Valley Metro conducted a transit on-board survey between October 2010 and February 2011. The purpose of the survey was to better understand the travel pattern of transit users in the metropolitan Phoenix area, particularly the impact that light rail has had on regional travel patterns. The survey included nearly 100 bus routes and all light rail stations.

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.

This guide provides assistance to schools and those working with schools in establishing and supporting tobacco free policies. The first edition of "Full Spectrum" was released in 1998. The purpose of this second edition is to provide updated information, including the new Arizona law prohibiting use and possession of tobacco products on all school campuses, and to provide revised policy information reflecting the new law. Includes how to set up policies, examples of policies, new legal code on smoking on campuses, and programs for helping schools and students be tobacco-free.

The Arizona Youth Tobacco Survey is a series of biannual school-based tobacco-focused surveys first implemented in the spring of 2000. The survey is designed to help monitor trends in tobacco use among public school students in grades 6 through 12 and to compare changes in rates over time. The survey also collects data on topics including: tobacco use; tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes and beliefs; access to tobacco products; exposure to environmental tobacco smoke; initiation and cessation; influence of family, friends and the media; and social, school and community interventions.

Adult tobacco use represents an important and ongoing morbidity, mortality and health care cost problem. The Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Tobacco Education and Prevention Program has been working since 1996 to reduce tobacco use in Arizona. This report presents data from the Adult Tobacco Survey on adult tobacco use prevalence rates, cessation behaviors, and Arizonan’s beliefs and attitudes about smoking hazards and tobacco policies. It also provides trends over time on Arizonans tobacco use and other related behaviors, using comparable data from surveys conducted previously in 1996, 1999, and 2002.

Unlike the rest of the Phoenix metropolitan area, population density in central Phoenix dropped during the 1970s and 1980s. The primary cause was a decrease in the number of housing units. Rising vacancy rates contributed, but the increase in vacancy rates was similar to that of the entire metropolitan area. Between 1990 and 1995, population density rose in central Phoenix. A sharp decline in vacancy rates was a major factor in the turnaround, though the vacancy rate decline only matched that of the entire metro area. Another major factor in the increase in density was the rising number of people residing in prisons, homeless shelters, or on the streets.

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.

The Phoenix metropolitan area’s “favored quarter” for employment in 1995 – the metro area’s highest employment densities outside the primary core – extended from Chaparral Road in Scottsdale to Baseline Road in Tempe. Downtown and South Scottsdale’s success can be traced to being adjacent to the favored residential quarter that extends from the area around the Phoenix Mountains through north Scottsdale. In the 1990s, the favored employment quarter has been extending north in Scottsdale through the favored residential quarter. The presence of Arizona State University, proximity to Sky Harbor Airport, and access to the region’s first two freeways contributed to the portion of Tempe north of Baseline Road becoming the largest employment center outside of the primary core in Phoenix. Employment also was above average south of Baseline Road, extending into the secondary favored residential quarter of South Tempe and Ahwatukee – Foothills. Considering residential and economic factors, the Phoenix metro area’s favored quarter stretches from north of Squaw Peak in northeast Phoenix through Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, and Tempe to south of South Mountain in southeast Phoenix.