During the mid-part of the last decade, when the population growth rate was at its highest, the Phoenix area experienced rapid development and urban sprawl. The result has been an intensification of the Urban Heat Island effect. In this edition of Decades, author Sally Wittlinger discusses this uncomfortable consequence of urbanization.

In a rapidly growing desert metropolis such as Phoenix, the question of which water conservation measures and factors actually save water and which do not is an obviously important one. The water-related decisions made today and in the years to come will have lasting impact on the future of this area, including upon its sustainability. Estimates from the City of Phoenix suggest that, in non-SRP-areas, water demand will exceed water supply by the year 2025--absent droughts or intervention.

This report documents and analyzes the results of a multivariate regression analysis designed to estimate the effects on residential, single-family water consumption of a host of factors, particularly water conservation policies.

In the fall of 1995, the City of Phoenix Police Department convened a special group of people known to be deeply involved with the social and personal aspects of domestic violence. This group, which came to be called the Phoenix Police Department's Joint Task Force on Domestic Violence, consisted of police and criminal justice personnel, social service and health care providers, and a number of interested community members. Task Force members soon began earnest discussions on how best to reduce the incidence of domestic violence-a crime that is, sadly, the number one call for police service in the City of Phoenix.

Community policing — “a collaboration between the police and the community that identifies and solves community problems” — is not new to the City of Phoenix Police Department. They adopted this philosophy in the early 1990s. In 1995, they sought to expand community policing in Phoenix by applying for, and receiving, a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to implement the Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) — a project designed to implement community policing in an urban neighborhood and demonstrate its potential.

This briefing paper summarizes the measures used in the CCP evaluation and briefly examines whether
results answer the question: Is community policing effective? More specifically, it focuses on whether the Comprehensive Communities Program resulted in outcomes desired by neighborhood residents. That is—Did crime go down? Do residents feel more safe? Does a formal partnership between the police and a neighborhood make a difference?