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.

We need to look at what is management and how it has changed. What was once considered good practice in farming in some areas is no longer considered good practice because you are losing soil. The same thing is happening in ranching and as we look at the way range management has changed in the last 30 years, it is really dramatic in what the goals and objectives are of those people that are on the land is to stay on the land.