growth strategy pertained in Gilbert, Glendale,
Scottsdale, and Surprise where development occurred by converting previously rural
land to urban uses. In Scottsdale, every 1,000 new residents between 1990 and 1995
required 1.03 square miles of new urban land in contrast to Chandler where 1,000
new residents took only .09 square miles of new urban land.

Table 2: Land Absorption Coefficients, Total Land Area
City Land Absorption Coefficient City Land Absorption Coefficient
Avondale 0 Paradise Valley 0
Chandler .09 Peoria .12
Fountain Hills -. 02 Phoenix .17
Gilbert .24 Scottsdale 1.03
Glendale .29 Tempe -. 05
Goodyear 4.10 Surprise 1.03
Mesa -. 04 Maricopa County .42
Sources: Authors' calculations from MAG's 1990 and 1995 coverages

Conclusions Despite the high growth reputation of Phoenix, losses in population and housing are
widespread across the metropolitan area. Intense activity occurs along a fairly well-defined
line of new development at the urban fringe. Farther out appears to be a zone
of moderate development which has not yet been inundated by new home
construction. Closer in is an area whose period of intense development is now past.

Urban growth is not a monolithic process. In some communities, growth involves
converting more land to urban uses. In others, there is more of a filling-in process
taking place. Communities across the country are experimenting with managing
growth along the urban fringe through such techniques as growth management
boundaries, annual growth caps, and contiguous growth requirements. While Valley
municipalities do not use any of these types of growth management tools, they are
able to affect some control over development through other methods such as zoning
ordinances, impact fees or exactions in kind for development, infill strategies, open
space preservation, and annexation policies. For example, Phoenix has an urban infill
strategy designed to encourage use of vacant or under used lots. This may work to
redirect the location of new development away from the urban fringe of the city.
Zoning codes delineate the kinds of development which can occur in specific areas,
and sometimes there are even further restrictions. Notably, Scottsdale has an
Environmentally Sensitive Lands Ordinance which encourages land uses "which are
compatible with the environment."

Communities that are building on new territory require more land for their growth
than do cities where construction is largely confined to land that is already urban.
The Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Project's goal is to
relate the character of new urban growth to municipal land use and development
policies. To what extent do communities affect development patterns by their
policies? Answering this question comparatively across the municipalities studied
here will complement this article's findings regarding population growth and new
urban land use and provide a more complete understanding of metropolitan
Phoenix's dynamic and complex urban fabric.

U. S. Census, American Housing Survey, Current Housing Survey, 1994.

Travel in Metropolitan Phoenix Elizabeth K. Burns, Ph. D.
Professor of Geography, Arizona State University

The growth of metropolitan Phoenix has created a low-density region where residents
must travel to their often widely dispersed residential, work, shopping, and social
destinations. Personal mobility is a core value of the individualistic Arizona lifestyle,
but it raises concerns about increasing road congestion, limited alternatives to driving,
and deteriorating air quality. Most travelers, however, have no choice but to use
personal cars and trucks to get through their daily routines.

Four mobility trends are particularly important in metropolitan Phoenix at this time.
Continuing population and employment growth supports even larger increases in the use of personal vehicles.
Phoenix led the nation in the 1970s in population growth, labor force expansion, and
increased use of personal vehicles to travel to work. In the 1980s, the rate of population
growth continued with Phoenix second only to Orlando, Florida. Personal mobility, as
measured by the number of daily vehicle miles traveled, has grown at a rate of
4.3 percent every year since 1985. Thus in 1996, almost 59 million vehicle miles were
traveled per day on interstates, highways, and arterial and local streets in metropolitan
Phoenix. This travel volume equals an average of 22.72 miles per person with only
1 percent of all vehicle trips taken by public transit.

When metropolitan Phoenix is compared with other western cities, the average miles
traveled per person is lower, but the use of public transit lags and travel occurs
disproportionately on a network of highways, arterials, and local streets. Efforts to
correct a gap in regional freeway capacity led to the passage in 1985 of a half-cent sales
tax for a $5.5 billion augmentation of the freeway system. While popular priorities
have continued to support freeway construction, some communities, like Tempe, are
improving transit services. Travelers in metropolitan Phoenix find themselves in the
difficult situation of moving around during a major freeway construction effort, while
the volume of travel continues to increase. Thirty-one miles of the planned 124 miles
were completed by 1997. If all the planned increases occur in freeway and local street
miles and bus services, the number of congested intersections and lanes will still grow.
Congestion that is concentrated now in the core of the metropolitan region will extend
into the suburbs. Distances between home, work, and social activities add to travel difficulties.

“With less than one third of the population of Los Angeles, the residents of the Phoenix
metropolitan area log two thirds of the vehicle miles traveled in Los Angeles.” Large
residential developments are now located at the suburban fringe so that jobs,

entertainment, and shopping are some distance away. By 1997 each one-way trip
averaged 7.63 vehicle miles. Regional one-way average travel times to work increased
5.6 percent to 23 minutes from 1980 to 1990.

Commutes across city boundaries to work are the norm. For example in 1997 only 31.5
percent of Maricopa County residents lived and worked in the same city. While over
74 percent of Phoenix residents worked in Phoenix, only 7.2 percent of Gilbert
residents were employed in Gilbert. These contrasts suggest that broad travel
imbalances will continue as the metropolitan area continues to expand outward.

The use of private cars and trucks, particularly in single-occupant trips, dominates metropolitan commuting.
In 1990, driving alone and carpooling accounted for 89% of work trips. This
percentage has remained steady since 1970 (See Table 1).

Table 1: Means of Transportation to Work in Metropolitan Phoenix
1990 1980 1970 1960
Drove alone 75% 70% 79% 82%
Carpooled 14% 19% 10% Drove alone includes carpooled

Worked at home 3% 2% 2% 4%
Walked 3% 3% 4% 6%
Bus or Trolley 2% 2% 1% 4%
All other means 3% 4% 4% 4% (motorcycle, taxi, rail, bicycle)

Source: U. S. Census of Population 1960-1990

By 1997, participants in the Maricopa County Regional Trip Reduction Program used
alternative modes of transportation for nearly 30 percent of their commuting trips.
Employees most commonly used carpools and a combination of compressed work
week and telecommuting to reduce commuting mileage. However, private vehicles
remain a necessity, not an option, for daily mobility for most residents. Travel by
private vehicles, especially for women, makes it possible to juggle the daily demands
of employment, household responsibilities, and child care. Even low-income workers
find that access to a car is essential. Employed residents of one neighborhood in central
Phoenix are heavy users of the automobile for their work trips. They travel by carpool
more and drive alone less than metropolitan residents as a whole, but only slightly.
Unfortunately, automobile dependence also creates a gap in social and economic
participation for those who cannot afford a vehicle or cannot drive.

Now residents can live at a distance from work and not pay a comparable price in travel
time, but that may not be the case in the future. Some are looking for alternatives now.
Travelers to inner-city work sites will continue to find that congestion in the

metropolitan core provides a considerable incentive to change their travel behavior.
A positive "culture of commuting options" is emerging in some work sites at Sky
Harbor International Airport for example. Many employees live in the new suburban
areas and are interested in alternate commute modes such as carpooling and
telecommuting. Current employees who use compressed workweek schedules live at
distances of 15-17 miles from work along the Interstate-10 corridor serving
Ahwatukee, Tempe, and Chandler.

Technological and traffic system improvements are being installed on existing freeways
and major arterial highways with the goals of faster travel times and less congested
routes. High-occupancy vehicle lanes, message information signs, rapid accident
removal, and trip planning information technologies, ideally, will result in travel mode,
time of day, and route shifts. The extent to which these improvements slow the rate of
growth in congestion on the interstate system remains to be seen.

Present-day mobility reflects a dependence on personal vehicles that shows few signs of changing.
Arizonans appear to prefer an unregulated lifestyle that depends on personal mobility.
However, the realities of urban travel are beginning to motivate residents to change
their travel modes, routes, and times, shift residential and employment locations, and
share rides with others with a common social bond or travel purpose. As policy choices
are considered, it is important to note that these personal responses are not sufficient by
themselves to overcome current growth trends toward an increased volume of travel
and decentralized development patterns.

Notes
1 Alan Pisarski, Commuting in America II: The Second National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends. Lansdowne, VA:
Eno Transportation Foundation, 1996. Commuting in America. Westport, CT: Eno Transportation Foundation, 1992.

2 Mary Kihl, Forging an Appropriate Transportation System for Arizona. Arizona Academy, 1997.

4 Morrison Institute for Public Policy. What Matters in Greater Phoenix: 1997 Indicators of Our Quality of Life, 1997.

5 Arizona Town Hall, 1997.

6 Arizona Town Hall, 1997.

7 U. S. Bureau of the Census. 1980 Census of Population and Housing, 1984 and 1990 Census of Population and Housing. Social and Economic Characteristics. Metropolitan Areas. 1993.

8 Maricopa County Regional Trip Reduction Program, 1997 Annual Report.

10 Patricia Gober, and Elizabeth K. Burns, "Why Inner-City Job Linkages Won't Work in Phoenix." Applied Geographic

Studies 2: 1-16., 1998.

11 Elizabeth K. Burns, E. K. "Participation of Employed Women in Telecommute Options: Evidence from Inner-City Phoenix,"
Paper presented at the Telecommunications and the City Conference, University of Georgia, 1998.

48 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Growth Brings Uneven Benefits for Arizonans

Tom Rex
Research Manager, Center for Business Research, Arizona State University

Growth can be defined in different ways, such as population gains, employment
increases, or geographic expansion of a community. In Arizona, these measures largely
coincide so that references to growth in this article refer to it generically.

The Need to Grow Because the population continues to increase, other types of growth, such as
employment, need to keep pace. Even if an area's population is not increasing from net
in-migration, the number of jobs usually needs to increase because of rising workforce
participation rates among women and because the number of young people entering the
workforce exceeds the number of workers retiring or dying.

The number of new jobs needed in Arizona has been estimated to be approximately
21,000 per year; of these 13,000 are needed in Maricopa County with 4,000 in Pima
County, and 4,000 in the balance of the state.¹ Between 1980 and 1995, an average of
61,600 jobs were created per year (figures in recent years have been even higher). Only
in two recessionary years did job growth fall short of 21,000.

The fact that the number of jobs created has been about triple the number needed by the
existing population is most of the reason for the state's rapid population growth. The
more than 40,000 jobs per year in excess of those needed by the existing population
have allowed many working-age people, especially those 18 to 29 years old, to move to
Arizona. Most of these working-age migrants would not be in Arizona if they could not
find a job. The state's experience fits with the findings of national studies that indicate
that 60 to 90 percent of new jobs go to migrants.

Across the state, job growth has been greater than that needed to employ local residents
entering the workforce except in isolated communities, especially Indian reservations.
Despite the high numbers of new jobs, unemployment rates remain high, and
workforce participation rates low, throughout much of the state beyond the Phoenix
metro area. Low workforce participation rates usually reflect the inability of local
residents to compete for the jobs being created. Migrants with more education, work
experience, and job skills have filled many jobs in Arizona to the exclusion of local
residents.

Costs and Benefits Of Growth And Urban Size

Since many of the costs and benefits of growth are difficult to quantify, personal
perspective plays an important role in weighing the advantages and disadvantages of
growth. Thus, determination of a generally accepted, scientifically defensible, optimal

city size or growth rate is not possible.
While the concepts of urban size and growth rate are not completely interchangeable,
the costs and benefits of each are highly related. Table 1 summarizes the generalized
costs and benefits for each of three groups: the private sector (businesses), individuals
(or households or families), and society as a whole (the public sector). Even within
each of these three groups, costs and benefits do not accrue evenly among all members.

Table 1: Generalized Benefits and Costs of Urban Growth and Increased Size
BENEFITS COSTS

Improved market potential, Increased competition including more customers Higher costs, such as land,
and higher profits labor and utilities
Improved productivity and Higher taxes efficiency Greater travel time
Increased availability of business services and capital

Broader employment opportunities Higher taxes
Higher incomes* Increased cost of living,
Increased cultural and especially housing prices
recreational choices Psycho-social, including
Greater selection of goods lifestyle changes, stress,
and services and loss of sense of
Wider choice of housing community

Improvements to infrastructure Strain on public facilities
and social services Increase in social problems,
Public sector economies of such as homelessness and
scale income disparity
Broadened tax base Higher costs of government,
Healthier economy with a increased government size
stable, diversified structure Urban sprawl and congestion
Psychological benefits from of some public goods
increased exposure and Traffic congestion and
sophistication accidents
Increased rate of innovation Higher crime rate
and inventions Air pollution
Lower incidence of poverty* Water quality and quantity
Other environmental damage * Associated with larger urban size, but not with the growth rate

Private Sector
Businesses generally are perceived to receive a strong net benefit from urban growth
and increased urban size. This was verified in the Phoenix area in a survey conducted
in 1987. 2 The survey was limited to business owners and senior managers living in
metropolitan Phoenix. Eighty-five percent thought growth was beneficial to businesses

in the Phoenix area, compared to 12 percent who thought it was costly.
Survey respondents agreed that improved market potential (more customers) was by
far the greatest benefit from urban growth. Other generally perceived benefits include
higher profits; better availability of labor; increased availability of business services,
including banking and capital; and improved productivity and efficiency.

Most of the benefits, however, have associated costs that reduce the net benefit. For
example, greater travel time limits the net improvement in productivity for many firms.
While a growing economy attracts labor from elsewhere in the country, it does not
always bring in enough workers for all occupations. Labor shortages in certain
occupations have occurred in the Phoenix area in recent years. Increased competition is
a serious cost of growth to existing businesses. Examples exist from the Phoenix and
Tucson metros of rapid growth attracting many national chains at the same time,
driving local businesses and some chains entirely out of business.

More generally, except for monopolistic or near-monopolistic sectors, the benefits
from growth are short term, with the market constantly adjusting to a new
equilibrium between increased customers and increased competition. The higher
profits perceived as a net advantage of growth may be offset by increased costs of
doing business (such as land, labor, utilities, and taxes). Increases in costs generally
have been moderate in Arizona.

The principal beneficiaries of urban growth and increasing urban size are those who
possess monopoly advantage in the marketplace. Historically, banks, utilities, and
newspapers have had little competition, but deregulation is changing this situation.

In addition, those who own fixed assets, such as land, receive a disproportionately
large jump in value from the greater demand that accompanies urban growth.
Further, individuals who own enterprises for which efficiency rises with size or who
hold important nonduplicative positions, such as key private and public sector
executives, are essentially isolated from increased competition and thereby prosper
from urban growth.

Especially large landowners, and those who do business with these property owners,
profit from growth and the associated increased intensification of land uses. This group
has a very strong vested interest in growth. Thus, while growth leads to a significant net
benefit to the business community as a whole, some entities reap tremendous benefits,
while others face a net cost that may drive them out of business. Those business
enterprises that serve a national or international market, such as many manufacturing
firms, receive little net benefit from growth.

Individuals
Growth is felt to generally carry a slight net cost to individuals, households, and
families already living in an area. This was verified in the 1987 survey in which 42
percent of respondents thought growth had a beneficial impact on individuals in the
Phoenix area, while 49 percent felt the impact was costly.

Generally perceived benefits to individuals include broader employment opportunities,
increased cultural and recreational opportunities, greater selection of goods and
services, wider choice of housing, and higher incomes. Costs include higher taxes and
an increased cost of living, especially higher housing prices.

As discussed below, higher incomes are associated with a larger urban area, but not
with growth in recent years. Further, at least part of any increase in incomes is
typically offset by a higher cost of living. In the Phoenix and Tucson areas, neither
higher incomes nor costs have been significant results of growth. In communities
such as Prescott and Flagstaff, however, growth in the 1990s has resulted in
significantly higher housing costs.

The increase in choice of employment, shopping, entertainment, and housing are all
significant benefits in less populous areas. These benefits largely disappear as
populous areas continue to grow. Phoenix-area residents in recent years have received
little benefit in any of these regards because growth generally has brought more of the
same. The exception may be in employment opportunities for those in certain
specialized occupations. In contrast, the Tucson area is probably still benefitting from
growth, especially in employment and entertainment opportunities. It is in certain types
of entertainment, such as major league sports, where benefits continue to accrue up to a
population of around 1.5 million.

In less populous areas, increased choice and opportunities are a significant benefit of
growth. However, psycho-social costs probably are greatest in smaller communities,
since it is here that the character of the community is most likely to be changed by
growth. While some residents may welcome the benefits and wish for their community
to grow further, others may be living there precisely because of their desire not to live
in a populous area. Except for this latter group, growth carries a strong net benefit to
individuals in less populous areas. This benefit declines with size until it turns into a net
negative in large urban areas.

While growth carries a net cost to most individuals already living in a large urban area,
the same cannot be said for new migrants to the area. Most migrants initially view their
move to be a substantial net positive personally¾otherwise most would not undertake
such a long distance move. Most migrants to Arizona perceive significant improvement
in their quality of life, mostly due to climatic factors. While economic aspects are

important for most migrants, many are willing to sacrifice financially because of
perceived amenities. Moreover, if the new residents purchase a new home at the fringe
of the urban area, they generally benefit from the low land costs without being made to
pay for the full cost of public services to their new home.

Society at Large
Growth is generally recognized to carry a slight net cost to society as a whole, much of
which can be measured by effects on the public sector. The 1987 survey respondents
saw the issue in this way, with 43 percent feeling growth provided a net benefit to
society at large, while 48 percent felt it resulted in a net cost.

Improvements to the social and physical infrastructure are seen as a prime benefit from
growth. Included here are more and better public services, such as medical care and
education, as well as economies of scale. Other benefits frequently cited include a
healthier economy due to more diversification and stability, a broadened tax base, an
increased rate of innovation and inventions, and a lower incidence of poverty.
Unfortunately, neither of the latter two benefits can be seen in Arizona.

Avariety of societal costs result from growth. These include traffic congestion and air
pollution. Other costs include the quality and quantity of water, environmental damage,
higher crime rates, various social problems, urban sprawl and congestion, strain on
public facilities, and increased government size and cost. While growth's effects on the
public sector may be seen in cities of all sizes, most of the costs are greater in very
populous areas than in less populous areas.

Studies have shown that population growth is associated with higher per capita
spending by local governments. The increased per capita taxes borne by the entire
community may come at the same time as declines in the quality of the public service.

Like the net impact on individuals, the effect of growth on society at large may be a net
positive in less populous areas, but a net negative in larger urban areas. The divergence
of continued net benefits to the private sector and to certain individuals while the net
benefits to the other groups are disappearing results in the growth of an area beyond the
size desired by a majority of its residents.

Growth And Prosperity in Arizona Empirical evidence indicates that the more populous the area, the higher both incomes
and costs tend to be. The net effect is higher wages and incomes even after considering
living costs and taxes. Thus, the economic well-being of individuals tends to be highest
on average in very populous metro areas and least in small communities. However,
these higher incomes largely represent compensation for the "disamenities" (such as
pollution) associated with large urban areas.

