“What about the water?” was one of the questions Morrison Institute for Public Policy asked in its 2008 study, "Megapolitan: Arizona’s Sun Corridor". That report looked at the potential growth of the Sun Corridor as Tucson and Phoenix merge into one continuous area for economic and demographic purposes.

With its brief review of the water situation in urban Arizona, "Megapolitan" left a number of questions unanswered. This report will consider questions like these in more detail in order to examine the Sun Corridor’s water future. This topic has received less sophisticated public discussion than might be expected in a desert state. Arizona’s professional water managers feel they are relatively well prepared for the future and would like to be left alone to do their job. Elected officials and economic-development professionals have sometimes avoided discussing water for fear of reinforcing a negative view of Arizona. This report seeks to contribute to this understanding, and to a more open and informed conversation about the relationship of water and future growth.

The purpose of this paper is to consider alternative assured water supply approaches for Superstition Vistas and to describe potential methods of providing water service to the property. Because this paper represents a cursory analysis of the study area and available supplies, the results should only be used for scoping more detailed planning efforts. The first issue examined is whether sufficient water supplies exist regionally to support projected growth including Superstition Vistas. Additionally, estimated demands for the property are presented. Finally, there a number of issues that complicate the process of acquiring supplies for an area like Superstition Vistas. This paper summarizes some of those issues.

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.

Both the effect of climate change on our future water supply and the size of the population that will need to share in that supply are uncertainties that water planners must consider when making decisions regarding our future. We have options, but we have to be sure that we use water efficiently to meet our urban, agricultural, and environmental needs. This Policy Points offers a clear, succinct overview of the status of Arizona’s water supply and what the current drought really means for water availability.

Arizona is now entering a new era of water challenges prompted by the need to consider, confront, and find solutions to predicted water supply, and demand imbalances in the future. This paper by water attorney M. Byron Lewis discusses studies predicting water supply limitations, possible sources of augmentation of Arizona’s water supply discussed in those studies, and significant legal and political challenges to overcome in finding solutions to supply and demand imbalances.

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.

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.

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?

No American metropolis has been more loved or hated than Los Angeles. Witness how for 25 years Phoenix’s mantra has been “We are not L.A.” Unfortunately, that mantra has not produced an agenda for making Phoenix a better place. “Are nots” and “don’t wants” never turn into action, even when there is agreement on what that action should be. “We Are L.A.?,” the second issue in Morrison Institute’s policy briefing series Forum 411: Engaging Arizona’s Leaders, looks at how smog, congestion, and density have defined the two places. The briefing provides an overview of the two metro regions and how they compare on several important measures. The report not only challenges the myth that Phoenix has become too much “like L.A.,” but also proposes a new way of thinking about what it means to be Phoenix. “We Are L.A,?” argues that metro Phoenix must come up its own homegrown identity more powerful than simply “not L.A.”