Report from the Center #6

Western FuturesA Look into the Patterns of Land Use and Future

Development in the American West

William R. Travis • David M. Theobald • Geneva W. Mixon • Thomas W. Dickinson

Center of the American West | Univers it y of Colorado at Boulder

The Center of the American West: Its Purpose and Vision

The Center of the American West at the University of Colorado strives to bring together, for meaningfulconversation and interaction, people as diverse as the American West itself. With the participation of ecologists andengineers, poets, professors and policymakers, students and scientists, musicians and lawyers, foresters, filmmakers,and physicians, the Center’s events have become a model of interdisciplinary debate. Issues long held to be black andwhite reveal their nuanced shades of gray when examined from these multiple perspectives. Minds change, informa-tion is exchanged, and conversations begin. To understand the region, we believe that the exploration of the minds ofits residents is as important as the inquiry into the workings of its cultures and ecosystems.

The Center of the American West is the region’s most creative and innovative organization in identifying andaddressing such crucial issues as multiculturalism, community building, fire policy, and land, water, and energy use.We do this through programs of research, public outreach, and engagement meant to help Westerners think abouttheir region and their role in its sustainable future.

Enterprising and inclusive in its embrace of a wide range of disciplines and strategies of communication, theCenter strives to illuminate the challenges and opportunities facing this complicated geographic and cultural area.Ultimately, we want to help citizens of the West become agents of sustainability—citizens who recognize that theiractions determine the region’s future and who find satisfaction and purpose in that recognition.

Center of the American WestUniversity of Colorado at BoulderMacky 229282 UCBBoulder, CO 80309-0282

Phone: 303-492-4879

Fax: 303-492-1671

www.centerwest.org

Cover photographs: (left) courtesy of United States National Park Service; (right) by John Fielder, courtesy of Colorado SprawlAction Center, www.sprawlaction.org.

All interior photographs are by John Fielder, courtesy of Colorado Sprawl Action Center, www.sprawlaction.org.

Report from the Center #6

Western FuturesA Look into the Patterns of Land Use and Future

Development in the American West

Western Futures Team:

William R. Travis , team leader • David M. Theobald, land use modeler

Geneva W. Mixon, research associate • Thomas W. Dickinson, geographic information specialist

Funding provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Published by

Center of the American WestUniversity of Colorado at BoulderMacky 229282 UCBBoulder, Colorado 80309-0282

Phone: 303-492-4879

Fax: 303-492-1671

www.centerwest.org

Copyright © 2005 by the Center of the American West

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Edited, designed, and produced by the CU-Boulder Publications and Creative Services department of University Communications: Linda Besen, editor; Polly Christensen, designer; Katie Henry, project manager.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Land Use Futures of the American West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Our Projections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Pattern and Rates of Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Overview of the West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Colorado Front Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Sierra Nevada Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Puget Sound Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Southeastern Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Conclusion: A “Business-as-Usual” Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Appendix: Our Land Use Modeling Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Biographies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

1

Contents

2

Introduction

The American West is the fastest-growingregion of the country, but it is also a place en-dowed with great open spaces that offer important

ecological and social values. This juxtaposition, and theregion’s rapidly changing land use patterns, attract a lotof interest and evoke a lot of emotion. Residential andcommercial development is spreading across the land-scape. The region is home not only to some of the mostsprawling cities in the country, but to a more dispersed“exurban” pattern of low density development in ruralareas, especially near charismatic landscapes like nationalparks. Westerners watch these changes and grieve overlost open space while simultaneously appreciating thebenefits of economic and population growth, and theland development, expanded services, and propertyvalue appreciation that naturally follows.

Western growth has boomed and slowed through his-tory, but the landscape effects of growth are cumulative.Economic prosperity may advance and retreat, but itsphysical edifices hold their ground. Each developed acreis subtracted from the fount of open lands that have longmarked this region as a special place and have allowedthe West to maintain much of its natural endowment ofbiodiversity. Because development is carved predomi-nantly out of lands used for agriculture, it also inevitablyreflects a reduction of the agrarian and pastoral economyand culture that once formed the core of Western ruralsociety. Letters to the editors of newspapers in Boise,Phoenix, and Denver, and even in rural valleys like theBitterroot and Payette, speak to a sense that develop-ment is spreading too fast, consuming the view, habitat,and sense of community that Westerners have valued forso long. Of course, many of us who complain aboutgrowth and land development are ourselves part of theproblem. We gravitate to the edge of the suburbs, at-

tracted by views of the mountains and cheap land, or wetake the next step and build our homes out in the exurbs—out in the so-called wildland-urban interfacewhere people and nature coexist uncomfortably.