In contrast, however, empirical evidence from recent years does not reveal any
relationship between the rate of population growth and incomes. While some
individuals and companies benefit financially from growth, the prosperity of the
community as a whole is unaffected. Similarly, growth has no significant effect on the
unemployment rate. Despite rapid employment growth, unemployment rates do not fall
relative to other areas since migrants fill the majority of new jobs.

Per capita personal income (PCPI) is a measure of economic well-being. Among the 50
states, increases in PCPI have had no relationship with population growth rates over at
least the last ten years. Since the end of World War II, Arizona's population growth has
been consistently among the fastest in the nation. Arizona's PCPI growth has been a bit
below the national average, with the actual level of per capita personal income
remaining far below the national average. Over the past ten years, Arizona's PCPI gains
were among the weakest in the country.

Other measures of prosperity and economic well-being in Arizona have a record similar
to that of the PCPI. Despite strong employment growth since the last recession,
unemployment rates in 1997 were at least seven percent in ten of 15 Arizona counties,
with the overall figure for the 13 less populous counties in excess of ten percent. The
average wage in Arizona grew less than the national average throughout the 1980s and
early 1990s; gains since 1993 have been slightly above average. Arizona's average wage
was close to the national average in the 1970s, but now it is several percentage points
lower. Slow wage gains have contributed to the slow growth in PCPI. They also have
contributed to the state's poverty rate rising to a level well above the national average. The
high poverty rate is associated with Arizona having one of the most rapidly widening
income disparities in the nation, with the disparity one of the greatest in the nation.

Similar results are seen by metropolitan area. Nationally, the PCPI and population are
significantly related, but change in population and change in PCPI are not related. The
Phoenix area has consistently led the state on all measures of economic well-being,
while the rural part of the state has had the greatest problems. These significant urban-rural
disparities generally continue to widen in Arizona.

It is difficult to quantify the direct effect growth has had on these conditions. However,
it is clear that during decades of rapid growth, economic well-being in Arizona did not
improve more than the national average.

Sprawl Versus Compact Development

In this section, sprawl is compared to growth that is more managed and planned. The
goal of the latter often is to achieve "compact" cities. Sprawl and compact development
are at opposing ends of the continuum of forms of development. Thus, sprawl is a
matter of degree and does not have a precise definition. While considered an aspect of

growth, sprawl can occur independent of population growth.
Generally, sprawl involves extensive areas of low population density. The low density
results from some combination of leapfrog, scattered, and very low density residential
development. A further characteristic is residential development (bedroom
communities) without much else nearby. Thus, residents must drive extensive distances
to employment, shopping, and entertainment. Sprawl may also incorporate commercial
strip development. Another feature of sprawl is that a lack of functional open space
may coincide with large tracts of undeveloped land.

Since sprawl represents one end of the continuum of forms of development rather than
a distinctly different type, gray areas exist between what obviously is sprawl and what
is not. Unfortunately, some use the term sprawl for essentially all suburban growth,
even that without the above features. The result is confusion and differences of opinion
that are semantic rather than real.

Acertain amount of leapfrog development is a natural feature of growth. Private
landownership means that some landowners closer to the urban center may choose not
to develop their land while others farther out do develop their property. For example, a
farmer nearing retirement commonly will wait to sell his land, while a younger farmer
generally sells quickly and establishes himself in another area. With rapid population
growth in Arizona, the bypassed closer-in land usually is developed in the not-too-distant
future.

Similarly, retail and other commercial activities usually require a certain population
base before locating in an area. Thus, newly growing areas frequently lack most
services, but only for a relatively short time in most of Arizona. Further, some land
needs to be left behind for such future and more dense types of development.

Thus, leapfrog development and a lack of services does not automatically equate to
sprawl. Instead, such features need to be extreme¾in distance or in number¾and must
be long lasting to be considered sprawl. In Arizona, most of these features do not last
long because of rapid population growth. In contrast, leapfrog or scatter development
without services may last a long time in slow-growing eastern and midwestern areas of
the country. Ironically, while western metro areas frequently are cited as prime
examples of sprawl, classic undesirable sprawl really is mostly a feature of older,
slower-growing areas in the eastern two-thirds of the nation.

Compact development is at the other end of the continuum. It involves higher (but not
necessarily high) densities through the use of more multi-family housing, cluster
housing, and smaller lots for traditional single family housing. Unused or underutilized
land within the developed area is minimized. Compact development generally is

achieved only through growth management or intensive planning. However, where land
prices are high, some degree of compact development occurs naturally.

Sprawl frequently is cited as having greater costs than other forms of growth. Thus,
planners have proposed taking more managed or planned approaches to urban growth
to reduce these costs.

Growth management has been seriously discussed in Arizona only recently. However,
the desire for more planning is not new. The 1987 survey of business leaders asked
about the quality of the growth planning in the Phoenix area. Only 14 percent believed
growth had been well planned, while 44 percent felt it had been poorly planned. Of
those who thought growth planning had been mediocre or poor, public officials were
felt to be primarily responsible for the inadequate planning and management.

Density and Geography Population density naturally declines with distance from the urban center. The rapidity
of the decrease, and the level to which it decreases, help to define sprawl. Further, a
steady decline in density better defines sprawl than a decline punctuated with
occasional increases. Such increases are an indication of suburban centers, likely with
jobs, entertainment, and shopping.

The U. S. Census Bureau defines an "urbanized area" (UA) as the developed area of
population centers with at least 50,000 residents. Between 1980 and 1990, the
population density of the nation's nearly 400 urbanized areas declined four percent.
Two-thirds of the UAs experienced a decline in density. Most notably, while the
population declined in nearly one in five UAs, the geographic size of most of these
UAs still expanded. The decline in density was greatest in the middle of the country,
where densities already were relatively low. Densities rose slightly in New England and
substantially in the Pacific region in the 1980s. In 1990, UA population densities were
least across the South, followed by the North Central regions. Densities were highest
along the West Coast, followed by the Mountain region and the Northeast.

Densities and the change in densities clearly are highly correlated to land prices. Where
prices are high¾the West and Northeast¾densities are high and either rising or falling
only slightly. Densities also are highest and rising the most in the most populous
urbanized areas, which also tend to have high land costs.

The Case in Arizona In general, Arizona's populous areas do not present a classic example of sprawl, in part
because rapid population growth quickly overcomes most characteristics of sprawl. In
addition, land prices are not as low as those in the middle of the country, meaning that
the land tends to be developed more intensely and carefully. On the other hand, Arizona

communities are far from examples of compact growth.
While examples of low-density residential development some distance from any other
development and without jobs or most services exist in the Phoenix and Tucson areas,
these developments are relatively few. Some have already been engulfed by the rapidly
expanding urbanized area.

In contrast, some of Arizona's smaller communities do exhibit many of the
characteristics of sprawl. Many lack a town center and have residential development
spread out over a large area with many intervening undeveloped areas.

Costs and Benefits: Sprawl Versus Compact Growth

As noted earlier, growth brings a variety of costs and benefits. The magnitude of some
of these, particularly costs, may vary with the form of urban growth. In particular,
many claim that sprawl increases many costs relative to other forms of growth.

The primary beneficiary of sprawl is the new homeowner. Purchasing a new home at
the fringe is less costly, since land costs are lower. Similarly, businesses locating at the
fringe also benefit from these lower costs, enhancing competitiveness. Among the costs
largely borne by new residents at the fringe are higher commuting costs (gasoline, auto
maintenance, and time). The outlying residents may also experience a longer response
time for emergency services (police, fire, and ambulance).

Most of the costs of sprawl accrue to society as a whole, such as air pollution and
traffic congestion. Many of these costs are widely debated. This includes the most
commonly cited one, that the marginal cost of public services is higher in outlying
areas and that these additional costs are not usually captured in development fees. Thus,
taxpayers throughout the community help pay for the cost of infrastructure and services
to the new development, including roads, sewer and water lines, and construction of
schools. The growth at the edge experienced with sprawl usually is associated with the
decline of the urban area's central core. However, this has not occurred to a substantial
extent in Arizona.

Little disagreement exists that sprawl consumes more land than other forms of urban
growth, but some argue against the significance of this. Prime agricultural land may be
converted to housing developments while sensitive ecosystems may also be developed.
Some of Arizona's growth has been on such lands.

Oregon as a Case Study

Oregon is the nation's leading example of growth management planning, including the
use of urban growth boundaries (UGB). Community plans were passed during the
1970s and 1980s, with Portland's being adopted in 1979. This section examines

whether Oregon's growth management has had any obvious effects on four factors:
population growth; economic performance; housing prices; and population density.
This is done primarily by comparing Oregon to Washington, its most comparable state,
and the Portland area to the Seattle area. While the state of Washington now has its own
growth management act, community plans have been adopted only since 1994.

Washington and Oregon have alternated having faster population growth during the last
50 years. From 1979 through 1992, Oregon's population grew less rapidly than that of
Washington. Whether the growth management plan contributed to the slower growth is
unclear, as many factors influence population growth. In any case, over the last five
years, Oregon's population growth rate has been identical to that of Washington.

One of the five counties comprising the Portland metropolitan area is in Washington
and thus was not affected by Oregon's growth management plan. It has only been in
recent years that the growth rate in Washington's Clark County became the fastest of
the five counties. Thus, despite no UGB and the lure of no state income tax in
Washington, the Washington portion of the Portland region has not grown at a much
different pace than the Oregon portion since the passage of Portland's growth
management plan.

Oregon lagged behind Washington in economic performance, as measured by per
capita personal income, during much of the last 50 years. However, conditions have
reversed since 1992.

Data on land and home prices indicate that those in Portland remain lower than those in
Seattle. Within the Portland area, the price in the Oregon portion was marginally less
than that in the Washington portion. However, research that compares home prices to
incomes shows Portland to be one of the least affordable areas in the country. Cyclical
economic factors, rather than growth management, has been the dominant influence on
land and home prices in both states, driving prices lower in the 1980s and forcing them
higher since the late 1980s.

The Portland urbanized area's population density in 1990 was about equal to that in
Seattle. While considerably more dense than the national average, Portland's density
was no higher than that in many western areas. The Portland UA was about ten percent
more dense than the Phoenix UA. In contrast to the national decline, both Portland and
Seattle had a slight rise in density in the 1980s. Many western areas, including Phoenix,
had greater increases in density.

Notes
1 Arizona Business, Center for Business Research, Arizona State University, July 1996. 2
Arizona Business, Center for Business Research, Arizona State University, August 1987.

58 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Yesterday's Growth: The Market Reigned
Phoenix and the Vision Thing
Grady Gammage, Jr., Partner, Gammage and Burnham
Adjunct Professor, School of Planning and Landscape Architecture
Arizona State University

Housing Marketplace Determines Design, Not Other Way Around
Tom Simplot, Deputy Director, Home Builders Association of Central Arizona

Let's Hear It for the Suburbs
Samuel R. Staley, © Reason Public Policy Institute

Agriculture: Growth's Architect and Its Victim
Rick C. Lavis, Executive Vice President, Arizona Cotton Growers Association

Barriers Won't Help Growth
Patrick S. Sullivan, for St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Counties That Growth Forgot
Brent Brown, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Restore the Focus on Planning
Larry Landry, © Landry & Associates
Yesterday's Growth: The Market Reigned
Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 61

Phoenix and the Vision Thing Grady Gammage, Jr.
Partner, Gammage and Burnham
Adjunct Professor, School of Planning and Landscape Architecture
Arizona State University

This article is adapted from the author's book Phoenix in Perspective,

published by The Herberger Center for Design Excellence, College of Architecture

and Environmental Design, Arizona State University.

Visions are elusive. George Bush, mired in the minutia of governing, found it hard to
articulate any lofty goal and admitted that the "vision thing" was not his cup of tea.
Phoenix, obsessed with the business of growing, has not often paused to ask: into
what? This year the debate about the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) proposal to
draw a boundary around cities has helped focus local attention on what is too often a
vague dialogue about the relationship of growth, quality of life, and the nature of our
communities. The UGB was a device not a vision, but for a place whose only vision
has been to grow, a device may be a necessary construct to guide discussions.

Recently, the Maricopa Association of Governments organized a "visioning" meeting,
intending to gain input by using high tech computers to tabulate responses to a range
of questions by audience members holding little remote control boxes. Some
participants became angry because they didn't like the questions being asked¾the
technology seemed more important than the vision thing. Others did not like being
asked to predict the future they thought they had been invited to help shape. It was not
an auspicious start, but shared visioning can be difficult, especially when there is little
common ground among its participants other than an expectation of growth.

The UGB proposal was to draw an arbitrary line around cities delimiting their
maximum circumference, and to not change it without a public vote. While initiative
petitions were circulating, the debate about the proposal contained very little
substantive dialogue about how boundaries would make things better, very little
explanation of what vision, if any, the magic line was intended to implement. The
principal argument by proponents of UGBs seemed to be: "But we've just got to do
something! Anything! We can't trust those politicians!"

UGBs are a solution crafted for another place with a very different city form. Such
boundaries are designed to protect a traditional, dense 19th century-style downtown
area and to keep small traditional rural towns from being transformed into commuter
suburbs. These are not our principal problems. We do not, and never really did, have
a traditional downtown nor do we have many small farming towns in Maricopa
County struggling to preserve a pastoral lifestyle. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, we
also have little of the classically derided "leapfrog" phenomenon where new
subdivisions spring up unexpectedly miles and miles beyond the urban fringe. Desert
cities have a distinct pattern of growth. They expand relatively steadily on the edge

because new development can occur only where the infrastructure of water delivery
is available. There are a few exceptions, of course, but by and large we already grow
in a logical progressive outward expansion.

Instead of importing a growth management device from the Pacific Northwest, any
mechanism developed to guide future growth in Greater Phoenix should build on an
understanding of the nature of desert communities. The best place to start is with our
water resources, the thing which makes it possible for us to exist here at all. Because
of the Salt River Project and Central Arizona Project, there are renewable water
supplies available to Maricopa County which conceivably could support a population
in excess of ten million people. Our development-oriented forebears who lobbied for
these systems showed extraordinary foresight in planning for continued growth, and
we also owe an enormous debt (in money and gratitude) to the federal government
for actually building these plumbing systems. Historically we have not considered
water as something to be utilized to manage growth. Rather, we treat water as a kind
of tribal commodity we fight to protect at all costs. It is a commodity of which we
can never have enough, even while simultaneously worrying that we are growing too
quickly.

Ten million people is too many. Using all our water resources to support an urban
population would leave us little margin for error. The number is uncomfortably high.
Instead, we should make a conscious decision to establish a "planning horizon" for a
population which we believe is the maximum to reasonably sustain an acceptable
lifestyle in the Valley. The number is not an absolute limit to be enforced by
"population police," but it would become a framework for all planning and
development decisions. Individual cities, through internal planning and dialogue with
neighboring jurisdictions, could plan for future growth that would conform to the
projection. We would make more deliberate choices about types of growth and
development if we had criteria and targets to work against. The horizon would give
us a reason to scrutinize and prioritize in a way we now do not. With the advent of a
presumptive limit, we could no longer simply assume all growth is good. Rather, we
would have to exercise a serious degree of influence on the quality and character of
growth. This is a radical notion in a community that has held as its core value the
desire to boom. As the horizon number gets closer, adjustments in settlement patterns
and lifestyles would become necessary.

The question of how many people can live in Greater Phoenix is directly related to
whether agriculture will survive in central Arizona. Right now, about half of the
water in Maricopa County is still used for irrigated farming. Hundreds of thousands
of acre feet of Central Arizona Project water is also being delivered to farms in Pinal
County. Since water is a commodity which responds to market demand and pricing,
it is likely that if we do nothing, all of that water will eventually move to urban uses,
which can invariably pay a much higher price. The loss of all farming in central
Arizona would be tragic. Open space would vanish; the contribution of large
agricultural parcels in cooling the climate would disappear. But most importantly, we
would lose our connection to why people came here in the first place. From the
Hohokam to Jack Swilling, the reason this place came to be was in order to grow
crops, and it is a good place to do so. Preserving agriculture preserves our
community's heritage and promotes "sustainability"¾not because we could ever
grow all the food to serve the people who live here, but because sustainability also
comes from understanding, recognizing, and utilizing the resources of a place in
shaping its settlement.

To insure this important resource is not lost, we should dedicate 500,000 acre feet of
water to agriculture, to be used permanently for farming in central Arizona. This
water might be used by Indian tribes, by non-Indian agriculture, or a combination of
the two. The physical location of farming might shift, but the decision to dedicate
this much water to agricultural use begins to help us establish a population horizon
for Maricopa County: 7 million.

Seven million people is still more than twice our current population. It is a number
which we might reach by the middle of the twenty first century. How can we
accommodate such growth and still maintain a high a quality of life? Should we try
to radically alter our current urban form by compacting all those people much more
tightly together? Should we remake our city in the image of more traditional older
urban areas of America? Should we strive for high density, fewer cars, rail transit,
and less of that awful sprawl? In a word: No.

The Valley of the Sun has always been an open, affordable, low density city. We
blossomed into a big city after the automobile, in an era when government policies
were designed to encourage home ownership. Because of those policies, personal
lifestyle choices, abundant land, and a climate in which living outdoors is possible
for most of the year, we have an urban form in which a remarkably high percentage
of our population (55%) lives in detached single family homes. Most of these homes
exist within a confined range of densities, between two and a half and five units to
the acre. Most of these homes are owned by the people who live in them¾65
percent, one of the highest percentages in the world.

Today, nearly 1000 square miles of the county is built in this pattern. The urban area
will grow more dense, as it does every day, with infill development, more multi-family
housing, and higher density single family home development as a result of
increasing land prices and construction costs. Many major metropolitan areas in the
U. S. are losing density from one area of the city to another¾that's what "sprawl" is
really about. Phoenix is not following this pattern. Rather, we continue to grow on

the edge at the same time we infill and build urban cores. We cannot bulldoze our
existing metropolis and rebuild it in the image of Manhattan. And the reality is: we
don't want to. In Walt Kelly's immortal words, "we have met the enemy and he is
us." We are living a lifestyle we like, we just wish so many other people didn't feel
the same way.

It is the independently exercised choices of individuals which shape cities.
Government has the power to influence, but not to control those choices. Phoenix has
been the successful product of such influenced choices for the last fifty years. We
should recognize and celebrate the result, not waste energy lamenting that we don't
look like Boston. Our focus should be on how to continue to influence the trend of
development in the future to retain those things that make Phoenix a place where
people choose to live. Our power to influence is greatest when used in realistic
increments. We should accept that we can, and we will, continue to grow in a pattern
much like our current city¾a community of detached single family homes; a
relatively uniform density of between 2500 and 3000 citizens per square mile. If we
reach a "population horizon" of 7 million in that pattern, we will have urbanized
about 3000 square miles or about half of the land in Maricopa County.

