The State of the System Report is a compilation of the physical inventory and status of the Maricopa County Department of Transportation’s infrastructure. It addresses roadway congestion, traffic safety, low volume road paving, bridges, and pavement conditions. Also, included are recommendations for future improvements within each of the infrastructure categories. The SOS report has been produced annually since 1998.

A landmark assessment of infrastructure needs in Arizona was produced by the L. William Seidman Research Institute in May 2008 for the Arizona Investment Council (AIC): "Infrastructure Needs and Funding Alternatives for Arizona: 2008-2032", that addressed infrastructure needs in four categories: energy, telecommunications, transportation, and water and wastewater. The information from the AIC report is a major input to the report that follows. Other types of infrastructure — most notably education, health care, and public safety — also are analyzed here to provide a more complete picture of infrastructure needs in Arizona. The goals of this report are to place Arizona’s infrastructure needs into national and historical contexts, to identify the changing conditions in infrastructure provision that make building Arizona’s infrastructure in the future a more problematic proposition than in the past, and to provide projections of the possible costs of providing infrastructure in Arizona over the next quarter century.

The condition of Arizona’s infrastructure has a direct impact on economic productivity and quality of life. As economic competition expands domestically and globally, and as the knowledge economy evolves, the importance of a strong infrastructure increases. Education, in particular, is of growing importance. Arizona’s infrastructure challenges will require commitment and creativity to meet the needs and potential of 10 million people and to ensure a positive future for the state.

The age of housing in the Phoenix metropolitan area reflects the mostly steady outward spread of development. Large differences exist across the area in other housing measures. Many of these differences are closely related to geographic variations in household income and in the type of housing. As in the rest of the country, housing affordability in the Phoenix metropolitan area fell substantially in the 1970s. During the 1980s, the change in affordability varied by situation. Affordability rose for the median-income household, especially for homeownership. For those at the low end of the income spectrum, affordability of rental units improved slightly, but affordability of owned units worsened. Data for the 1990s are limited; the affordability of owned units rose for the median-income household, which could afford the median-priced home in 1998. An inadequate supply of very low-cost housing existed in the Phoenix metropolitan area in 1990. Even if low-income households were perfectly matched to low-income housing that they could afford, a little less than 3 percent of all households (about 23,000) could not have found affordable housing. The inadequacy expanded in the 1980s. The percentage of households reporting an unaffordable housing payment was much greater. Considering only low-income households who spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing, about 21 percent of all households had a housing problem related to affordability.

Does H20 = Growth in Arizona? That is how many people view the water-growth equation -- any introduction of "new" water supplies inevitably stimulates population growth and economic activity. However, the report by Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Growth on the Coconino Plateau, offers some surprisingly contrary conclusions. Completed on behalf of Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Coconino Plateau Watershed, this document is relevant for all regions of rural Arizona. Among the findings: - Some rural areas in the West have constructed major water supply projects only to see most of their towns languish, not prosper. - New water infrastructure in growing rural counties hasn't affected the size so much as the pattern of new development. - Leapfrog sprawl into unincorporated areas has been discouraged in regions where cities and towns hold control over the distribution of new water supplies. Bottom line, water won't automatically produce population growth. But planning for water - how it is supplied and governed - does offer a useful tool for managing future growth. Moreover, it can provide some measure of protection for the environment. We believe this report has important application well beyond northern Arizona. By providing original research and analysis on the water-growth equation, this report helps resolve one of Arizona's most critical issues. As a result, public policy discussions in the future will be able to focus on the state's most important growth drivers and how they can be managed.