A few key facts of western land use are important.First, half the land between the front ranges of the Rock-ies and the Pacific coast is federally owned, and not sub-ject to residential or commercial development (it mayhave gas wells, roads, lodges, and clear-cuts, but it won’thave shopping malls or cookie-cutter subdivisions). Andmuch of the West’s private land is not likely to be devel-oped in the foreseeable future—it is too dry or too re-mote. But there’s reason to believe that a lot moredevelopment is coming. The West has grown faster thanthe country as a whole for much of the last century, andis likely to outpace national growth for the foreseeablefuture. The “New West” is increasingly attractive to mi-grants and to investors. Western land owners will cer-tainly continue to respond to market forces, and to theirown preferences, by transforming lower value land uses,like agriculture, into more financially-rewarding optionslike subdivisions and shopping malls. Finally, Westernerswill continue to buy homes in suburbs distant from citycenters and to build second homes in the forests and onridge tops. They will demand highways, water systems,and other utilities. They will also continue to complainabout the sprawl, traffic, interrupted views, and lostsense of community that growth brings.

Over the last decade, Westerners have witnessed re-markable change, have watched whole mountainsidesdevelop, and found their commutes lengthening. But weall still find it hard to imagine what the land will looklike in twenty, thirty, or forty years, when the region’spopulation is likely to have grown by 50 percent or moreagain. So we at the Center of the American West set outto project land use patterns so that Westerners mighttake a look at their region’s future. These are just projec-

tions, not exact predictions. Many unpredictable eventsand forces will make the future turn out differently thanour maps suggest. Still, we are confident that in generalwe have captured the broad patterns of likely future development in the West.

Our Projections

Our model for projecting land development has itsvirtues, but like much of the growth in the West it is notvery smart. It assumes that all private land that is techni-cally buildable in the West is on the real estate market. Itdoes not know that some owners have placed conserva-tion easements on their land, nor that many ranchersand farmers are not interested in selling, even if the priceis right. And it does not know where state or local gov-ernments have enacted effective growth limits. Still, verylittle private land is permanently protected from devel-opment, and very few effective growth limits exist in theWest. Outside of Oregon, no state has statewide growthlimits strong enough, in our view, to significantly affectlarge-scale development patterns. Local communitieswith land use regulations backed by effective incentivesor disincentives are sufficiently rare that they are repeat-edly cited as case studies (e.g., open space programs inBoulder, Colorado, or Davis, California) of either effec-tive growth management or, according to their critics, ofill-conceived interventions in the land market. Mostland development in the West thus stems from a mixtureof market forces and individual preferences, often aidedby government investments in highways and other infra-structure. The model simply spreads development outacross the landscape based on population growth (whichdrives demand for land and development). It calculatesonly residential development, which we offer as a surro-gate for all that comes with it, including infrastructureand commercial land uses.

Land Use Futures of the American West

on maps at this scale, the pattern especially occurs inmountain areas of the West. A good example is visible inwestern Montana: the Bitterroot Valley is becoming a sub-urban and exurban extension of Missoula.

Depending on your point of view, our 2040 scenariocan be seen as offering either positive or negative futures.The public lands figure prominently as a reserve of openspace that Westerners will come increasingly to value as thebuildable lands develop. But several areas face projectedgrowth that is sure to cause contention. Phoenix continuesto sprawl across the desert; cities along Colorado’s FrontRange merge into one another and send exurban sprawlinto the nearby mountains; and development in Califor-nia’s Great Central Valley, so rich in productive farm land,expands to dominate the landscape.

A few places step into the land-use limelight:Spokane spreads out, and towns in Idaho’s Upper SnakeRiver Valley grow and begin to merge, as do several smalltowns on the west side of Washington’s Cascade Range.On the eastern border of our maps, though, a hugeswath of the Great Plains in eastern Montana,Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico that is mostlyprivate land stays green (rural) even in 2040. Populationgrowth and spreading development concentrates in themountain, desert, and coastal parts of the West, whileavoiding the Great Plains.

In the following pages we take a closer look at selected parts of the West.

4

FIGURE 1: (pages 4–5)

Actual and projected

housing densities for the 11

Western states.

At this scale, the West is dominated by undeveloped rural land, both private (green) and public (white). Theprivate open lands concentrate in a swath along the east-ern edge of the maps—out on the Great Plains—in the in-terior Columbia Basin, on Indian Reservations in NewMexico and Arizona, and within the fertile valleys alongthe West Coast. Much of this rural land hosts houses,roads, fences, crops, and other developments that you

would notice through the car windshield, but such signsof human use still fall into our rural category. Publiclands dominate the Intermountain West, especially theGreat Basin in Nevada and Utah.