It is possible to reach that horizon while preserving the lifestyle we enjoy, but only if
we make a series of changes in the way we currently manage growth and
development. A fundamental beginning is to embrace a degree of regional cooperation
that we previously have not been willing to entertain. This is not a call to create a full
scale regional government, for to be successful we must move ahead prudently,
recognizing political realities and focusing on specific issues of regional development
which offer opportunities and clearly visible benefits for the population county wide.

A starting point would be the implementation of the Maricopa Association of
Government's Desert Spaces. That plan identified more than three million acres of
potential open space to be preserved. This open space should be woven into the
urban fabric of the city as we grow, not isolated in a belt outside of an arbitrary
growth boundary. The open space should be connected, providing wildlife with
migratory routes, and providing urban citizens with accessible desert they can see
and appreciate. The Sonoran desert is the richest and most spectacular arid
ecosystem in North America. It is the essential magic of this place. That magic
cannot be captured on a fifty foot wide lot serviced by drip irrigation. By integrating
sufficiently large desert parcels into our city as we grow we can help to mitigate the
heat gain of urban mass. Retaining and incorporating desert spaces into the city is a
far better way to inhabit this region than by trying to force our agglomeration into a
tighter, denser urban form.

Fortunately, the mountain preserves of Phoenix and Scottsdale already provide a

strong foundation for this open space system. These cities' recent efforts to expand
this system, and the state's Arizona Preserve Initiative are further steps toward such a
goal. But even taken together, these are inadequate. We should ask the citizens of
Maricopa County to dedicate tax resources, such as a county wide sales tax, for open
space acquisition. We raised nearly $300 million for Bank One Ballpark in a few
short years. We should target $2 billion for open space acquisition.

Next, we must reform the operation of the State Land Department. There are nearly
600,000 acres of land in Maricopa County held by the Land Department "in trust"
for the benefit of funding education. Since the Urban Lands Act of 1981 this property
has been "available" in some sense for ultimate development. In that period, urban
trust land has been plagued by constant misunderstanding of its purpose, false starts,
indecisive policy making, and political interference. The Land Department has been
castigated for disposing of land too early and too cheaply; criticized for not
preserving enough land as open space; blamed for furthering sprawl; chastised for
not being aggressive enough in disposing of land to generate revenues to help
Arizona's school children; investigated for being too "cozy" with developers;
boycotted as "impossible to deal with" by the same developers. Through this
relentless barrage of criticism the Department has careened from one policy to
another depending on what criticism was leveled last.

Despite the problems, we should recognize that the State Land Department controls
one of our greatest assets. These lands represent an opportunity to realize a vision of
the future and protect our quality of life. Trust Lands should be treated as a
laboratory for innovation. They should be used to demonstrate sensitive, creative,
climatically appropriate development instead of used as a political battleground. The
Land Department should be completely restructured to insulate it from political
pressures and to allow the development of consistent policies and behavior which
can survive the comings and goings of a given Land Commissioner or changes in
Administration. The Department should be managed by a Board of Trustees
appointed by the governor for staggered terms and removable only for malfeasance.
Those Trustees should be given a mandate to realize the greatest possible revenue for
the Trust while at the same time demonstrating innovative sustainable development
practices. To be successful, they should be given the power to manage the agency as
a quasi-public corporation, hiring employees outside the state civil service system
and retaining enough revenues to operate.

A population horizon; a comprehensive, integrated and open space program; a State
Land Department with a mission of developing innovative quality development.
Good ideas, perhaps, but still short of a vision: these seem pieces of process, not a
blueprint for the future. Perhaps that is the point. Cities do not exist by fiat, they
evolve and change in response to a myriad of influences. Today we are witnessing
the embryonic years of a cultural transformation every bit as profound as that

wrought by the rise of the automobile. The auto gave us "sprawl"¾the ability to live
and work in places connected only by ribbons of pavement, in a lifestyle of
unparalleled personal mobility. Now we are moving from the city on wheels to the
city on the wire. Working and living patterns have and will change as computer
technologies proliferate. What our cities will look like when people can plug in and
work from home, from Starbucks, from a telecommuting center, and at whatever
time is convenient, we cannot yet predict. More density or less? Maybe both, since
for the first time in human history our urban form may not be dictated principally by
the means of available physical transportation.

Phoenix, the prototypical post-industrial city, should be at the forefront of this
revolution. Instead of arguing over how to build the mass transit systems of the last
generation of cities¾designed to move large numbers of people downtown for
work¾we should talk about how to build a city to eliminate rush hour altogether. We
should consciously capitalize on our multi-centered form to further disperse and
diversify work activities. We should plan that the "cores" of our metropolitan area
will be increasingly centered on social interaction, dining, shopping and meeting,
while "work" itself will become less dependent on face-to-face interaction and the
need for simultaneous concentration of large numbers of workers.

We should stop trying to turn Phoenix into a 19th century city, with the
preponderance of jobs concentrated downtown, with fixed transit routes to feed
preconceived locations, with boundaries constraining further low density growth.
Our city is already closer to the future than that. Visions of the past are too easy;
visions of the future are very hard. The viable vision is one of process which lets the
future unfold.

66 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Housing Marketplace Determines Design, Not Other Way Around

Tom Simplot
Deputy Director, Home Builders Association of Central Arizona

Fifty years ago, when hundreds of thousands of American men and women returned
from serving their country in World War II, we faced a severe housing shortage. The
unpleasant reality was that the people who had just given so much had no place to live.
They could rent or they could live in the family home. Almost none of them could
afford to buy a home.

We created a number of incentives¾low interest loans, the Federal Housing
Administration, and other programs¾to encourage new home ownership.
Unfortunately, there weren't any homes to buy. So we developed suburban America
where large numbers of homes could be built on tracts of relatively inexpensive land.
We weren't much concerned with how those houses looked, and American families
were thrilled with the chance to buy more distinctive homes as their incomes and needs
grew. But, they took great pride in those little "starter" homes.

Fifty years later, we are now confronted with a similar lack of truly affordable housing
for young families. We met the challenge 50 years ago, but now we seem less interested
in making sure housing is available than we are in how houses are designed.

What is especially interesting in the current debate over home design is that we seem to
be seeking the same neighborhood atmosphere that existed when we last dealt with this
problem. We have a vision of neighborhoods we have carried from our childhoods¾
streets lined with big trees and front yards filled with happy children who live in lovely
homes with nice front porches. It's a nostalgic and comforting vision which,
unfortunately, harkens back to a time that no longer exists. The notion that we can
somehow restore neighborhoods just by changing home design is puzzling because it
ignores the reality of modern American life, especially here in metropolitan Phoenix.
All the front porches in the world cannot make working mothers sacrifice their careers,
nor will they put children back in those front yards. In fact, because of our weather, the
Valley is a back yard place where families are content to live with walls around their
patios and pools. Design changes will make no difference to that reality.

The current design debate doesn't even reflect the wishes of most new home buyers or
current home owners. The two current hot button issues¾exterior design and high
density developments surrounded by green space¾were rarely mentioned in recent
research among potential and current home owners conducted by National Family
Opinion for Professional Builder magazine. Two of the biggest issues to new home
buyers were overall home size and interior design. Exterior design factors didn't even
make the list. And, both design and size took a back seat to new home buyers' greatest

concern, whether for first homes or not. That concern is cost, with nearly 70 percent of
new home buyers citing affordability as their number one issue. Fully 60 percent of
first-time buyers cite cost as the factor that has prevented them from buying until now,
and more than half of those potential buyers are still priced out of the market.

The so-called neo-traditional developments¾smaller homes, greater density, pocket
parks, surrounding green space¾have gained popularity only among empty nesters.
Even retirees prefer the more traditional development and that tradition is preferred
nearly two to one by both first-time buyers and those making a move-up purchase.

The problem here is fairly obvious. The changes now being proposed to individual homes
and home developments do not reflect the marketplace, which has been the design
standard on which home builders have depended for at least the last half century. The
notion that we home builders can somehow force people into developments and designs,
against their will and for our own financial advantage, has never been true. The average
first-time buyer looks at no less than 16 homes before making a purchase. That's a pretty
discriminating buyer to whom we must be responsive if we want to stay in business.

Additionally, there is a serious disconnect between what cities allow us to build and
what some experts now tell us we should build. Lot sizes, exterior appearance, set-backs,
landscaping, construction methods and a host of other restrictions require us to
build a certain way in certain communities. Many of these standards must be changed,
or at least loosened, to accomplish the kind of design diversity now being discussed.
We certainly do not offer blanket opposition to new home design or to new ideas about
land development. We do however offer the following suggestions:

° New home designs, whatever they may be, must include affordability as a
priority or we will have eliminated millions of Americans from the
opportunity to enjoy homeownership.
° Home builders will always be more responsive to the realities of the
marketplace than we are to the desires of social engineers.
° New home designs will continue to reflect what home buyers tell us they want.
° Any changes must first come from municipalities which now essentially
control both building methodology and design.

Like any other business operating in the free market, we will respond to the needs of
the buying public. If people want front porches, homes set back farther from the street,
garages accessible from alleys instead of the street, or any of the other changes now
being suggested, we will meet those marketplace requirements, as we always have. But
somebody better tell those who make the rules under which we currently function that
those rules need changing. In the meantime, we will continue to adhere to the most
important criteria¾giving new home buyers a high quality product at an affordable
price within the rules which have already been established.

68 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Let's Hear It for the Suburbs

Samuel R. Staley
© The Reason Public Policy Institute, 1998

My wife and I make a habit of packing up our kids and going for an evening stroll.
Our stroll says a lot about our neighborhood and the people who live here:
Joe, our next door neighbor, used-car dealer and all-around great guy, is inspecting
a newly purchased car.

The next house down is a family of four with two young children about the age of
our kids. He's a salesman, she's a nurse.

On the other side is a minister and his wife.
Behind us is a banker.
Other families on the street include an electrician, a factory worker, another
salesman, a retired engineer and a teacher.

As we continue our walk, two kids in tow, acquaintances and strangers are outside
playing with their children or working in their yards¾the normal stuff of neighborhoods.

Anyone who wanders in will discover our neighborhood is safe, family-friendly, and
all around pleasant. It's a good place to raise kids. I should know; we live just two
streets away from where I grew up.

What's wrong with this picture? For the vast majority of folks in America, nothing.
In fact, many aspire to these kinds of neighborhoods and living conditions.

Yet, to many urban studies professors and some politicians, this neighborhood and
the town that hosts it represent the newest "social ill." It's a suburb. It's part of the
"urban sprawl" that soothsayers, particularly those in traditional central cities, think
is ripping apart the fabric of American society.

The problem with this antisuburban view is that these cities¾and they are cities¾are
not really the bland, faceless, non-communities described in social studies textbooks.
People live here. People choose to live here, and they choose not to move out. In fact,
suburban residents are less likely to move than their central city counterparts.

The failure to recognize these simple facts about suburban life is the source of one of
the most profound misunderstandings of contemporary Western society. Suburbs
exist because people want them and their wealth permits them to enjoy the fruits of
their labor.

"Anti-sprawlers" are correct when they point to public policies such as subsidized
mortgage rates, highway construction subsidies and below-cost pricing for utilities as
contributors to suburban development. But even if these costs were fully accounted
for, it would slow, not stop, the pace of sprawl.

The evidence of this is clear simply by looking across the ocean to Europe where
energy prices are higher, housing is more expensive and mass transit is more
convenient. Despite these barriers, Europeans have moved in droves to the suburbs
(albeit in higher densities).

Even in the United States, most home and office construction now occurs outside
traditional cities. More than half of the American population lives in a suburb and the
suburbs are the primary job generators.

Why the hostility toward suburbs? Three reasons come to mind. First, suburban
dominance is relatively new. Many people do not understand it. Suburbanization has
been occurring for centuries, but suburbs have not dominated social and economic
life until very recently.

Second, suburbs look different. They often do not have identifiable downtowns
(although they may have older parts that are designated as "historical districts").
They also do not have large houses on postage-stamp size lots. They are designed for
the automobile, not crowded high-density rail systems.

Third, suburbs are not easily categorized. They range from new to old, large to small,
from the economically homogeneous to the economically diverse, from the
ethnically homogeneous to the ethnically diverse. Few urban planners and
sociologists have theories that can accommodate such diversity. In earlier decades,
traditional cities had the same levels of diversity (or segregation), they just were all
within one city's boundaries.

Policymakers and citizens need to look beyond the architecture and into the soul of
the suburb. Even a casual walk through our neighborhood¾a very typical
neighborhood¾demonstrates that American society is alive, kicking and pretty
routine in the "sprawling suburbs."

It's time to recast the urban policy mold and root in a fuller understanding and
appreciation for the benefits of low-density, suburban living. The suburbs are not for
everyone, but they obviously represent a step up for most American families.

Reprinted with permission from the Reason Public Policy Institute.

70 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Agriculture: Growth's Architect and Its Victim

Rick C. Lavis
Executive Vice President, Arizona Cotton Growers Association

Wallace Stegner once described the western wilderness as the "geography of hope."
Of course, Stegner wrote about conservation. Yet, the West has become the
"geography of hope" for countless Americans who moved West and for many more
who think about coming.

Arizona's growth has been relentless over the last 50 years, often coming in prolonged
spurts. And with every spurt has come the noise of resentment, concern, criticism and
the strain on the public infrastructure; i. e., roads, water, schools, and now, air.

Yet, Arizona has never experienced a no-growth-slow-growth political environment,
although there have been occasional brushfires in places like Scottsdale, Tucson, and
Flagstaff where discussions over growth could be described at best as "civil wars" or at
worst "nasty." Growth has been the engine of economic success for Arizona and it is
likely to continue despite the rantings and ravings of those who question it.

This is not to say that the critics of growth don't have a case. They do. The debate has
always been over what to do about growth: whether to manage it, restrict it, or stop it.

Which brings us to Arizona agriculture and its unique and special place in the growth
discussion. Arizona agriculture is both the original architect of growth and its first victim.

Clearly, irrigated agriculture helped to create Phoenix and its "Valley of the Sun." By
civilizing the land, it developed the ancillary businesses that would sustain farming and
its growth which, in turn, spawned the initial "urbanization" of Phoenix. And as
Phoenix flexed its muscles, agricultural land began to be city land. Steady
disappearance of farm acres has become agriculture's history. The disappearance of
agricultural land was slow at first but picked up speed with the end of World War II and
the massive influx of people looking for a new start and a different lifestyle. It
continues unabated today.

For some in farming, development was a welcome event. The fragile nature of farming
as an economic enterprise was becoming more costly with marginal returns. And so
some would sell, with many among them realizing significant economic gains. Others
wanted to maintain their farms in the hopes of passing them along to the next
generation. But even they cherished the idea that their land was a "retirement fund" to
be "cashed in" as their entitlement.

Agriculture then is of two minds when it comes to growth. Farmers are both
developers and farmers. This crucible of farming and development drives agriculture's
view of growth.

Preserving "open spaces" as applied to agriculture and its amber waves of grain or the

green fields of cotton has a nice ring. But at what cost? To control growth, do we
adversely affect agriculture and its economic opportunities? Restricting growth may be
appropriate in the debate over development but it could run counter to the interests of
agriculture. Agriculture exists, it has land that is cultivated. It can't go anywhere else.

Under Arizona's 1980 Groundwater Management Act, agriculture is prohibited from
breaking out any new ground for agricultural production in the Phoenix valley.
Agriculture cannot move away from onrushing urban encroachment. Unlike in the past,
agriculture no longer has the flexibility to accommodate growth.

Development on the other hand is a future. It can be deferred or modified. Agriculture
has no such luxury. It must plant on what it has to succeed, to survive.

Equally, what about those who wish to sell, who have to sell? What about those trapped
by the economics of an ever more uncertain farm economy?

The debate over growth in Arizona is nothing new; the proposals for controlling or
restricting it are.

Urban growth boundaries or even zoning changes could trap agriculture. Imagine
growth boundaries that would prevent the sale of agricultural land to preserve "open
spaces." Imagine policies that dictate use. Imagine policies that further restrict
agricultural farming practices in the name of preserving someone else's "lifestyle."

Arizona agriculture is concerned, if not afraid, of what some have in mind for
controlling growth. Certainly, there are policies that could prove helpful to agriculture;
i. e., the purchase of development rights to preserve farmland. But what really scares
agriculture in Arizona's urban areas are policies that limit agriculture's use of land if
not the right to sell. It didn't take but a nanno second for the Arizona Cotton Growers
Association to recognize that potential. It adopted a resolution, which says simply:

The Association strongly opposes any and all efforts to create urban growth
boundaries or other regulations that impair agricultural property rights.

The Citizens Growth Management Initiative or the Growing Smart legislation offer
Arizona agriculture very little protection. None. And protection is what this fragile
industry must have.

Agriculture holds some keys to growth management, but so far it has not been invited
to the table. Instead the process is defined more by imposing policy rather than
through genuine citizen involvement. To partake of a few political crumbs is not the
same as being real honest participants. Agriculture and its unique conditions deserve
much more.

Economics and policy are changing agriculture. What is necessary in the debate
over growth is to recognize those changes. Otherwise, growth policies will prove to
be unrealistic.

72 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Barriers Won't Help Growth

Patrick S. Sullivan
Home Builders Association of Greater St. Louis, March 15, 1998 for St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The recent series on urban sprawl had a very clear theme: Urban sprawl¾or outward
growth from the urban core¾is inherently bad for metropolitan St. Louis, and more
government intervention by way of growth management is fundamental to a solution. I
question both basic premises.

The fear of urban sprawl results in citizens wasting valuable time in unproductive
pursuits. The time would be better spent on making the declining urban areas
competitive. We must look to individual freedom and the free market system¾the
fundamentals that have made America great¾as the best ways to create the best life
possible for the greatest number of people.

As for the fear of sprawl, two professors of planning and economics at the University
of Southern California, Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson, wrote in the Winter 1997
Journal of the American Planning Association:

"America is not running out of open space, nor in any danger of having cities encroach
upon reserves of 'prime' agricultural land... Low density settlement is the
overwhelming choice for residential living."

As for government intervention through growth management, Michael Walden,
economics professor at North Carolina State University wrote in the February Business
Leader magazine:

"The idea of managed growth implies that some set of individuals has a better
knowledge about what should happen in the local economy than the thousands of
consumers and businesses who are constantly interacting in the marketplace..."

"Our economy operates on the principle of competition. This competition ensures that
consumers get the best combination of price and product based on their preferences.

"By its nature, competition, and hence economic growth, is messy and disorderly...
All the changes… are impossible to predict. This realization casts severe doubts on
managed growth."

