The General Plan is the primary tool for guiding the future development of the city. On a daily basis the city is faced with tough choices about growth, housing, transportation, neighborhood improvement, and service delivery. A General Plan provides a guide for making these choices by describing long-term goals for the city’s future as well as policies to guide day-to-day decisions.

This Existing Conditions Report is the first major technical product of the General Plan Update process. It describes the current conditions in the City of Casa Grande and identifies preliminary issues relevant to the update of the 2020 General Plan update. This report details conditions specific to Casa Grande in the areas of locational context, demographics, housing and economic development, land use, historic preservation, transportation, environment and water and wastewater. The information provided in this Existing Conditions Report is intended to provide a basis for community discussions that will inform the City of Casa Grande General Plan Update 2020.

This update comes at a critical time in the history of Casa Grande. The City has experienced significant change since the 2001 adoption of the Casa Grande General Plan 2010. City limits have expanded and new development has come forward at a rapid pace. These changes raise pertinent questions about how the City can and should accommodate the cycle of development over the next 10, 20, and even 30 years.

Eye on the Future 2020, the Maricopa County Comprehensive Plan, provides a guide for decisions concerning growth and development, and considers strategies for addressing growth-related impacts. Among the strategies is the creation of scenic corridors for unique roads in Maricopa County. The Carefree Highway area is one of these roads, and thus the Carefree Highway Scenic Corridor Guidelines are established to help enhance this area’s special characteristics.

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 lines—the 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 Growth—the policies that have been used in the past; Today’s Growth—the “smarter” approaches from around the country; and Tomorrow’s Growth—cutting edge thinking about the economy and experiments in urbanism and governance.

It’s been more than five decades now since Scottsdale incorporated as a city.During that time, the city emerged as one of the most well-known communities in the Western United States—or, as the local logan says,“The West’s Most Western Town.” From the 1950s onward, Scottsdale combined upscale resorts, an outstanding arts and culture scene, and a spectacular natural setting to create a cachet that few other cities anywhere in the nation could match. So powerful was the Scottsdale name that the city focused on competing nationally with other brand name towns, rather than operating within the context of metropolitan Phoenix.

Fast Growth in Metropolitan Phoenix is the first product of a comprehensive effort to describe and analyze the region’s growth. The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy in Washington, D.C. presented the opportunity for this project to Morrison Institute for Public Policy. The story of growth in metropolitan Phoenix is a complicated, often surprising, tale. There is much to be proud of in the region. Yet there is also much to worry about, and much that needs to be done. Hits and Misses will have been successful if it becomes a catalyst for getting started.

The purpose of this paper is to provide background information on trends and possible future changes in urban structure and lifestyles important for planning the development of a parcel of Arizona state trust land known as Superstition Vistas (SV). This parcel, which is located just south of the Superstition Mountains in Pinal County, has an area of 275 square miles—enough land to provide housing for 900,000 new Phoenix metro-area residents at current population densities.

The aspects of future urban living discussed in this paper are those important for land-use planning—density, neighborhood design, transportation demand, etc. Very little attention will be given to the interior of homes. Also, since the SV parcel is currently undeveloped, emphasis will be placed on changes in urban structure that can be accomplished in greenfield developments rather than the in-fill of urban cores.