Presents results of a 2010 survey aimed at understanding water resource and land use planning. First it explores how professional views about water resource stressors and management strategies converge and diverge among water resource managers and land use planners. Second, it examines the degree to which water managers and land planners are engaging in integrated planning.

The Decision Center for a Desert City at Arizona State University—funded by the National Science Foundation since 2004—conducts research relevant to water resources and urban climate dynamics under multiple uncertainties. This report summarizes and synthesizes research findings and achievements of DCDC after almost a decade of research and science-policy interactions. Water resource decision-making is complicated by climate change and variability, population growth and economic development, diverse stakeholder interests and fragmented governance. While these factors generate various uncertainties and complexities for decision-makers, DCDC pursues research to create a more sustainable future. The DCDC contributes to water management and urban sustainability by conducting basic science and collaborating with policymakers and stakeholders to solve real-world problems. As detailed herein, DCDC research, education, and community outreach have made substantial contributions to improving water-resource governance and climate adaptation.

Prior to developing and approving new ordinances that would further regulate sex- offender distance restrictions and clustering, the Phoenix City Council approved a study to examine the nature and impact of sex-offender clustering. Their overall goal was to use the study to fill in some important knowledge gaps about the issue of sex-offender residential clustering in order to inform the development of effective policy. To examine this issue on behalf of the city council, we relied on a multi-methodological research design. We wanted to incorporate information from several different points of view, giving policy makers a more comprehensive perspective from which to inform their decision making. For this study, we relied on four resources: official police data, offender interview data, citizen survey data, and key stakeholder interview data.

A number of significant positive and negative economic impacts could result from Pima County's SDCP and related programs, according to an analysis of existing research on large-scale conservation planning undertaken to provide a framework for community decision-making. This report offers no final verdict on the net economic impact of Pima County's current, ambitious initiatives in habitat conservation and growth management. However, it does provide a framework for future assessment and decision-making.

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.