As early as 1983, Gordon and Richardson were urging government to facilitate consumer
decisions. They wrote: "The appropriate role for planning agencies and local jurisdictions
should be to facilitate the decentralization of jobs… and to discourage growth control
initiatives. In other words, help the market to work rather than attempt to strangle it."

The freedom these experts talk about has given America¾and metropolitan St.
Louis… a pretty good life, by and large. No area is free from all problems. Not even the
great city of Portland, OR¾often cited in the Post-Dispatch series as a model upon
which to base our plans.

The series mistakenly gives Portland's growth management tool known as Urban
Growth Boundaries the credit. True, Portland has a great urban core and is situated in
beautiful surroundings, but let's look a bit deeper.

A1998 traffic congestion study shows Portland's traffic congestion as being much
worse than St. Louis'. The beauty of the northwestern mountains and forests also gives
that area a bit of a head start on us. That natural setting combined with the success of
the free market creating an explosion of high tech jobs are the real reasons Portland was
able to enliven its urban core.

In fact, studies by the University of Washington, Washington State University and
Portland State University all find fault with Urban Growth Boundaries. Another critic is
Alexander Garvin, professor at Yale University, a Planning Commissioner for New
York City and author of The American City: What Works and What Doesn't. He wrote
for the St. Louis Business Journal:

"The conventional wisdom seems to be that in order to prevent further abandonment of
the region's urban core and inner ring of suburbs, state government must impose
growth controls. In fact the suburbanization of America has been under way for two
centuries; it cannot be stopped through restrictions on development. Such restrictions
will only rechannel that suburbanization to areas… untouched by growth restriction."

That means jobs… our jobs… could be moved elsewhere if we don't let the marketplace
work. How many remember that by 1980, General Motors made it clear that it would
leave its plant location within the city of St. Louis? Thousands of jobs were at stake,
and there was talk of moving the plant to Memphis or other out-of-state locations. Then
in the early 1980s, GM moved to Wentzville, in western St. Charles County. What if
our region had had Urban Growth Boundaries in 1980? GM might well have moved
out of state. That scenario might even have been repeated this year with the thousands
of jobs at stake in the MasterCard relocation. Incidentally, officials in Wentzville tell
me that still today, most of the work force at GM drive daily to their jobs from their
homes in St. Louis County and the city of St. Louis.

The Post-Dispatch series made a weak claim that suburban growth was not paying for
itself. In a 1996 study, Steven Hayward, senior fellow with the Pacific Research
Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco, wrote, "The nature of suburban growth is
misunderstood. Increasingly, new job growth is occurring in the suburbs, as jobs follow

housing. Hence, most commuting today consists of short suburb-to-suburb trips rather
than suburb-to-downtown trips ... the claim that 'growth doesn't pay for itself' is
inaccurate."

As to Hayward's last point, 1997 studies corroborate his assessment. One is noted in
this Texas A& M University press release: "New residential subdivisions not only pay
their own way, but they actually generate income that can be used by cities to
upgrade other neighborhoods. For some two decades, Texans have debated whether
or not residential development is a benefit or a drain to the city treasury," says Mark
Dotzour, chief economist for the Real Estate Center at Texas A& M University. "After
studying 10 subdivisions… we know that new subdivisions actually generate surplus
revenue for cities."

So if (a) urban sprawl and (b) allowing individuals with the economic means to freely
choose to live where they want are not the reasons for declining urban areas, what are?
Declining areas¾wherever they are¾have unsuccessfully competed for the
consumer¾especially the middle-income consumer.

The solution: Declining areas have to successfully compete. That can be tough. Some
government programs can help declining areas in that competition. One great example
is the September 1997 enactment by the Missouri General Assembly of a Historic Tax
Credit for revitalizing older areas. That law hasn't had time yet to produce results but is
being looked at eagerly by many housing developers.

Citizens within a region need to pool their resources to solve regional problems and to
fund and manage true regional needs and treasures. Our region's leaders need to focus
collectively on those aspects of our future and stay away from growth management
schemes.

It would be good for metropolitan St. Louis if more people with economic means
would choose to live in the inner core. It is completely possible to support efforts to
revive neighborhoods in declining areas and also be against growth management
controls.

Fundamentally, solutions are best found for the most people in a competitive
environment where consumers are free to choose and with government limiting itself to
protecting public health and safety. The more healthy we make our economy, the more
people throughout the region will improve their personal quality of life.

Compete for the consumer in a free market. The answer is that simple and that complex.

Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 75

Yesterday's Growth: The Market Reigned

The Counties That Growth Forgot

Brent Brown, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Arizona's spectacular population growth since World War II is the envy of many other
states. By most economic development standards, Arizona is one of the success stories
of the post-World War II period. In fact, Hudson Institute in 1977 concluded in Arizona
Tomorrow that "Arizona is developing one of the preferred lifestyles of the future.
Arizona may indeed be a development prototype for post-industrial society." ¹

This remarkable economic boom has benefited Arizonans especially in the Phoenix and
Tucson metropolitan areas and emerging areas such as Flagstaff and Prescott. Other
areas of the state have not shared equally in the post-war growth. For example, the June
22, 1998 issue of Time identifies Yuma, Arizona as having the highest unemployment
rate (27.1%) of all the nation's metropolitan areas.² The border counties of Yuma,
Santa Cruz, and Cochise experience unique economic and growth problems and
opportunities because of their proximity to Mexico. Gila, Graham, and Greenlee
counties have economies that are still heavily dependent on mining operations. The
world price of copper dictates their economic well being. However, the area of the state
that has consistently lagged the furthest behind in economic activity is the northeast,
namely Apache and Navajo counties.

The economic and population figures for these two counties are pathetic when
compared with the two major urban counties. From 1980-1996, Arizona's population
increased 26 percent whereas Apache County grew at a rate of 19 percent and Navajo
County at 16 percent.

The unemployment rates in these two counties persistently remain high. Apache County's
rate for 1996 was nearly 18 percent and in Navajo County the rate was 15 percent. These
numbers are depressingly high and give the region an Appalachian-like character.

Statistics for April 1998 indicate that over one third of Apache County's residents and
almost a quarter of Navajo County's citizens are receiving Food Stamps. According to
the last census, Apache County's per capita income was less than half the national
average. 3 By most statistical measures, these two counties rank at the low end of the
economic scale for all counties in the United States. Ironically because Arizona's
economy has performed well since the 1940s, the problems of the northeastern
counties have often been ignored by state and national policy makers. Consequently,
the economic pressures have become so intense that decision makers in the counties
have chosen economic development avenues that local governments usually avoid.
They have welcomed prisons, power plants, landfills, and casino gambling.

There are many reasons for the poor economic performance of these two rural counties.
Some of the most important issues are discussed below.

Population and Isolation Amajor reason why these counties are lagging behind is the long-time neglect of or
misguided solutions for the problems of Native Americans by state and national
governments. Table 1 shows the large Native American population which comprises
nearly 80 percent in Apache County and more than half of Navajo County. The
population composition coupled with the remoteness of the Navajo and Hopi
reservations partially accounts for the lack of attention paid by federal and state
policymakers to resolving the structural poverty and social problems of the counties.

Table 1: County Population Composition 1990
Race/ Ethnic Apache County Navajo County
Native American 50,032 43,836
White 13,024 37,092
African American 129 843
Asian/ Pacific Islander 129 253
Other 1,161 2,276
Total 64,475 84,300
Hispanic Heritage (may be of any race) 2,708 6,137
Source: Arizona Department of Economic Security

Lack of Political Clout Since statehood, the political strength of Arizona's rural counties has waned. In 1912,

only 12 percent of Arizonans lived in Maricopa and Pima Counties. By 1998, these two
counties accounted for 87 percent of the state's total population. This reversal of
population concentration and the loss of political power due to reapportionment in
1996 have left Arizona's rural counties politically weak. For example before 1966 each
Arizona county had two state senators. Now, the District Four senator represents all or
parts of seven counties.

This small population base allows state and federal elected officials to ignore the area's
constituents. The lack of attention has increased in recent years as families, such as the
Goldwaters, Udalls, and DeConcinis, whose roots were deep in rural Arizona have
passed from the political scene.

Another factor contributing to the political decline of rural Arizona is the fact that
traditionally in many rural counties, registered voters have been mostly Democrats
whereas Maricopa County has become more Republican. As Republicans began to
dominate the Arizona Legislature and Congressional delegation, the out-counties
started to suffer more and more neglect. Often when an elected official moves to help
these counties, it is with a sense of noblesse oblige rather than a real commitment to the
grave problems facing these rural areas. The condescending attitude of some elected

officials only increases the communication gap between policymakers in Phoenix and
Washington and the counties' residents.

Federal Policy Impacts Some federal policies are nonsensical when implemented in Navajo and Apache
counties. The environmental attempt to save the spotted owl, for example, appears to be
noble until one examines the consequences for the lives of Navajo and Apache county
residents. Federal court action has shut down most lumber activities in Apache, Navajo,
and Coconino counties thus eliminating almost all of the traditionally higher paying
jobs. There has been almost no new manufacturing employment to replace these lost
jobs. The animosity many rural residents feel towards the federal government is
understandable when one considers that jobs are eliminated by decision makers who
seem to be invisible and unreachable by the traditional electoral process.

Intergovernmental Conflict Arizona is a very urban state. Rapid city growth has focused policymakers' attention on
urban problems rather than rural ones. The small populations and the many federal
jurisdictions have made it easy for state officials to label the economic problems of
these counties as federal problems. Conversely, federal officials, especially in hard
times, try to pass more and more responsibility to the State of Arizona. This political
posturing would be comical if the consequences were not so serious. Nobody is willing
to put together an intergovernmental approach to improving the situation. Some of the
areas that need intergovernmental attention are: tribal governments versus the Bureau
of Indian Affairs; EPA issues on reservation lands; Indian water rights; gaming
regulations; and federal versus state obligations for Indian health and welfare.

Many problems facing Apache and Navajo counties defy easy solutions. Many of the
residents of these counties are starting to recognize that problems will not be solved by
other governmental jurisdictions, and signs of cooperation between local jurisdictions
are starting to produce results. This process is helped by the fact that Apache County
has been governed in recent years by a Board of Supervisors with a Navajo majority.
This cooperation can serve as an example for future policymakers and help government
jurisdictions start to build a process to encourage favorable economic growth.
Washington, D. C. and Phoenix decision makers would be wise to give broad-based
grant authority to these local jurisdictions and let them start to develop the capacity to
solve their own economic problems.

Notes
1 Paul Bracken, Arizona Tomorrow, Hudson Institute, 1977, p. 3.

2 Time, 15 (24), June 22, 1998, p. B2.

3 Lay Gibson and Bruce Wright, The Many Faces of Economic Development in Arizona, Arizona Academy, 1990, p. 78.

Restore the Focus on Planning

Larry Landry
© Landry & Associates, April 4, 1995 for The Phoenix Gazette

There are many inviting aspects in the Valley of the Sun, which have made the Phoenix
area one of the most popular places in America to visit and to live. If you list all the
reasons you love living here, you will discover why so many others want to be here,
too (including our children). The magnetism of this Sunbelt community is sparking
yet another cycle of the growth versus no-growth debate that has existed since there
were farms on Central Avenue. This debate, like growth itself, has its cycles¾and the
two cycles are interrelated. When there is a resurgence of new growth, the debate gets
even hotter. As citizens of this community, we appear to be of two minds on this issue.
We want to reap the economic rewards of tourism and a thriving business climate, but
we also want the Valley to stay the way it is and stop growing. Polls show that the vast
majority of Valley citizens want both growth and a safe, clean environment.

The current round in the recurring growth versus no-growth debate has however,
become uglier and less civil. It is not uncommon to have hostile, angry, yelling,
attacking exchanges at public hearings on land use or growth these days. A climate of
fear, hysteria and abusive behavior does not produce rational decisions and
responsible solutions to legitimate concerns about the environment, traffic
congestion, air pollution, infrastructure, adequate public services and other serious
issues. The critical question is not how to stop people and businesses from coming to
the Valley so it can stay the way it is, but rather how do we responsibly plan not only
for the people and businesses who will inevitably come, but also for our own children
as they grow up and need jobs and homes.

Examine Misconceptions To restore the focus on responsible planning, it would be helpful to examine
misconceptions that are fostering fear and impeding reasonable solutions. One
misconception which is rampant today is that the only way to stop growth and save the
desert is to keep all vacant land in the Valley zoned at one-unit per acre or less. Even a
cursory review of aerial photos and studies from across the country makes it obvious
why this is such a false, and indeed insidious notion. Aerial photos of many outlying
rural areas in Maricopa County with scattered home sites on one, five or 20 acres reveal
large areas denuded of vegetation and bladed for horse corrals or other uses, property
fenced in with no preservation of open space, washes, hillsides or public trails... To
insist that the rest of the vacant land in the Valley develop in this manner would lead not
only to more environmental degradation, but also to economic disaster. Sprawling, low
density residential development cannot generate sufficient tax revenues to pay for the
infrastructure, public facilities and services such as schools and law enforcement. The
result is a drain on the financial resources of the cities, counties, and school districts and
even more taxes on businesses and residents in urban development areas.

Many participants in today's debate also misunderstand, or misuse, the term "urban
sprawl." Studies in other states that have faced growth issues have identified sprawl as
development of significantly lower density (i.e. one unit per acre or lower) than typical
metropolitan urban development, which is scattered over the countryside in a manner
that increases dependence on automobile travel, that cannot be efficiently served by
public utilities and other infrastructure systems, and that may threaten environmental
resources. One-unit-per-acre development is widely recognized as an extremely
inefficient land use pattern, as "urban sprawl" that consumes a vastly disproportionate
amount of land to provide for a limited segment of community housing needs. A
balanced approach to these issues begins with acceptance of certain realities and
consensus objectives.
° First, we must accept that people are part of the environment; we should plan for
increases in population and its impact on the demand for housing and services.
° Second, healthy communities need varied housing products to serve all of society.
° Third, it is desirable to have a mix of uses to provide retail services, employment
uses, as well as parks, schools, open space and public facilities. From this
foundation, we can be open to building creative solutions.

No Alternative The alternative is to stick our heads in the sand, while we futilely hold up a stop
sign. Responsible planning is the only real alternative to the deceptively simplistic
slogans of "save the desert" and "stop growth" that are being sold as the equivalent
of motherhood, apple pie, and the American flag by some. We must avoid the
temptation of such easy, short-sighted answers.

An alternate form of development long recognized as beneficial by responsible
planners is the master-planned community model. Recent studies and experience here
and elsewhere indicate that master-planned developments which provide large-scale,
municipal quality infrastructure and a range of residential, commercial, employment,
recreation and open-space uses should be viewed as desirable components of growth
that avoid the negative impacts of sprawl. The success of master planned communities
all over the Valley in attracting residents and in providing responsible solutions for
community needs makes this model an option for continuing the healthy, dynamic
balance of a growing metropolitan area. For subdivisions and other development too
small to be master planned, the general or area plans of local governments can guide
and shape growth to achieve the same purposes.

No community in history has ever achieved a state of blissful homeostasis by bringing
all growth and commerce to a standstill. The Valley will not be the first, and we must
resist the tempting call to accentuate the negative and pursue a no-growth Shangri-La.
Instead, we must struggle together to replace animosity with civility in our dialogue on
the future of our community, to recognize the need to bring balance into the growth
versus no-growth debate and, most of all, to plan responsibly for generations to come.

80 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response
Smart Growth Takes Off
Neal R. Peirce, © Washington Post Writers Group

State Responses To Urban Growth: Lessons for Arizona
John M. DeGrove, Director, Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems
Florida Atlantic University/ Florida International University

Growing Smarter in Arizona
Steve Betts, Attorney, Gallagher & Kennedy

Initiative Gives Voters Control Over Growth
David S. Baron, Assistant Director, Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest

Growing Smarter in Arizona: The Northern Arizona Experience
Paul J. Babbitt, Member, Coconino County Board of Supervisors

SprawlÑ As Development Continues to Consume land, a Few Places are Experimenting with Alternatives to Uncontrolled Growth

Philip Langdon, © Builder
The Growth Management Challenge in Arizona
David R. Berman, Professor of Political Science, Arizona State University

Arizona Must Recognize Limitations as it Grows
Sharon Megdal, President, MegEcon Consulting

From Rural to Suburban: Five Regions in Greater Arizona
Tanis J. Salant, Director of Government Programs, University of Arizona

Losing Ground: Land Fragmentation in Rural Arizona
James P. Walsh, Lawyer

Historic Preservation Rebuilds Communities
Roger A. Brevoort, Director of Historic Preservation, van Dijk Pace Westlake Architects

Growth Focuses Attention on Infrastructure, Public Safety, and Community
Norm Hicks, Mayor, City of Bullhead City

Valley Vision 2025: A Plan for the Next Generation
James M. Bourey, Executive Director, Maricopa Association of Governments

Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 83

Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response
Smart Growth Takes Off Neal R. Peirce
©1997 Washington Post Writers Group, December 14, 1997

Reprinted with permission.

Hear this from a leading American developer: "We've grown outward for 50 years;
now it's time for a turnaround. Growth is inevitable and necessary. But left unattended
it will wreak havoc on our environment and civilization."

The speaker, at a national "Smart Growth" conference in Baltimore in early December,
was James Chaffin, widely respected for such developments as Snowmass Village in
Colorado and Spring Island in South Carolina. He's the new president of the Urban
Land Institute, premier organization of the U. S. development industry.

Chaffin is steering the ULI to focus on issues most developers and home builders
historically ignored or left to the politicians¾restoring community and vitality to inner
cities and their neighborhoods, recovering industrial brownfields, transit-oriented
development, and metropolitan-wide cooperation to reduce fiscal disparities between
rich and poor areas.

"Smart growth," said William McDonough, dean of the University of Virginia School of
Architecture, is the most important new planning and development strategy for the
American landscape in several decades. It's desperately needed, he said, to offset today's
"strategy of tragedy," the random scattering of disconnected real estate developments
with no thought to what they mean for the environment or human community.

Gov. Parris Glendening, author of a pioneering "Smart Growth" initiative that's
focusing Maryland state aid on existing cities and towns while denying funds for
exurban roads, sewers or schools, said the goal is not "no growth" or even "slow
growth." Rather, said Glendening, the goal is "sensible growth that balances our need
for jobs and economic development with our desire to save our natural environment
before it is forever lost."

ULI agreed to cosponsor the Baltimore conference with the developers' sometimes
nemesis the Environmental Protection Agency. Last year EPA Administrator Carol
Browner, in what looked like a politically risky move, founded within her own agency
a "Smart Growth Network" to unite and inform anti-sprawl advocates nationwide. The
effort could easily have raised the ire of a Republican Congress fixated on free
enterprise and private property rights.

