The La Paz County Comprehensive Plan is the first overall plan for development countywide. Due to the passage of new state requirements and a desire to plan for the future, the La Paz County Board of Supervisors contracted with Partners for Strategic Action, Inc. to develop the county’s first comprehensive plan. The consulting team was directed to solicit broad community participation, study the county planning area, and develop a plan that would be an easy-to-understand policy document that will guide La Paz County’s development in the future.

Because the West Branch area has been left alone, it has a chance to recover and become a part of the larger Paseo de las Iglesias project, and a cornerstone of a more extensive effort at ecological restoration involving the mesic coorridors of Pima County, the Santa Cruz, Rillito, and Pantano.

The city of Phoenix Planning Department was asked to prepare a land use plan to identify goals and policies to guide development decisions for an area beyond the banks of the Salt River and to complement the Phoenix Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Project (Rio Salado Project). In response, the Planning Department initiated a five-phase planning process to develop an area plan. The resulting plan builds on the community's vision of how the area will develop in the future and identifies the steps needed to make that vision a reality.