Actual census data show development spreading be-tween 1960 and 2000, especially along the Pacific Rim. Inour projection for 2040, development stands out as a bigswath paralleling the West Coast, and the footprints of

Overview of the West

55

the larger interior cities like Phoenix, Denver, and SaltLake City, which blossom into significant urban sprawls.Rural valleys across the mountain West, for example inwestern Colorado, exhibit marked exurbanization by2040. You can see these maps in motion at www

.centerwest.org/futures.A few caveats: Our maps are just one way to look at

Western development, but we hope they generate moresearching discussions about how citizens want the regionto evolve. Any projection is uncertain, and even the empir-ical data for 1960 and 2000 required some manipulation to

reflect housing density (as described in the appendix at theend of this report and at www.centerwest.org/futures). Ourmaps do not reflect private land conservation or openspace owned by local governments (most such parcels aretoo small to show up at this scale). Finally, many develop-ment features that affect wildlife habitat and other landvalues, like highways, military operations areas, industrialcomplexes, and mines, are not reflected by maps of hous-ing density, so the total footprint of development is largerthan we depict here.

77

FIGURE 2. Actual and projected housing densities

for the Colorado Front Range.

Sierra Nevada Region

The spread of urban development up and down the cen-terline of California’s Central Valley is not surprising andhas been predicted by several land use models.1 But it ismore difficult to assess what is happening and will hap-pen in the Sierra Nevada foothill zone, which may wellbe the premier case of exurbia in the West. University ofCalifornia landscape architect Timothy Duane wroteabout the exurbanization of this area in his book, Shap-ing the Sierra (University of California Press, 1998). Thefoothill zone is difficult to define, but in general the ele-vation ranges from about 1,000 to 3,000 feet, borderedby the valley-bottom farmlands and, at the top, by na-tional forests and other public lands. Our look focuses onthe foothills region that stretches from Plumas County in the north down to Fresno County in the south, and encompasses large portions of more than fourteen

counties (FIGURE 3). This was traditionally “cattle coun-try,” and has been since the first Spanish settlers and thegold rush, when large numbers of sheep and cows weregrazed in the foothill zone to feed and clothe the miners.This land tenure evolved into relatively large spreadsthat were a combination of farm/ranch/timber properties.

The foothill region has a population of some 950,000(2000 census), and covers approximately 24,048 squaremiles of Butte, Plumas, Yuba, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, El Dorado, Amador, Calavaras, Alpine, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Merced, and Fresno counties (because largeportions of these counties are federally owned publiclands, the populated area is much smaller). This area in-cludes only a few larger towns like Placerville, but hostsdozens of smaller settlements like Mariposa, Murphys,Three Rivers, and Porterville, some of which are growinginto suburban towns in their own right.

The 2000 map, based on actual census data, alreadyshows the exurbanization of the Grass Valley/NevadaCity areas. Over the next four decades this merges into alarge swath of suburban and exurban foothills from thetowns along U.S. Highway 50 (e.g., Placerville and Pines)north to the Lake Oroville vicinity. Other splotches ofsuburban and exurban development emerge around theOakhurst and Mariposa areas.

The model concentrates future development alongroads, and those leading into the foothills thus anchornew growth. This process creates a few areas that re-main less developed even into the middle of the century,such as the foothills above Lake McClure. This is just ascenario, not a prediction, but the remaining green areason the 2040 map obviously represent landscape pocketswhere agriculture and wildlife might hold out.

8

99

FIGURE 3. Actual and projected housing

densities for the Sierra Nevada region.

Puget Sound Region

Built on shipping and the harvesting of salmon, fir, andtimber, the Puget Sound region, anchored by Seattle, ex-perienced a technology boom during and after WorldWar II, as the Boeing Aircraft Corporation expanded itsoperations there, and more recently as computer soft-ware (e.g., Microsoft) and dot-com companies (e.g.,Amazon) made it their home.

We focus on a swath from near Centralia on I-5 southof Olympia north to Mt. Vernon and Burlington on theSkagit River (FIGURE 4). We include almost all of Kitsap,Island, Pierce, and Thurston counties in this view as wellas western portions of Skagit, Snohomish, King, and theeastern portions of Mason, Jefferson, and Clallam coun-ties. Population for this region is roughly 3.8 million

(2000 census). The elevation ranges from sea level to14,392 feet at the summit of Mount Rainier. Cities rangefrom populations of 563,374 in Seattle and 197,553 inTacoma, to mid-sized towns like Bainbridge Island(20,308) and Bremerton (26,232), as well as small townslike the Victorian coastal towns of Port Townsend andPoulsbo (a.k.a. Little Scandinavia) which both have fewerthan 10,000 year-round residents. There is significant pri-vate forest land in this view, some of it owned by corpo-rations and some by individuals.