But by the time the Baltimore conference convened Dec. 3, the "smart growth" concept
was getting political legs. An impressive 750 people came from across the U. S.Ñ
roughly a third from government, a third from environmental groups and non-profits,
and a third developers and home builders looking for some alternative from current
patterns of far-flung, land-consumptive development.
And the conference's cosponsors hardly looked like a radical group. Among them: the
Bank of America, the National Assn. of Realtors, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the
National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Assn. of Counties, the Congress
for the New Urbanism, and two heavyweights of the great American construction
machine¾the American Public Works Assn. and the American Assn. of State Highway
Transportation Officials.

Most fascinating of all, though, may be the EPA-ULI alliance. Twenty years ago, EPA
flirted with an anti-sprawl policy initiative and then dropped it like a hot potato.
Environmentalists got into a tight regulatory mood, focused on air, water and toxics. As
for the ULI's developers, they built subdivisions and malls but rarely thought much
about true community as town and city builders had in all of earlier history.

The new alliance, finally, brings each camp back to a focus on land and human
settlement. And at a propitious time: endless subsidy moneys for redundant suburban
infrastructure are giving out; road traffic is swelling far beyond our capacity to site or
pay for thousands of new freeway lanes. The old approaches are starting to self-destruct;
new solutions are imperative.

Smart growth won't be easy: it will demand ingenious ways to revive troubled
communities, reclaim brownfields, remake cheap commercial strips, and forge regional
alliances to help poorer communities. And no one kids themselves: many local
officials, builders, highway zealots will want to stick to narrow self-interested ways.

But if you're interested, the Smart Growth Network just opened individual
memberships. (For information check www.smargrowth.org or call Noah Simon,
International City/ County Management Assn. 202-962-3591, or Harriet Tregoning,
EPA¾ 202-260-2750.)

Clearly, this is a movement that will only succeed by unconventional learning. Famed
New Urbanist architect Andres Duany, for example, reminded the Baltimore conferees
that suburban development had raised standards of retailing, merchandising, crime and
litter control. Older cities and suburbs, he argued, can't fall back on the informal,
haphazard techniques of yesteryear. Rejecting suburban developers' wasteful land
techniques is appropriate; rejecting their improved techniques would be foolishly
shortsighted.

Rigid environmental regulations will be playing less of a role and smart growth
coalitions will be increasingly needed, said Conservation Fund chairman Patrick
Noonan. And all parties need to widen their horizons, he said¾developers learning
about recycling difficult land sites, for example, and environmentalists learning about
efficient use of capital.

We'll have to be a lot smarter, in short, to make smart growth work.

Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response
Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 85

State Responses To Urban Growth: Lessons for Arizona

John M. DeGrove, Ph. D.
Director, Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems
Florida Atlantic University/ Florida International University

States' efforts to manage growth date from the early 1970s and coincide with the
development of the environmental movement. Before then states generally relied on
local governments for whatever planning and regulation took place. Typically, local
governments had few planning, zoning, or other tools to guide development in their
communities. This permissive approach began to change in the 1960s as environmental
and other citizen groups, alarmed at what they considered unholy alliances between
"rape, ruin, and run" developers and indifferent or compliant local governments, started
to demand new systems for land use decision making. Since the groups wanting a
different approach to land use planning tended to distrust local governments, they often
supported a major role for state and regional authorities in land use decisions,
especially for those that were perceived to have an impact beyond a specific area.

Growth Management: Phase 1

The environmental concerns that drove the development of what became state growth
management systems varied from state to state, but all had a significant concern for
natural systems. For example, Hawaii's 1961 land use law focused on protecting and
assuring the full utilization of the state's prime agricultural lands. Adecade later, as
Hawaii struggled to implement its system fully, other states began to adopt tools to
oversee some local land use decisions.

Between 1970 and 1978 phase one of the evolution of growth management systems
took place with legislation in a number of states. These included:

° Vermont, 1970
° California (for coastal areas only), 1971
° Florida (statewide, but selective), 1972
° Oregon (the most comprehensive), 1973
° Colorado, 1974
° North Carolina (for coastal areas), 1974
° Hawaii (building on 1961's law), 1978

Like Colorado, the Hawaii system has been weakened steadily, and in 1998 the
legislature was under renewed assault by hostile public and private interests. Neither
Hawaii nor Colorado can be classified as having a comprehensive system now.

Growth Management: Phase Two The second phase of growth management development built upon earlier efforts, but it
was significantly different from the first strategies. Arising tide of frustration and
concern with inadequate infrastructure, especially roads, motivated the initiatives of the
1980s. However as the politically volatile 1990s began, a resurgent concern for natural
systems returned environmental issues to the top of the public policy agenda in those
states that adopted growth management systems.

Phase Two includes states that reshaped growth management programs to address the
concerns of the late 1980s and the 1990s, and others who moved to adopt state
planning and growth management systems for the first time. Florida (1985) and
Vermont (1988) went back to the drawing board to strengthen their systems. New
Jersey (1986), Rhode Island, Maine (1988), Georgia (1989), Washington, (1990 and
1991), and Maryland (1992 and 1997) adopted comprehensive systems for the first
time. Oregon continued the implementation of its system, but it came under attack by a
hostile legislature in the mid-1990s. Other states considered the passage of growth
strategies between 1988-1998, including Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and Minnesota. Only Minnesota managed to pass a law in 1997 that set the stage for a
state land use framework. However, the 1998 Minnesota legislature did not carry out
the scheduled strengthening of the statute, and the future will depend on support of the
governor to be elected in 1998 and the continued consensus building by 1000 Friends
of Minnesota.

Common Characteristics of Growth Management Systems

The growth management systems that have evolved over recent decades vary widely,
but there are some common threads.
Consistency
Beginning with Oregon in 1973, consistency has been one of the common threads
among states' systems. It is through the consistency requirement that the roles and
responsibilities of state, regional, and local levels are defined. Typically a set of state
goals and policies is articulated to frame the new system. Then, state agency plans,
regional plans where appropriate, and local plans must be made to be consistent with
the state goals. Sometimes the mandate for consistency is absolute, as in Oregon,
Florida, and Rhode Island. In other states, such as Georgia and Maryland, the
consistency requirement is less direct, but involves a system of incentives and
disincentives that go far to assure that the new local or regional plans will be in line
with the state framework. There is often some uncertainty as to whether the consistency
concept will be fully applied. For example, bringing state agency functional plans
completely into the system has proven to be especially difficult.

The consistency requirement also involves implementing regulations, and it is through
these that the growth governance system is tilted toward a larger role for the state and
often the regional level. Whether this undermines local governments' authority is a
much debated point. However, evidence suggests that a new state/ local partnership can
actually strengthen the authority of individual local governments.
The consistency requirement also underscores the breadth of the second generation of
state growth strategies. While growth management systems do vary, they all address
concurrency, compact urban growth patterns, affordable housing, natural resource
protection, and economic development to some degree.

Concurrency
The proposition that infrastructure for growth should be "concurrent" with its impacts
is the application of common sense and sound fiscal policy to planning and
development. It has also proved to be very difficult to carry out, even with a clear-cut
requirement. Florida and Washington have strong requirements for concurrency. Other
state concurrency requirements are less absolute, but they all attempt to estimate
present infrastructure needs and to meet the needs of new development over some time
period, often 20 years. The numbers that emerge from this effort typically show the
need for new revenues to close the gap between infrastructure requirements and
existing resources. Solving this typically multi-billion dollar puzzle has been extremely
painful, but the concept is taking deep root across the nation. The evidence is strong
that failure to keep up with the infrastructure demands of growth leads to unsustainable
economic and environmental systems.

Compact Urban Growth Patterns
Efforts to promote "livable" communities as an alternative to unplanned sprawl appear
in every state that has adopted a managed growth system, and seem especially
important to Arizona. Failure to promote alternatives to single occupancy vehicles to
contain sprawl seems sure to destroy much of the Sonoran desert and other landscapes
in Arizona.

State strategies to address sprawl and promote more sustainable patterns range from
regulatory systems (Oregon) to incentives and disincentives (Georgia and Maryland) to
a mix of the two. Even stringent regulatory systems must include some incentives and
disincentives to assure success over the long haul. The resurgence of support for
combating sprawl is closely linked to a clear recognition of its fiscal impact in addition
to environmental and social costs. Researchers, including Robert Burchell, are
comparing the costs of infrastructure needed for sprawl development and for the more
compact communities that are beginning to appear in increasing numbers across the
nation. These "people" and "environment" friendly communities, often identified with
the "new urbanism" represent a choice in urban growth patterns that deserves close
attention from Arizonans.

Protection of Natural Systems
The protection and wise utilization of important natural systems is the other side of the
compact development/ anti-sprawl concept. Sprawl development patterns consume
large amounts of land per capita, needlessly sacrificing a range of natural systems.
The belief that environmental protection would take a back seat to such issues as
transportation was much discussed and believed by many in the mid-1980s. But, the
public's concern for the environment has assured natural resource protection a
prominent place on the growth management agenda. It should be stressed that the
strong support by Arizona's citizens illustrated by opinion polls, and some willingness
to support funding to purchase natural systems, may be the key to Arizona finding a
way to grow in a sustainable fashion without adopting a state land use law with urban
growth boundaries.

Economic Development
The importance of economic development to growth management/ smart growth came
into focus in two states that developed their systems during the early 1990s recession.
Washington and Maryland placed major emphasis on economic development as a goal
and provided policies and funding for implementation. Even fast growth states such as
Arizona have some areas that need economic development, in addition to
redevelopment and infill to revive urban areas that have declined in the face of sprawl.

Affordable Housing
Growth management systems often are accused of driving up the cost of housing. The
facts often do not support that charge, as we will see from the examples of Oregon and
Florida. Certainly no growth management/ smart growth system can claim to be in the
best interest of a state or region if it does not provide for affordable housing.

Growth Management Experiences in Oregon, Florida, Washington, and Maryland Oregon
Oregon's experience with SB100, the state land use law adopted in 1973 which
required all urban areas to establish urban growth boundaries, and with the Portland
Metro Region contains important lessons for Arizona. One is the successful effort to
build and sustain broad-based support for land use planning and implementation
statewide. While this effort has been led by 1000 Friends of Oregon, it includes groups
that typically oppose land use regulation such as the Oregon Farm Bureau, many local
farm bureaus, Oregon Forestry Council, and homebuilder groups. Even more directly
related to Arizona has been the extensive outreach effort in the Portland region guided
by Portland Metro, the only elected regional government in the nation. The move to
develop and implement a 50-year urban growth strategy, Vision 2040, led to an
extensive effort to build support for infill, redevelopment, and development along
public transportation corridors. This has resulted in a growth strategy that has public,
state agency, and local government support at the implementation stage.

The significance of Oregon's experience for Arizona focuses on the challenge of

developing strategies for public transportation, land use, and air quality for the Tucson
and Phoenix regions where current development patterns threaten the economic and
environmental future of all of Arizona. Efforts to build support among residents to
reverse sprawl patterns through well designed development in designated areas and
along transit lines, combined with a large network of open spaces and a strong
jobs/ housing strategy, all have major significance for the booming Phoenix and
Tucson regions.

Florida
While Florida's growth management system includes the components of a
comprehensive system, the state's record of implementing that system is mixed. The
failure to sustain funding for the concurrency requirement is particularly negative. That
failure, in turn, has made it harder to reverse sprawl development patterns, a
shortcoming with which the Florida system is still struggling. Florida's success in
funding acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands and earmarking dollars for
affordable housing however offers positive lessons for Arizona.

Florida's funding to protect vital lands started in 1972 with the first effort to establish a
comprehensive growth strategy. Voters approved a constitutional amendment calling
for a $200 million Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) program supplemented
by a $40 million outdoor recreation land purchase program. In 1979 the successor to
the EEL program, the Conservation and Recreation Lands (CARL) program, was
established, with earmarked funding first from severance taxes and later from
documentary stamp taxes. ASave Our Rivers program was established in 1982 and
administered through the state's five water management districts. A1990 opinion poll
showed that 88% of Floridians believed that the state should give more attention to the
environment, and 63% favored spending more money on environmental protection. In
that year, the legislature approved Preservation 2000, the most generously funded
environmental land acquisition program in the nation, including the federal
government. Preservation 2000 commits the legislature to provide funding annually to
support a $300 million bond issue. In spite of a major recession and a legislature
increasingly hostile to government programs, the needed funding has been provided
every year. The next bonds will bring the total for the decade to $3 billion, with another
$1 billion from the CARL and Save Our Rivers programs, or a total of $4 billion over
the decade. The Preservation 2000 funds are channeled largely to the land accession
programs described above. Almost 1,000,000 acres of land have been acquired through
the program by 1998, and matching funds acquired from local governments for some
of the program's components had leveraged almost another $1 billion by counties and
cities that had issued their own voter approved bonds.

Why is all of this significant to Arizona? My impression is that the citizens of Arizona
and Florida share a strong interest in preserving and protecting unique

environmentally sensitive open spaces. The potential for an integrated, large-scale
program for Maricopa County and the Tucson region seems very good. If Arizona
then moves to encourage moderate density mixed use communities and a sufficient,
integrated public transit system, Florida's earmarked funding program for affordable
housing could be a significant model for Arizona. In 1992, Florida passed the
Sadowski Affordable Housing Act, which provides 20 cents on each hundred dollars
of the real estate transfer tax for affordable housing programs. These funds now yield
more than $200,000 annually, and are leveraged significantly in carrying out the
program. Two-thirds of the dollars go to local governments, and the other third is
administered at the state level.

Washington
If Oregon and Florida can be described as more "top down" than "bottom up,"
Washington's growth management system constitutes a creative mix of the two.
Enacted in two separate but closely related statutes in 1990 (HB2929) and 1991
(HB1025), a system has emerged that relies heavily on incentives and disincentives to
achieve its goals. A partnership with the federal Department of Transportation dictates
that virtually all federal and state transportation funds must be used for projects that
meet the goals, policies, and objectives of the state's growth management system. As in
Oregon, the marriage of transportation and land use to support desired development
patterns inside designated urban service areas (Washington's equivalent of growth
boundaries) and limit invasion of natural areas is at the heart of systems. The system
has been given added substance by regional hearing boards appointed by the governor.

For Arizona, the success of the Puget Sound Regional Council in addressing regional
issues represents a significant experience for those who are encouraging new
approaches to growth. Whether the Washington system can produce a sustainable
region in the face of very substantial growth pressures that are projected to continue
into the next century remains to be seen. These factors will help create livable urban
communities that are well designed, compact, and linked by public transportation
systems. If this system succeeds over time, there is much to interest Arizona, assuming
that policy choices are made that depart even modestly from the laissez-faire approach
to managing growth that has characterized Arizona to date.

Maryland
The significance of Maryland's attempt to manage its growth lies in the effort to protect
a nationally significant resource, Chesapeake Bay, from pollution. The Chesapeake
Bay is much prized by the citizens of Maryland, just as the unique Sonoran Desert is
prized by the citizens of Arizona. States have been slow to put effective systems in
place because of the fierce resistance by local governments and agricultural and
development interests to any meaningful regional or state land use controls.

Sprawl patterns of development in Maryland are generating pollution that threatened
the short and long-term survival of the Bay as a resource necessary to the
environmental and economic health of the region. Maryland's facing up to the fact that
the ambitious goals of the Economic Development, Resource Protection and Planning
Act of 1992 probably could not be implemented without significant changes led to the
1997 passage of Governor Glendening's Smart Growth Initiatives. Maryland's
extensive outreach effort and the governor's strong support resulted in a system that
relies heavily on state agency support to draw most development into designated
areas. Local governments are not required to play the game, but state funds in
education, transportation, housing, economic development, and other areas will go to
those that meet the priority funding criteria. The governor has issued an Executive
Order that reinforces his determination to channel state funding only into priority
funding areas. The effort tip-toes around the home rule issue by not mandating that
local governments participate.

The initiative was led by the Governor who communicated the damage being done by
unplanned sprawl to the natural and urban areas in Maryland. The Smart
Growth/ Priority Funding Areas program can be by-passed by local governments, but
assuming Governor Glendening is re-elected and commits substantial political capital
to implementing the system, it may succeed in containing sprawl and building
sustainable communities without a "top down" system. Can Arizona's citizens continue
to document the damage to natural and urban systems and thus put in place a Smart
Growth System for Arizona? Support for such a move seems to be building in the state.

Arizona's Growth Management Challenge for Sustainability

Arizona's challenges are so substantial that some movement in the direction of a pro-active
approach to massive growth is very likely in the near future. Consider that
Arizona started the century with 123,000 people; expanded to 500,000 by 1940; in the
post-WWII period grew to 1.3 million by 1960; and topped 4.2 million by 1995. The
growth projections, both in sheer numbers and location, are stunning with more than 7
million expected by 2020.

The location of that growth is awesome. Much of the current population, and the
projected growth, is concentrated in just two counties, Maricopa and Pima. These
massive growth pressures would be difficult to manage with the best state and regional
planning/ land use/ growth management/ smart growth system, and clearly Arizona does
not fit into that category. So what can be done to deal with such growth pressures so as
to have a sustainable Arizona in the decades ahead? The definition from the President's
Council on Sustainable Development provides some clues to how to begin the
movement from growing "dumb" to growing "smart." Whether or not the Citizens
Growth Management Initiative will be revived in 2000, the Growing Smarter proposal
that will be on the ballot in 1998 may well do more harm than good if passed.

"Sustainable" Defined "

A Sustainable United States will have a growing economy that provides equitable
opportunities for satisfying livelihoods and a safe, healthy, high quality of life for
current and future generations. Our Nation (state) will protect the environment, its
natural resource base, and the functions and viability of Natural Systems on which
all life depends."

Source: Sustainable America: A New Consensus
Final Report of the President's Council on Sustainable Development February 1996

Short of major new smart growth initiatives via the ballot or otherwise, there are steps
that can be taken that will amount to win-win outcomes for all the key stakeholders in
Arizona: developers; environmentalists; local governments; state agencies; federal
agencies, and others.

Protect Desert Areas The first step involves protecting your unique desert arroyos, washes, hillsides, boulder
fields, desert spaces, and related open space areas.
Plans aimed at protecting these areas are plentiful, but an integrated approach that joins
efforts of all the relevant actors in the Maricopa and Pima regions has not moved to the
implementation stage. Finding the funding and coordinating the efforts first in the
major growth regions and then statewide are the challenges. There are some limited
success stories, such as 34 wash areas protected in Tucson by city ordinance and
Scottsdale's Environmentally Sensitive Lands ordinance, which use incentives and
density transfers to encourage landowners and developers to participate. Even more
significant is Scottsdale's voter approval to purchase some 4,000 acres for the
McDowell Mountain Preserve using an increase in sales tax.

Fund Land Preservation Of all the open space approaches however, the two most significant are the Maricopa
Association of Governments (MAG) Desert Spaces Plan proposed in 1995 and the
Arizona Preserve Initiative. The MAG plan would create a regionwide network of
protected washes, canals, scenic roads, cultural parks, and other open spaces. The key
to the success of this proposal is to achieve coordination between local governments
and state and federal agencies to create interconnected open space resources that cross
jurisdictional boundaries. Can funding be found to implement such a broad scale
protection effort? Every citizen survey gives a resounding "yes" to this question,
although defenders of the status quo argue otherwise. It will take a major public
outreach effort, and the dollars involved are large…billions, not millions as in the
current Growing Smarter proposal. The payoff in providing a network of
environmentally sensitive open spaces is equally large. In work with MAG's Blue
Ribbon Committee, I saw real support from local governments, citizens, and

developers for such an approach.
A statewide effort with great promise that died aborning deserves to be revived. Former
Governor Symington's Arizona Preserve Initiative, put forward in December 1995,
would have provided funding for preserving 700,000 acres of state lands, including
33,745 acres in the Tortolita Mountains northwest of Tucson, another 57,750 acres in the
Boboquivari Mountains, southwest of Tucson, and 85,000 acres in Maricopa County. A
key component of the proposed legislation would have given the State Land Department
authority to classify Trust Lands as environmentally sensitive for future conservation and
to lease land for preservation as an alternative to requiring their sale or lease for the
traditional maximum benefit. This landmark legislative proposal had other elements that
were important to a sustainable future for Arizona. It could go far toward putting in place
the integrated open spaces that could be extensive enough to establish de facto urban
limit lines in the highest growth areas in the state. Its rough rejection by the legislature
should not discourage advocates of a sustainable future for Arizona from regrouping to
build support for such a measure at the earliest possible time.

Create New Development Models

The second proposal goes directly to modifying the sprawl patterns of development
that to date have dominated Arizona's growth. Unmanaged sprawl in the face of the
population growth anticipated over the next several decades will not yield a sustainable
future for Arizona, either for your environment or your economy. Recent work
contrasting the fiscal cost of providing the infrastructure for sprawl development
patterns, much more rigorous in methodology than anything previously available,
documents the high fiscal cost of sprawl. Examples of these assessments include a
number of studies by Robert Burchell and his colleagues at Rutgers University, a 1995
study published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy edited by Dwight Young and
titled Alternatives to Sprawl and a landmark 1995 study in California titled Beyond
Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California, a joint venture by Bank of
America, the California Resources Agency, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Low Income
Housing Fund. The message is that sprawl is costly and that it picks the pocket of
taxpayers to favor developers providing unplanned development at the urban fringe.

I recognize that sprawl is a fact of life in Arizona, California, and most other states.
What can be done in Arizona to change the present predominant development patterns?

Create Choices for Arizonans

First, fully fund and implement the network of open spaces called for above. That
done, Arizona needs to address the issue of how to create choices to sprawl in your
development landscape. Afully developed plan for what I have in mind is the Civano
project in Tucson. As proposed, this project illustrates all the best elements of the "New
Urbanism" school of development. Its projected 5,000 population on 820 acres of State

Trust Land illustrates moderate densities designed as an integrated small town
environment where commercial, cultural, and civic activities are clustered. A
jobs/ housing balance, affordable housing, pedestrian-friendly environment, state-of-the-
art water conservation, and more make Civano a good model for alternatives to
sprawl. Can it be done without a "command and control" state land use system? That
remains to be seen, but many more places like Civano are needed to provide choices to
the present predominant sprawl development pattern. Acreative set of public sector
incentives that allows public/ private partnerships will have to be part of the picture.

The kinds of policy options advocated here can become a reality as Arizona grows into
the next century. Nothing less than the environmental and economic health of the state
is at stake. The cost of doing little or nothing to change development patterns and
protect open space will be far greater than the admittedly substantial costs of
implementing these recommendations.

94 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Growing Smarter in Arizona

Steve Betts
Attorney, Gallagher & Kennedy

Growth has been an intensely debated topic in Arizona for a long time. Realizing the
need for a proactive, balanced program that manages Arizona's explosive growth
without stifling our vibrant economy, Governor Jane Hull and community, business,
and government leaders joined together to develop an appropriate answer for Arizona.
The governor convened a series of meetings among legislators, state and local officials,
environmentalists, land use planners, citizens, and community and business leaders.
The result of these events was a program known as Growing Smarter which the
Arizona Legislature passed in May 1998. The Growing Smarter Act is a landmark
piece of growth management legislation for Arizona. It particularly strengthens
community planning and addresses residents' desire for the preservation of open space.

Specifically, Growing Smarter includes:
° reforming the planning and rezoning processes in cities, towns and counties by
adding new elements to community plans and requiring conformity of
rezonings to such plans
° increasing public participation and requiring a supermajority vote for the
adoption and amendment of community plans
° improving the coordination of State Trust Land planning with community planning
° providing $220 million in matching funds over 11 years for the purchase of
open space
° establishing a study commission to develop consensus on a comprehensive
long-term growth management strategy for Arizona.

Planning Documents Cities prepare "general plans" for their municipalities.
Counties prepare "comprehensive plans" for unincorporated areas.
Strengthens Urban Planning In our state, municipal, and county general and comprehensive plans were designed to
serve as guides to future development. Unfortunately these documents have had no
"teeth" for enforcement, consideration of growth impacts, or coordination with State
Trust Land plans. The Growing Smarter Act amends Arizona's statutes to make local
plans more effective through the following requirements.

General/ Comprehensive Plan Conformity
The act assures the public that community general/ comprehensive plans will be much
stronger than in the past. Plans must be adopted every ten years after mandatory public
participation processes. Any rezoning request must conform to the applicable

community's general/ comprehensive plan or a plan amendment must be approved by a
two-thirds supermajority vote of the city council or county board of supervisors.
Growing Smarter clearly provides for referring the adoption of general/ comprehensive
plans and plan amendments to the voters. Communities and counties are required to
bring their general and comprehensive plans into compliance with the new planning
reforms by 2001.

Open Space Planning
In general and comprehensive plans, cities, towns, and counties must inventory and
analyze the community's open space opportunities and needs. Then, they must create
policies and strategies to promote a regional system of integrated open space and
recreational resources.

Planning for Mixed Uses
Local governments are directed to identify growth areas suitable for future expenditures
of public transportation and infrastructure funds in their plans. This provision of
Growing Smarter is designed to support a planned concentration of mixed uses and
integrated open space areas.

Environmental Planning
General/ comprehensive plans must contain communitywide policies and strategies to
address the environmental effects associated with future development.

Cost of Development
New development is required to pay its fair share toward the cost of additional public
facilities and services needed to support the project. The general/ comprehensive plans
now must include specific strategies to ensure that the costs of development are shared
fairly by all in the community.

State Trust Land Plans
The State Land Department is one of the most important players in Arizona's growth.
The State Land Department must now create conceptual land use plans (including open
space area planning) which are coordinated with general and comprehensive plans. The
legislation also requires the department to produce annual projected five-year
disposition/ development plans for all Trust Lands within urban areas. An oversight
committee for the State Land Department, appointed by the Governor, will review
these plans and their coordination with local entities.

Acquisition/ Preservation of Open Spaces

The preservation of meaningful open spaces in urban and rural areas is often the
overriding concern among citizens who are frustrated by rapid growth. Although many
communities have demonstrated a willingness in the past to pay for the acquisition of

(i. e., the Phoenix Mountain Preserve and the McDowell Mountains in
Scottsdale), increased land prices and fiscal constraints have greatly restricted these
programs. The Growing Smarter Act addresses the funding of open space through the
creation of a multi-million dollar fund.

Long-Term Open Space Acquisition Matching Funds
Growing Smarter refers to the November 1998 ballot the question of whether $20
million in state general fund revenues should be appropriated to the State Parks
Department's public conservation account each year for 11 years. These state funds
would then be matched with other local governmental or private funds to purchase or
lease State Trust Lands, or their development rights, through the Arizona Preserve
Initiative (API) program. In order to retain open space areas or enhance wildlife habitat
or natural resources on State Trust Lands or other lands, the purchase of development
rights or crop/ grazing rights is possible under certain circumstances.

State Land Open Space Dedications

Some State Lands statutes are changed to merge the API program with the State Land
Department's development disposition program to provide for the purchase and
dedication of open space areas as part of the development of planned communities on
State Lands.

Growing Smarter Study Commission

The legislation creates a 15-member Growing Smarter Commission with representatives
of many interest groups appointed by the Governor and the Legislature to study growth
problems and solutions from both urban and rural perspectives and report to the
Governor and the Legislature by September 1, 1999. A Governor-appointed advisory
committee made up of experts in various fields complements the commission. The
Growing Smarter Commission will explore the following areas in particular.

Broader State Land Department Mandate
Changes to the State Trust mandate that requires the land to generate the greatest
amount possible for schools and other beneficiaries may permit some of these lands to
be set aside for long-term conservation. Development disposition credits and transfers
are two options the commission will study to allow greater leeway with Trust Lands.

Land Exchange Authority
Arizona's Constitution would have to be amended to permit land exchanges between
the State Land Department and federal or local governmental agencies to conserve
sensitive lands or create meaningful open spaces. This option will be explored by the
commission as will permitting land exchanges by the State Land Department with
private landowners where appraisals show equal value and the trade is in the best
interest of the Trust.

Reform Local Land Use Statutes
Reforms and amendments to municipal and county planning, zoning, and land division
statutes will be considered to promote a more sensitive and rational development of
land.

Development Rights and Conservation Easements
State programs or incentives for the purchase of development rights and conservation
easements on agricultural or ranch lands will be explored.

Regional Planning
Ways to make regional planning laws and procedures more effective will be a part of
the commission's work.

Urban and Rural Growth Patterns
The current patterns of urban and rural growth have positive and negative effects on
Arizona's communities. The commission will explore alternative planning and growth
management techniques and tools and analyze the need to modify state statutes
governing the financing of municipal and county infrastructure and services. The
effectiveness of current growth management systems will be assessed.

Infill Incentives
Incentives to encourage infill and redevelopment of land in designated areas could help
strengthen the tax base of areas that already have public services and infrastructure. The
commission will look at incentive programs and their applicability for Arizona.

Rural Economic Policies
The situations of urban and rural communities in Arizona often differ markedly. The
commission will look at state and local policies that could improve the economic
viability of traditional rural land uses and increase rural economic development.

The Growing Smarter Act will make a difference in Arizona's future because as
Governor Hull said, "It is clearly an Arizona solution to an Arizona challenge."¹

Notes
1 "Governor Celebrates the Passage of Growing Smarter," News Release, June 12, 1998.

98 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Initiative Gives Voters Control Over Growth

David S. Baron
Assistant Director, Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest

Arizonans are right to be alarmed about the way our state is growing. By some
estimates, development is chewing up the desert at the rate of an acre an hour. Phoenix
now occupies more land than Los Angeles, and the population is doubling every 20
years. In 1997 almost 32,000 building permits were issued in the Valley alone, a
construction binge unprecedented in our history.

All of this is destroying our natural heritage and quality of life. Scientists say that
urbanization is the number one threat to biodiversity in the Sonoran desert. Air quality
is suffering, with Phoenix rated "serious" for three different air pollutants and brown
haze enveloping large parts of the state. There are economic consequences as well.
Sprawl is costing taxpayers billions of dollars for new roads, schools, water lines, and
other facilities to serve distant new development.

Unfortunately, elected officials are unable or unwilling to address the problem. Instead
of thoughtfully managing growth, they constantly change plans and zoning in
response to developers' requests. There is no self-discipline and no overall vision for
how our cities should grow. As a result, we have massive new subdivisions being
approved miles from existing urban centers with no thought given to the taxpayer
costs and environmental damage.

It's time for change, and at long last a serious alternative is on the table. A group of
concerned citizens has developed a statewide urban growth management initiative that
is now planned for the year 2000. The Citizens Growth Management Act (CGMA)
would require cities and counties to adopt legally binding growth management plans
within two years of enactment. The plans would set urban growth boundaries outside
of which "up zonings" and new water and sewer service would be limited. A major
goal is to protect natural areas, wildlife habitats, and scenic vistas.

Plans would also require developers to pay the full cost of new roads, schools, and
other facilities to serve their developments. Each community would decide how to
calculate these costs, but in the end, development would have to pay for itself. In
addition, plans would contain provisions to:

° protect air and water quality
° safeguard neighborhoods, natural open space, and environmental values within
growth boundaries
° ensure that new road proposals are evaluated for urban growth impacts.

A key requirement of CGMA is that plans and major amendments be approved by the
voters. This would give local residents ultimate control over how their communities
grow. It would also give the planning process the credibility it needs to work. It would
represent a true community consensus on growth, and provide far greater stability and
certainty than the current system. Exceptions of up to 20 acres would be allowed
without voter approval on a four-fifths vote of the governing body. The grounds for
such exceptions would have to be laid out in the plan.

CGMA would also give cities and counties greater power to regulate subdivision
development. Lot splits of four or more would become subject to subdivision
regulations, and local governments could regulate even smaller lot splits if they choose
to do so. The creation of 36-acre "ranchettes" would no longer be exempt¾the
threshold would be raised to 160 acres. These provisions would go a long way toward
curbing wildcat subdivisions, rural sprawl, and the "ranchettification" of outlying areas.
The State Land Department would be required to comply with local land use plans to
the maximum extent allowed by the Arizona Constitution and Enabling Act.

This is not a no-growth or even a slow growth proposal. It is a proposal for managed
growth, with a substantial dose of voter control. We can continue to grow, but we have
to do so in a manner that respects our natural heritage and does not require taxpayers to
subsidize sprawl. CGMA is also sensitive to private property rights. It contains explicit
provisions protecting existing uses and barring actions that would amount to a taking.

The developers are predictably claiming that growth boundaries will make housing
unaffordable. Experience has shown, however, that sprawl does not make housing
affordable. Los Angeles has some of the worst sprawl in the world, and its housing
costs are among the highest in the world. In Portland, Oregon, which has a growth
boundary, housing costs are below the median for the West. According to Coldwell
Banker's Home Price Comparison Index, a house in Portland costs only about one
percent more than a comparable house in Phoenix. The Portland experience also
shows that growth management is good for business. Portland is a vibrant, thriving
community because it has worked on improving established areas of town rather than
spending millions to promote sprawl.

In the spring of 1998, the Arizona Legislature passed the Governor's "smart" growth
proposal in an attempt to head off the citizens' initiative. "Growing Smarter" was
written largely by developer lobbyists and is more of a developer protection act than a
growth management program. It does nothing to limit sprawl, does not require full
cost impact fees from developers, and continues existing curbs on local power to
regulate subdivisions. It requires a two-thirds vote of the governing body to decrease
intensity of development or delete planned road projects. It prohibits local
governments from requiring site-specific environmental reviews. And it requires the

State Land Department to prepare development plans for all urban lands in the state, a
step that may actually speed up growth.

Growing Smarter also requires a two-thirds vote of the governing body to adopt or
amend land use plans. Although this may make amendments a little harder in the
larger cities and counties, it will have no effect in rural counties with only three
supervisors. Moreover, there is little to prevent plans from being riddled with
exceptions, or from being written in such vague and general terms as to circumvent
the need for amendment.

The portion of Growing Smarter being referred to the ballot is even more
questionable. It is being touted by its proponents as a $20 million per year program to
buy state lands for conservation. But the proposal would also prohibit the state from
ever requiring local growth management plans containing mandatory impact fees; air
and water quality controls; environmental impact reviews of new roads; or growth
boundaries (even informal ones) as part of growth management plans. This effectively
bans a wide range of planning tools that are recognized by professionals as legitimate
growth management options. It makes a mockery of promises by Growing Smarter's
sponsors that they will objectively study growth management options over the next
two years. Further, it represents a cynical attempt to manipulate the voters by telling
them that they have to reject effective growth management if they want money for
open space.

The smart growth bill shows once again that we cannot rely on the political
establishment to adopt effective growth management programs. The driving force for
serious growth management will have to come from the people. This is why the
Citizens Growth Management initiative deserves everyone's strong support.

Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 101

Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response

Growing Smarter in Arizona: The Northern Arizona Experience

Paul J. Babbitt
Member, Coconino County Board of Supervisors

Uncontrolled and irresponsible growth is perhaps the greatest problem faced by state
and local governments today. As many communities in the West sprawl outwards with
little regard for planning, quality of life suffers and urban infrastructure becomes
difficult to sustain. Recent efforts by citizens and the Arizona Legislature have sought
to alter the way in which communities plan for growth by providing a framework for
responsible, managed growth that can continue well into the 21st century.

Although the issue of growth management in Arizona most often refers to Phoenix
and its neighboring communities, growth is of no less concern in northern Arizona,
especially in the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County. However, unlike our
neighbors to the south, growth management has, for the most part, been an integral
part of city and county planning efforts. Because of northern Arizona's natural
aesthetic and cultural value and its relatively small population, the region tends to be
more sensitive to growth and, as a result, has embraced the practice of planning for
responsible growth to a greater extent than have many other Arizona communities.

In June 1998, Governor Hull signed the "Growing Smarter" legislation, which reworks
the planning requirements of cities and counties and provides funds for the purchase
of State Trust Lands for the preservation of open spaces among other provisions.
Growing Smarter is an attempt by Arizona state government to restrain irresponsible
and shortsighted growth by providing counties and municipalities with greater
planning authority without urban growth boundaries. Growth management plans are
to be written to address ten-year goals with protections against arbitrary changes
whose motivations may be short-term gains rather than the good of the community.

Coconino County, City of Flagstaff, and the new Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning
Organization (FMPO) are well ahead of the Growing Smarter movement. Over the
past decade, the city and county planning departments have made great strides
toward ensuring responsible growth. The FMPO was created in accordance with
federal guidelines for the availability of transportation planning and construction
funds to cities with populations over 50,000. This quasi-governmental organization is
responsible for transportation planning; its authority resides within the state,
Coconino County, and the City of Flagstaff. Currently, the city, county, and FMPO
are establishing a land use and transportation plan for the region within their
jurisdictions. This joint planning effort represents an attempt to consolidate past,
fragmented land use and transportation plans in one new cohesive regional plan.
Such coordination between government and quasi-government entities should serve
as a model for communities that want to rein in out-of-control growth.

Growing Smarter seeks to reform the planning and rezoning procedures used by
county and municipal governments to enact growth management plans. Based on
population, certain provisions are required in general (city) or comprehensive
(county) plans. Growing Smarter places much importance on public participation in
promulgating new land use plans, as well as on the provision of open space and the
coordination of the local processes with State Trust Land planning. The legislation's
focus on municipal and county planning and zoning reform is an attempt to promote
a more sensitive and rational development of the land at the local level, rather than
having general mandates passed down from the state government.

Requirements for city and county planning organizations differ from one another in
Growing Smarter. In the case of Flagstaff, the growth management plan must include
provisions for open space, growth areas, environmental planning, and the assurance
that developers pay a fair share of the costs of expanding public services. Coconino
County must address population density, infill and compact development, air quality,
and the promotion of a broad variety of land uses in its comprehensive growth
management plan. Also, both entities must include plans for transportation services
that are coordinated with the land use plans.

Cities and counties are not limited to the act's requirements; in fact, growth
management planning in the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County long has
included all of the provisions set forth in the Growing Smarter legislation. In the past,
the city or the county developed separate plans for such needs as open space and
mass transportation in isolation from one another. Flagstaff and Coconino started
joint planning efforts in the mid-1990s. The most prominent of these regional plans,
which was finished early in 1998, is Flagstaff 2020. This massive cooperative effort
included the city and county, plus Northern Arizona University, Northern Arizona
Council of Governments, Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning Organization, Friends of
Flagstaff's Future, Grand Canyon Trust, Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, Coconino
Community College, and Northern Arizona Home builders Association. The process
depended heavily on public participation and addressed a multitude of issues from
environmental protection to economic development. The project created a
memorandum of understanding among participating organizations and set a
framework for future growth in the community. Flagstaff 2020 set goals and
objectives for growth rather than specific programmatic responsibilities.

The preservation of open space and greenways is of particular importance to residents
of the Flagstaff region. The Greater Flagstaff Area Open Spaces and Greenways Plan,
which is scheduled for adoption by the county and city in late 1998, provides a non-binding
planning framework for communities to consider in future development. The
final plan will be recognized by the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County and the

U. S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and Arizona State Land Department. The
acceptance of this plan will contribute greatly to the region's efforts to arrive at a
responsible and environmentally sensible growth management plan.

Flagstaff 2020 and the Open Spaces and Greenways Plan demonstrate that
cooperative growth management plans are much more comprehensive and avoid the
jurisdictional complications of plans that are created in isolation. Since the
acceptance of Flagstaff 2020 the need to formulate a workable plan for future growth
in the region has surfaced. Through a joint city/ county planning committee, issues
arose that led to the formation of the Regional Land Use and Transportation Task
Force, which is responsible for coordinating specific land use and transportation
policies that may help realize the vision set forth in Flagstaff 2020.

Regional Land Use and Transportation Plan

The city, county, and Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning Organization have joined
forces to create a comprehensive growth management plan for the region. This plan
encompasses future land use issues and the transportation infrastructure that ties the
region together. Specific issues to be discussed include housing, open lands and
recreation, community form and design, the environment, and economic opportunity.

Of particular interest is how the region will approach future development outside its
current boundaries. In creating a planning framework, the task force is formulating
three scenarios that represent how Flagstaff might look in 20 years. The scenarios
estimate the region's future development based on a variety of growth trends; these
trends show the effects of unrestricted growth spread out beyond current boundaries,
compact development characterized by the infill development of the regions
previously developed land, and the development of concentrated areas around the
region to serve a more diverse area of population centers.

This systematic approach toward creating a growth management plan is compatible
with both the city and the county's jurisdictional responsibilities and includes the
goals and visions taken from such efforts as Flagstaff 2020. In short, the Regional
Land Use and Transportation Plan is intended to be an all inclusive growth
management plan for both the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County, as well as
coordinated with federal and state transportation planning through the FMPO.

In most respects, the standards set for the regional plan meet or exceed those
included in Growing Smarter, but Growing Smarter complements and enhances the
Regional Land Use and Transportation Plan. The authority held by local
governments to promulgate long-term growth plans is greatly enhanced by
provisions within the Growing Smarter legislation. However, the legislation also
places restrictions on changes to the final plans, requiring a two-thirds vote of the

City Council and/or the County Board of Supervisors.
The legislation also encourages compact growth that favors infill development in an
attempt to restrain urban sprawl. Cooperation between local and state governments
concerning the coordination of local land-use planning and State Trust Lands is
integral with the Growing Smarter legislation. This coordination is accompanied by
funding to help balance state and local plans. At this point, it would appear that
primary control will rest in the hands of the local governments, with support from the
state level.

The regional planning initiative taking place now represents an approach not
specifically addressed in Growing Smarter, namely joint preparation of a long-range
growth management document by city and county governments. Flagstaff and
Coconino County's efforts are unique in Arizona. To us, the value of such an
approach is clear: by ensuring that those who will be affected by a plan are included
in the development process, the Regional Land Use and Transportation Plan can
serve as a comprehensive guide for responsible growth in the Flagstaff region.

Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 105

Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response

As development continues to consume land, a few places are experimenting with alternatives to uncontrolled growth.

Across much of America, urban sprawl is becoming a fiercely contested issue¾one
with potentially big consequences for developers and home builders.

In Maryland, state officials say half a million acres of farm and forest land could be
consumed by development in the next quarter-century. So Gov. Parris Glendening is
attempting to channel development into established communities or "priority" areas
where roads, sewers, and other public services are planned¾thus protecting rural areas
from uncoordinated growth.

In New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, who first won the governor's office as a tax
cut champion, now is trying to make preservation of open space a critical state goal. If
carried out, her initiatives could put half the state's two million acres of undeveloped
land off-limits to construction.

In the West, "urban growth boundaries" are proliferating. The Seattle area established
an urban growth boundary in 1994. One after another, 11 communities in the San
Francisco Bay area have adopted growth boundaries since late 1996. The Portland,
Ore., area has resisted every effort to radically change its nearly 20-year-old boundary,
despite complaints from the building industry that the limited land supply is driving up
housing prices. Even a state as traditionally pro-development as Arizona debated (but
ultimately rejected) whether a growth boundary was an idea whose time had come.

Where Will America Build?

Efforts to rein in sprawl¾an increasingly popular idea with voters¾could change the
rules of the game for developers and home builders. In regions that put tight restraints
on outward expansion, large tracts for single-family construction will become harder to
get. Land prices will rise more quickly. Lot sizes will shrink. And as these changes
occur, the building industry will have to seek its opportunities elsewhere¾in scattered
parcels that builders previously passed over, in urban centers and old industrial areas
waiting for renewal, in mixed-use projects, and in low-density commercial strips that
could be redeveloped much more intensively.

Why is sprawl becoming a rising issue? Conventional wisdom claims the following to
be the key reasons:

Massive incursions on the countryside. The pace at which development is marching outward from existing urban centers

disturbs millions of Americans who prize unspoiled countryside. Metropolitan
Chicago, for example, grew in population by a mere 4% between 1970 and 1990, but
spread its inhabitants across 35% more land, according to the Northern Illinois
Planning Commission.

Across the country, an estimated 400,000 acres of prime agricultural land are lost to
development each year, says the American Farmland Trust. Many unique or highly
productive farming areas are now threatened¾in California's Central Valley, Virginia's
northern Piedmont, the southern Wisconsin-northern Illinois drift plain, the Texas
blackland prairie, Oregon's Willamette Valley, and Washington's Puget Sound area,
among other places.

The Trust's 1997 report, "Farming on the Edge," points out that when prime land is
converted to housing tracts and other development, farmers use poorer land in other
locations and are compelled to boost productivity with chemical fertilizers that pollute
streams and harm aquatic life. Mike Burton, Portland's metro government executive,
says support for his region's growth boundary springs in part from an awareness that
"much of the agricultural land in the Willamette Valley is unique in combination of soil,
climate, and growing conditions."

If much of a landscape is carved into house lots¾even generous-sized house lots
interspersed with bits of woodland and wetland¾the habitat becomes so fragmented
that it can no longer support its native wildlife. For instance, a study for the Maine
Environmental Priorities Project determined that when development cuts swaths of the
state's countryside into blocks of fewer than 20 acres each, survival of bobcats, minks,
fishers, turkeys, hawks, bald eagles, and many other species is threatened.

Edge cities. "During the 1980s, most major metropolitan areas developed commercial and
employment centers at or near their outer boundaries, creating 'edge cities, ' often with
suburbs of their own," the Farmland Trust observes. Traffic congestion has become an
annoying and pervasive part of suburban life.

"The story used to be 'Growth is good; it's economic development, '" observes John
Fairhall, an editor who oversees The Baltimore Sun's coverage of suburban Howard
County, Md. "Now it's 'Growth has costs. You have to build more roads and
infrastructure. ' You can see the change coming."

Forsaken urban centers.

The shift of employment has weakened the old downtowns and left poor urban

residents at a greater disadvantage for finding jobs. When looked at as a package,
sprawl, with its combination of environmental costs, economic costs, traffic, tax
burdens, and urban deterioration, looks more and more like a bad deal.

The problems often associated with growth, however, are sometimes exaggerated in the
mainstream media. Therefore, it's important to keep things in perspective. For example,
less than 5% of the country's land mass is urbanized, and even at a loss rate of 400,000
acres a year, the United States is not even close to losing its ranking as the most
productive agricultural land in the world.

Other issues¾such as how to meet the inevitable demand for new housing¾should
also be part of this discussion. All too often, however, the fact that about 1.4 million
new-housing units are needed each year to house a population that is projected to
increase from 262 million in 1995 to nearly 300 million by 2010 gets lost in the debate.

The positive aspects of urban growth¾higher incomes, better employment
opportunities, more tax revenues, and increased demand for goods and services
throughout the local economy¾also get muted by the more visible problems of
congestion and pollution.

And finally, while the market is growing for infill and high-density developments,
particularly among baby boomers and Americans nearing retirement, polls show that the
majority of Americans still want what they have always wanted¾a single-family home.
And for most of them, that home will be most affordable at the edge of the urban market.

One of the best examples of a no-sprawl environment¾and of the opportunities and
risks it presents builders¾is metropolitan Portland, Ore. As the Oregon state
government requires, the Portland area has had an urban growth boundary since 1979.
The boundary encompasses 364 square miles, or 233,000 acres.

The premise of a growth boundary is simple. Outside the line, development is
discouraged. Inside, development is encouraged through infrastructure construction,
faster permit approvals, allowance of higher densities, and other policies and practices
aimed at making it easier to build in designated areas.

Oregon's builders value the government's commitment to foster development inside
the growth boundary and to encourage higher density. "The Oregon planning system
has some pro-development aspects," says Jon Chandler, governmental affairs director
for the Oregon Building Industry Association. The system, he points out, delivers these
advantages to the building industry:

° "It's almost impossible to get a building moratorium."
° "All the land is zoned [for residential or other purposes]. Land is presumed
developable, so you have 'some moral high ground to stand on."
° A" 120-day rule" limits the amount of time the government can wait before
acting on a project application. The 120-day rule "doesn't work all the time,"
Chandler notes, but if the government lets more than that length of time pass, the
applicant can ask to get back half the fees paid.
° An expedited process promises a 63-day turnaround on applications for higher-density
projects.
° An appeals process, presided over by a state Land Use Board of Appeals, has been
established to make final decisions in contested cases.

Compared with builders and developers in other parts of the country, "I think we have
an easier time of it," says Chandler. Opponents who want to say, "not in my back-yard"
are put at a disadvantage. "Are there delays? Sure," he says. "The neighbors have a
shot at you every step of the way. Neighborhood groups can appeal. But you tend to
win."

The Portland metro government's unwillingness to substantially expand its region's
boundary over the years has generated a lot of friction between the building industry
and a variety of other interests. The boundary is supposed to contain a 20-year supply
of developable land. When the region's economy was in the doldrums in the 1980s,
there was plenty of land available. Builders had no trouble acquiring the land they
needed inside the boundary. But in the 1990s, as the economy heated up and the
population grew more rapidly, that situation changed. Builders have been campaigning
to enlarge the boundary by 10,000 acres, but suburban mayors, metro council
members, and others have opposed an expansion of that magnitude. Some interest
groups, such as agribusiness, have opposed any expansion at all.

Meanwhile, Portland-area housing prices have shot up in recent years; builders blame
that on the restrictive growth boundary. "Ten years ago Portland was one of the 10 most
affordable cities in the country," says Kelly Ross, governmental affairs director of the
Metropolitan Portland HBA. "Recently we've bounced between number two and three
of least affordable. The main reason is the cost of land. Raw land prices have increased
400% in the last five years."

A similar phenomenon is occurring around Seattle. "Housing costs are escalating about
1% a month in the Puget Sound area," says Gary Lawrence, a fellow, at the University
of Washington's Institute for Public Policy and Management. "Builders have taken the
position that the growth boundary is what's responsible for the increase in housing
costs in King County [Seattle]."

Joe Molinaro, NAHB's director of land development services, cautions urban planners

about jumping on the Portland bandwagon. "Evidence is mounting that the Portland
experience may not be working as well as first purported," Molinaro notes. "The
increase in Portland housing prices is well documented. Also, higher densities called
for within the boundary are becoming more difficult to achieve as established residents
fight new infill development that is at densities higher than in their own
neighborhoods."

Some independent analysts question whether the growth boundary is the main reason
for the jump in housing Prices. Ethan Seltzer of the Institute for Portland Metropolitan
Studies says Salt Lake City and Denver have experienced similar price increases-despite
their lack of growth boundaries.

"Any time you have high demand, housing prices will rise, and rise rapidly," says Tasha
Harmon, executive director of Portland's Community Development Network. Harmon
argues that as land prices have escalated, builders have shifted toward erecting luxury
houses, which are out of reach of many middle-management employees and
production workers.

In a booming economy, it seems unlikely that builders in Portland and Seattle would
meet the housing needs of moderate-income residents even if growth boundaries
suddenly vanished. "The housing that would be built beyond the urban growth
boundary would be upper-income, large-lot housing," Lawrence says. "It wouldn't get
at the need for affordable housing."

The cost squeeze afflicting middle-income families in the Portland and Seattle areas
has led to calls for government intervention. The remedy Harmon espouses is
"inclusionary zoning"¾a requirement that a certain proportion of the units in any new
housing development over a specified size be moderately priced. Harmon notes that
Montgomery County, Md., outside the nation's capital, has had inclusionary zoning for
20 years. She reasons that if, according to, an inclusionary zoning ordinance, "20% of
what you build has to be starter homes," the land naturally becomes worth less
money"¾to you and to every builder." In her view, inclusionary zoning helps temper
the rise in land prices and helps ensure that people with ordinary incomes can get
decent, affordable housing.

The Portland HBA's Ross notes that the Metro Council is encouraging voluntary,
incentive-based measures to produce affordable housing and "will consider mandatory
inclusionary zoning if there is not significant progress in having them implemented by
the end of 1998."

Growth boundaries, and the planning and zoning standards that complement them, are

causing the development density to increase. In Portland, the average lot size for single-family
houses (including townhouses) dropped from 13,000 square feet in the late
1970s to 7,400 square feet in 1995-96, and it continues to decline. As land has become
more costly, builders have used it more sparingly.

To cope with the higher cost of land, Gary Pivo, chair of the University of
Washington's Department of Urban Design and Planning, says governments can take a
number of actions. "Allow subdivisions to reduce street widths or to cluster densities,"
he suggests. Let developers get a density credit for the portion of the property they
leave undeveloped because of wetlands; that density could be transferred to a buildable
part of the terrain. Eliminate unnecessarily tough standards for curbs and gutters, Pivo
says, and allow other density-increasing techniques, such as zero-lot-line design.

"There are a lot of things under way around the country" to reduce housing prices, Pivo
says. Those techniques may be greatly needed as communities limit development in
outlying areas. Tough restraints on sprawl eventually force builders to revise their way
of operating. For some single-family home builders in the Portland area, the type of
house they do really doesn't work anymore, says David Lawrence, assistant city
manager of Hillsboro, a fast-growing community west of Portland. "What they have to
pay for land takes them out of the market they've been in; they can't get the size of lot
that fits the house they're used to building." As a result, says Lawrence: "Niche builders
have to decide whether they can move up a notch or two in quality or move into infill
development."

In fact, some are doing that and more. "Builders are looking at a wider range of
products now, like small-lot single-family," says Seltzer. Public projects, such as the
extension of Portland's light-rail rapid transit line to Hillsboro and other western
suburbs, are giving them incentives to develop certain areas in a more compact, less
automobile-dependent manner. "On the Westside rail line, close to 6,000 residential
units have been completed near station areas," says Seltzer. This figure becomes even
more impressive when you consider that the line won't open until September of this
year. The units include apartments, row houses, and small-lot, detached houses.

The same shift toward dense, mixed-use development is occurring in the Seattle area.
One example is Trammell Crow Residential's LionsGate development in the previously
undistinguished downtown of Redmond, Wash., east of Seattle. LionsGate mixes rental
apartments on three levels with ground-floor commercial spaces that face public
sidewalks in traditional urban fashion. The project's success has led Trammell Crow to
start several new developments in the area.

In Portland, builders are examining how they can create housing in business areas,
industrial districts, and existing neighborhoods. "We're looking at filling in the holes in

the fabric," says Gary Reddick, the CEO of Sienna Architecture. "The Portland area is
so healthy, it's happening in every quadrant of the inner-city neighborhoods. It's being
pushed very enthusiastically by the city, the Planning Department, and Metro [the
Portland area's three-county regional government]." Sienna projects currently in the
works include construction of three to four stories of condo-condominium units over a
concrete podium; walk-up apartments along sidewalks (with parking expanded by
placing a new deck over an existing parking lot); and addition of three or four floors of
housing to the top of existing buildings. The basements of existing buildings often end
up accommodating parking. Old warehouses are being turned into housing-a part of the
market that Reddick says is much larger than developers had initially expected.

Blending new and old, and mixing housing, working, and shopping, produces places
with character, Reddick believes. "What we're making is incredibly rich, experientially
interesting neighborhoods." Plenty of demand exists for these developments, he says. It
comes mainly from adults ranging from young couples without children to older
people who are shedding the large houses. "These projects are, in many instances,
garnering the highest sales figures per square foot of anything that's being done."

New Frontiers The new frontier for builders and developers lies more in the existing cities and suburbs
than on raw land at the edge. As Seltzer puts it, improving on sprawl is more than a
matter of how to "do better subdivisions at the margin. It's how to get better function
out of what's already been done. In a lot of ways, it's how to deal with everything that
has been built since World War II."

Growth boundaries, says Jim Sayer, executive director of San Francisco Bay area's
Greenbelt Alliance, have "shifted the debate away from rampant growth vs. no growth
to 'how do we grow better? ' People are starting to look at the quality of development,
not just the numbers. People were fed up with the quality of development, with big
developments that were characterless. People are being more thoughtful about
development."

In the end, that may not make a builder's or developer's job any easier. But it could
make it more satisfying and ultimately more beneficial.

112 Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 Morrison Institute for Public Policy

The Growth Management Challenge in Arizona

David R. Berman, Ph. D.
Professor of Political Science, Arizona State University

In a March 24, 1998 news release, Arizona Governor Jane Dee Hull noted, "We are
truly at a crossroads... It is time to open our minds and look thoughtfully at how we
want to grow." From 1950 to 1990, Arizona was the second fastest growing state in the
nation as it moved from some 750,000 people to 3.7 million residents. The population
now numbers over 4.5 million. In 1996, Phoenix became the sixth most populous U. S.
city. Phoenix is also a sprawling city. Phoenix's land area grew from 17 square miles in
1950 to 330 square miles in 1980 to the present 469 square miles, two more than Los
Angeles. Many have been left wondering if it can sustain further growth. Many fear
that Phoenix will become another Los Angeles¾in terms of sprawl, traffic, and
pollution¾without better controls. In Tucson, the fear has been of becoming another
Phoenix. Local governments in much of the rest of the state also face the task of
financing infrastructure and services to support many more citizens and of planning to
avoid the ill effects of development.

To many Arizonans the underlying problem is sprawl, that is, low-density, automobile-dependent
development that spreads out over the landscape. This type of growth
gobbles up land, increases the cost of providing roads, schools, and other facilities, and
makes financing mass transportation difficult. Residents, thus, are forced to drive
almost everywhere. As the population spreads further and drives more, traffic
congestion and air pollution become problems while more roads are built. Sprawl also
contributes to the decline of rural areas, the disappearance of farmland and wildlife
habitat, and the loss of scenic views. Sprawl is a policy problem that becomes
particularly intense when the economy is strong. While incomes are improving, people
look for their first homes or improved housing and developers scramble to
accommodate these demands on relatively inexpensive land at the edge of cities.

Arizona is hardly unique when it comes to growth management. The objective of the
most recent concern with land use planning and controls has been to manage growth
better. Growth management looks to steer development in desired directions, promote
infill, and protect open spaces. Major reforms around the nation include urban growth
boundaries beyond which only limited development can take place and the
coordination of development with the provision of adequate infrastructure. In many
parts of the country problems caused by poorly planned development have created
pressure to shift planning and oversight responsibilities from localities to states or
regional planning agencies.

What can state and local governments in Arizona do to control growth? How have
governments in Arizona done on growth management? Given the state's political

traditions, what might be done to improve their performance?

Growth Management in Arizona

As in other states, Arizona's state government has delegated much of the responsibility
for regulating land use and coping with growth to local governments. Land use
planning authority is exercised by county and municipal governments. These
governments have several tools to control population growth. Growth may be
encouraged or discouraged, for example, by governmental purchase of land and by
decisions regarding the expansion of facilities like roads and sewer lines. Within
general limits, local governments can experiment with such ideas as development
moratoria and high-density zoning. Moratoria on development can be achieved in the
short run by blocking the issuance of building permits or by refusing to extend water
and sewer services. Through the adoption of "adequate public facilities" requirements,
localities may control development by limiting building permits to areas that already
have enough public facilities to serve the development. They also may create special
zoning districts to respond to local conditions and concerns. For example, overlay
zones for natural resources, open space preservation, historic preservation, or economic
development may be created. Local governments have the power of eminent domain to
acquire land for public use; cooperate in regional activities; and spend funds to acquire
land to be retained as open space.

Localities operate within legal and political constraints. Courts long have recognized
that local governments can regulate the uses of private property in the interests of public
safety, health, or welfare. Yet, there are limits to this power. Local land use regulators
may find that they have exceeded the power delegated to them by the state enabling
legislation or have, through their regulation, violated due process rights, the guarantee of
equal protection, or the right to travel. Zoning and other land use regulations may be so
burdensome that they amount to illegal taking of private property for public use without
compensation. Politically, much of the public input local officials receive on planning
and zoning matters concerns turf protection, that is, efforts to keep undesirable people,
activities, or facilities out of one's neighborhood. Citizens often complain that they are
left out of development decisions and denied the opportunity to challenge a zoning
move that has brought an unwelcome facility into their neighborhood. With a mixture of
economic and social objectives, neighborhood groups mobilize against LULUS (locally
unwanted land uses) such as public housing units or half-way houses. Proposals to
locate such facilities give rise to the NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome. For the
nervous politician, it's often a case of NIMTOF (not in my term of office).

Municipalities and counties are required by state law to adopt comprehensive, long-range,
land use plans and zoning ordinances to implement them. They also must
impose additional controls on land use through subdivision regulations. Historically,
however, Arizona's statutes regarding land use plans have been poorly implemented.

The state does not review plans to enforce the law. The actual performance of Arizona's
municipalities and counties regarding growth management is spotty at best. Some
jurisdictions have not adopted plans despite the state mandate. In others, plans are given
only lip service and zoning and subdivision controls are often imposed without
reference to a plan. Historically, developers often have been able to lobby city councils
or county boards to change plans put together by commissions or to override the more
restrictive decisions of planning boards. Because of the variation in land use control
among Arizona's cities and counties, developers have been able to shop around and
gravitate to areas with the fewest controls or lowest impact fees, if any at all, on
proposed projects.

Citizens in Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale, and elsewhere have complained that
developers have gone too far, creating heavy burdens on government services and
threatening air quality and desert preservation. A number of cities in metropolitan areas
are making greater efforts to promote infill and preserve open spaces. To discourage
sprawl some jurisdictions charge higher permitting and hookup fees for sewer service
for projects on the outskirts of town and lower ones for projects in the heart of the city.
Proposals for differential fees in Tucson have set off warnings that such restrictions
conflict with people's desire to live in the wide open spaces and add to housing costs.
Going further to control growth, Sedona voters in 1996 adopted a citizens' slow growth
initiative to limit building permits. This action was later invalidated by the courts.
Flagstaff has something comparable to a growth boundary in its urban service district,
an area outside of which it does not provide services. Several jurisdictions have
demonstrated a concern to preserve scenic areas and open space. Scottsdale voters, for
example, in 1995 and 1996 approved preservation programs for the McDowell
Mountains and Sonoran Desert. The Pima County Board of Supervisors in 1998
adopted a desert protection plan devised by environmental and neighborhood groups.
Yet, while one finds considerable sentiment for preserving open spaces, one finds little
sentiment for higher density living. Local officials in Arizona as elsewhere seem far
more likely to hear demands for lowering a development's density than demands for
increasing it. Responding to this sentiment, Arizona governments have allowed lower
density development than called for in their official plans and allowed urban areas to
expand far more rapidly than expected.

Recently, the legislature has acted to address some of the criticisms of local planning.
Under the Growing Smarter law that goes into effect late in 1998, cities, towns, and
counties have to adopt or renew land use plans for 10-year periods and amendments to
the general growth plans need a two-thirds vote of city council or county board of
supervisors members (rather than, as in the past, a majority of members). A section
calls on each governing body to "adopt written procedures to provide effective, early,
and continuous public participation in the development and major amendment of
general plans." The new law also requires that zoning standards be in conformity with

the general plan and requires cities and towns to adopt general plans with specific
points or elements. Among these are the protection of open space, strategies for
efficient transportation and well-timed expansion of infrastructure, such as sewers.
While the legislation mandates some important changes in existing practices, there is
no state agency to monitor compliance. Arizona still has a low-key approach to growth
management.

The most basic problem with relying on local units for growth management is that each
is likely to consider its own needs first and only incidentally the needs of the broader
metropolitan area or region. Failing to think regionally, one city may give its blessing to
a development that has major adverse effects on the well being of a neighboring
jurisdiction. When it comes to control, imposing a moratorium may help a rapidly
developing city, at least in the short run. This action, however, is not likely to do
anything to help neighboring jurisdictions and, indeed, may prove harmful to them and
to the region as a whole. Similarly, while cities might solve certain service problems
within their boundaries, those problems which transcend municipal or even county
boundaries, such as pollution and traffic congestion, require a regional approach to land
use planning. Cooperation is sometimes frustrated by long-standing feuds and rivalries
between local units or because various units see their own problems as unique or are
suspicious of each other's special agenda. Local officials also actively compete for such
resources as land, population, industry, and taxes. Regarding taxes, the emphasis on the
sales tax as a source of municipal revenues has encouraged intense competition for the
location of regional shopping centers. The desire to secure a center may lead to
wasteful competition in the region as a whole and play into the hands of businesses
shopping around for a location.

Reformers have long cited the need for adjustments in Arizona's metropolitan areas to
facilitate an effective regional approach to growth management. Over the years many
academics and practitioners have argued that new metropolitan or regional levels of
government should be created either to replace local units or to assume functions that
are regional in nature. Regional special districts and authorities could also be
established to handle each regional growth problem separately. However, such entities
tend to be invisible, largely unaccountable governments. The preferable approach
would be vesting responsibilities in a unit of government such as the county which is
highly visible to the public. Thus far, however, voters have not gone along with "home
rule" efforts intended to improve the status of county governments in the Phoenix and
Tucson metropolitan areas.

Local officials in Arizona, as elsewhere, tend to favor a voluntary approach to regional
problems. Voluntary regional councils of governments (COGS) have been the principal
vehicle for coordination. Since the early 1970s six COGs in various parts of the state
have helped promote uniformity in the planning and programming of various activities.

They often perform coordinating activities that are required by federal transportation
and other programs. Some, such as the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG)
have pursued an aggressive regional agenda and played a strong role in planning
activities. Currently, for example, it is heading a project to produce a vision for the year
2025 that governments in the valley can endorse. Bodies such as MAG do not have the
power to enforce decisions. Yet, as they gain the confidence of their members and
develop staff facilities, they can progress toward becoming regional policymaking and
action councils.

Politics, Culture, and Policy Directions

Growth management in Arizona and elsewhere has been a highly contentious issue.
Policymakers have been challenged to reconcile the demands of many interest groups.
Growth management is controversial because it involves the imposition of controls
over the right of individuals and businesses to use their land as they wish and
questions the traditional allocation of responsibility between state and local
governments. Decisions are also important because they affect the life styles, health,
and prosperity of many.

In Arizona and much of the West, land has been perceived as plentiful. There has been
a tendency for people to want to spread out. Moving out is partly how people have
defined success. Developers have found relatively cheap land outside of established
population centers, built secluded single-family dwellings on large lots, and offered a
carefree countryfied lifestyle, removed from the problems of the crowded cities.
Developers argue that they have given people what they want. Compact, high-density
living has been difficult to sell. To a considerable extent, so too has been mass transit.

In Arizona, growth management has also had to struggle with the values of
individualism, economic development, and localism. Arizona as one of the last
frontiers in the movement west has long been a place associated with frontier freedoms.
Individualism and material accumulation are often included in the list of frontier
values.¹ The first of these encompasses the freedom to think and act as one pleases. It
also includes the value of self-reliance. The emphasis on material accumulation carries
with it a high value accorded to entrepreneurial freedom, a willingness to undertake
risks, an optimistic view of one's chances of getting ahead in life, and an exploitive
attitude toward natural resources. One scholar has linked the popular adherence to the
frontier themes regarding the unfettered development of natural resources to the
difficulty the state has had in putting together a consistent policy on environmental
quality.² In the individualist spirit, Arizonans have been mistrustful of government
officials telling them what to do. This is especially true when it comes to regulations
affecting their property rights. Lawmakers have to find a way of protecting private
property rights while also allowing governments to regulate land use in the interests of
the general welfare.

In the frontier tradition, growth control in Arizona has also had to exist in an
environment where state and local governments have focused on doing what they can
to promote economic development. This has been true even as the ill effects of
economic development, such as air pollution and traffic congestion, have become
manifest. Arizonans try to cope with growth while asking for more of it. There is
considerable fear that increased controls will discourage further development. Yet,
support also exists for the notion that without some controls, further economic growth
may suffer. To many calling for action on an issue like air quality, including members
of the business community, environmental protection is consistent with economic
development because a high quality of life makes the area more attractive to investors.
In the Arizona political environment the most feasible growth control reforms are those
that can be clearly promoted as necessary to maintain economic development.

Another obstacle reformers have to come to grips with is the strong tendency in
Arizona to look at land use control as a local rather than state or even regional activity.
Several questions, however, have to be faced about the ability of local governments to
do the job. Given the parochialism of local units, regional or statewide interests are
difficult to attain. The history of reform in other states with a strong tradition of
localism indicates that states will not take drastic measures until it is clear that local
governments are not up to the task. "Top down" comprehensive planning by the state
(like Florida's) can be the consequence of the continued perceived failure of localities
to control growth. To minimize state involvement, more of the growth control function
could be shifted to a broader regional government or governing agency. Regional
agencies can "provide an important link between state and local governments by
balancing the desire to keep power relatively decentralized while accounting for more-than-
local interests." ³

Several other types of policy decisions at the state level also have an effect on growth
management. The state, for example, is directly involved in growth management by its
control over State Trust Lands. Policies regarding incorporation and annexation also
affect future local planning. The best laws would be those that make annexation
relatively easy and incorporation relatively difficult. These help prevent the
proliferation of new municipal governments, and thus, minimize the problem of
fragmented local authority. They also allow cities to avoid discordant land uses on their
boundaries, keep jurisdictional service boundaries, and expand settlement patterns in
proper alignment. The incorporation of more towns on the periphery of a large city
such as Tucson makes it more difficult to conduct regional planning, and makes it
easier for developers to shop around for the least restrictive controls.

Many people in Arizona appear frustrated with problems like traffic congestion and
pollution and, thus, are likely to support greater growth management controls. On the
other hand, tightening controls on growth becomes more complicated because it

conflicts with lifestyles and values dear to the heart of many Arizonans and many
political leaders.

Thus far there has been only a limited effort on the part of localities to control the
timing of development or channel it into areas that are already developed. Local
officials, even if so inclined, have found it difficult to encourage high density planning.
Existing arrangements also make it difficult to address broader regional or statewide
concerns relating to growth management. In the metropolitan areas where growth
problems are more advanced, there is no entity to prevent ruinous competition among
neighboring cities. Nor is there any way to ensure that cities consider the effects of their
developmental decisions on neighboring cities. More effective planning on a regional
or metropolitan basis could reduce these problems. Local officials seem to be faced
with a strong desire for low density living. Changing opinion on this topic would
require an intense public education campaign focusing on the importance of cleaner air,
less traffic, and more efficient public services. On the plus side there seems to be
considerable support for action designed to preserve open spaces. Within the limits
imposed by the attachment to low density living, Arizona localities still could do much
to minimize the amount and effects of sprawl by promoting mixed land uses and
increasing regional planning.

The future of growth management is largely in the hands of the state government. It
could impose rigorously enforced and detailed planning mandates under which all local
plans must fold into regional plans and the regional plans into a state plan.
Alternatively, it could require regional planning which recognizes that Arizona is
relatively decentralized and locally diverse. A" one size fits all approach" is not
appropriate, and state mandates need to be accompanied by ample technical and
financial assistance to jurisdictions that need help. The state also could, as in Maryland,
use the power of the purse, to control sprawl. This would follow an extensive study of
how state expenditures regarding highways, schools, water facilities, and other projects
encourage or discourage certain land uses.

Notes
1 See, for example, the list of frontier values compiled by James Shields and Leonard Weinberg, "Reactive Violence and
the American Frontier: A Contemporary Evaluation," Western Political Quarterly 29, March 1979, 84-101.

2 Mark Pastin, "Ethics: Pluralism or Conflict," Culture and Values in Arizona Life, Arizona Academy, 1987, 43-54.

3 Ndubisi Forster and Mary Dyer, "The role of Regional Entities in Formulating and Implementing Statewide Growth Policies,"
State and Local Government Review, Fall 1992, 117-127.

Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona Policy Choices October 1998 119

Today's Growth: The Smarter Growth Response

Arizona Must Recognize Limitations as it Grows

Sharon B. Megdal, Ph. D.
President, MegEcon Consulting

Much of the current debate on growth is concentrated on how we collectively should
shape Arizona's growth. Consideration of water resource limitations, transportation
infrastructure planning issues, and the need for governmental coordination are
important to this debate.

While we think of the vast land areas of Arizona, the state is highly urbanized. Due to
the rapid growth of Maricopa County, the proportion of the state's population living in
Maricopa and Pima Counties is expected to grow from about 76 percent in 1990 to 79
percent in 2040. Although Maricopa County has long been served surface water
through the Salt River Project, Pima County has historically relied on groundwater.

Recognizing the critical importance of water to the state's future, Arizona established
itself as a leader in managing water resources. In 1980, the state passed the
Groundwater Management Act (GMA) creating the Arizona Department of Water
Resources (ADWR) and four Active Management Areas (AMA) ¾Phoenix, Pinal,
Prescott, and Tucson¾where groundwater depletion had emerged as a critical concern.
In 1994, the Santa Cruz AMA was formed by separating it from the Tucson AMA.

AMAs are defined by hydrological boundaries and have groundwater management
goals specified by law. The Phoenix, Prescott, and Tucson AMAs have achieving safe-yield
by the year 2025 as their management goal. Safe-yield is defined by ARS § 45-
561 as a goal which attempts to achieve and thereafter maintain a long-term balance
between the annual amount of groundwater withdrawn in an active management area
and the annual amount of natural and artificial recharge in the active management area.

The Santa Cruz AMA's goal is to maintain safe-yield and to prevent local water tables
from declining. The management goals of the Pinal AMA are to allow development of
non-irrigation uses and to preserve existing agricultural economies as long as is
feasible, while preserving future water supplies for other uses.

The management plans for each of the AMAs also specify water conservation
requirements and limitations on water use, which in most cases become more stringent
over time. ADWR is currently in the process of adopting its third overall management
plan for the years 2001 to 2010.

The Central Arizona Project (CAP) is an important component of Arizona's water
supply. A key purpose of the federal project was to provide water to sustain municipal

growth in Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties. The CAP was also to supply water for
agriculture so that farmers would substitute a renewable source for limited underground
water supplies. Finally, the CAP was meant to provide water for Indian tribes. The
CAP is an important component of the Phoenix, Pinal, and Tucson AMAs' efforts to
utilize renewable water supplies in place of groundwater.

According to the Arizona Town Hall report, Ensuring Arizona's Water Quantity and
Quality into the 21st Century, the agricultural sector used 80 percent of all water in
Arizona in 1990, with the remainder going to municipal and industrial purposes. That
proportion is expected to decline to about 66 percent by 2040. In certain parts of
Arizona, including the Tucson AMA, use of water by the mining industry also is
considerable. The Phoenix and Tucson AMAs are expected to have difficulty achieving
safe-yield by 2025 in part because of their substantial growth. Some of the water
supply and use implications of urban growth patterns are considered in this article.

It has long been acknowledged that in certain parts of Arizona, agricultural use of water
will give way to municipal and industrial uses. Farming activities use more water per
acre than residential and commercial uses. For example, as Salt River Project farmland
is sold for urban development, there is likely to be a net decline in groundwater
overdraft. In Marana, new housing could displace farming activity, replacing
agricultural water use with municipal use. Alternatively, it could be located in ironwood
forests, adding additional water demands on the aquifer. The water implications of
growing where there is pristine desert versus irrigated farmland may be vastly different.
This should be considered as communities plan for growth.