The area was already a significant urban swath in1960, but it also featured extensive private timberlands.These rural landscapes still exist east of Seattle-Tacoma,and on the southern fringe of our view, though subdivi-sion of many forest tracts is underway. Growth from1960 to 2000 occurred pretty much in all directions from

Seattle-Tacoma, including the west side of the sound,around Bremerton and Port Orchard and in suburbs andexurbs north of Tacoma served by the Tacoma NarrowsBridge. In 2000 the trans-Cascade roads like I-90, U.S. 2and State Highway 20 show up as linear suburbansalients into the foothills of the Cascades.

The 2040 scenario is an eye-opener, and many resi-dents of the region will either deny that it could happenas mapped, or will hope dearly that it does not comeabout. By 2040 most of the private rural land in our win-dow is built at least at lower suburban densities, andnew urbanizations emerge east of the I-5 corridor astowns like Redmond and Snohomish are articulated intothe urban footprint.

10

1111

FIGURE 4. Actual and projected housing densities for

the Puget Sound region.

Southeastern Arizona

The deserts of southeastern Arizona host the largest cityin the interior West (Phoenix, at 1,321,045 inhabitants in2000) and its smaller partner to the southeast (Tucsonwith 486,699 residents). Both are growing and spreadingfast, and three Phoenix area suburbs ranked among theten fastest-growing cities in the United States from 2000to 2002: Gilbert came in first, Chandler placed fourth, andPeoria came in fifth.2

We focus on a large region in the southeast corner ofArizona that stretches from Sun City in the northeastdown to Douglas on the U.S./Mexican border. This en-compasses all of Pinal, Graham, Cochise, and Santa Cruzcounties as well as most of Maricopa, Gila, and Pimacounties, and the southernmost portions of Apache andNavajo counties.

To some, Phoenix is the exemplar of sprawl. Butsprawl is difficult to measure in a way that allows com-parisons among cities; some analysts would say that Atlanta and other eastern cities sprawl more than theirwestern counterparts, presumably an effect of public

lands that hem in some western cities. And a recentstudy showed that Phoenix has remained quite denseeven as it grew.3 Still, at this writing (in 2004) Phoenixwas sending out amoeba-like appendages in several di-rections simultaneously. The widely touted plannedcommunity of Anthem was developed in the late 1990s,32 miles north of downtown. Other major residential andcommercial developments extending the edge of subur-ban Phoenix include: Estrella Mountain Ranch, 33 milesto the southwest; various developments around QueenCreek, 36 miles southeast; and Douglas Ranch, a planned83,000-home development, 45 miles to the east of downtown.4

Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Pub-lic Policy calculated Phoenix’s urban area as 9,200 squaremiles in 1998; the city’s circumference was some 150miles and the average new home was built 19–21 milesfrom the city center.5 What is probably the largestplanned community in the Interior West, Douglas Ranch,is sited some 45 miles from downtown, causing a largebulge in the urban footprint across the HassayampaRiver.

Our 2040 scenario shows Phoenix’s developmentfootprint filling pretty much all of the available privateland, at least at lower suburban densities. That growthhas to find its way around a couple of major militarybases (which are, themselves, threatened by encroach-ment), and the Gila River Indian Reservation, which isless likely to see major suburbanization.

Tucson also begins to fill the available private land by2020, and it too impinges on tribal lands (the San Xavier In-dian Reservation), which are not likely to exhibit suburban-density development. In 2000 Tucson was already pressedup against the Coronado National Forest to the north and east, so future growth tends to push south and west.Our scenario suggests a significant exurbanization or“ranchette-ization” of rural valleys outside Tucson (e.g.,the Altar Valley) and south along the Santa Cruz River, animportant riparian corridor.

Between Phoenix and Tucson the Casa Grande area,relatively inconspicuous in 2000, blossoms to fill the SantaCruz Flats by 2040, while spilling down the Gila River.

12

1313

FIGURE 5. Actual and projected housing densities for southeastern Arizona.

The West will continue to grow faster then the nation asa whole for the foreseeable future. The region is attrac-tive to people and to capital investment, especially in aneconomy where both are mobile and quality of life in-creasingly guides business and individual decisionsabout location. The economic and political forces be-hind the growth of recent decades are powerful, andmost community leaders continue to see growth as suc-cess, and to view any decline of housing starts or jobs assomehow a “failure.”

Our projections offer a view of the future that wethink of as “business-as-usual.” But will growth in-evitably result in suburban and rural sprawl that eats upopen space and wildlife habitat and blurs sense of com-munity? This depends, of course, on decisions made byeach state, each community, and each land owner. Toolsare available for making growth “smarter.” Open spaceprotection, downtown revitalization, alternative trans-portation, and comprehensive plans that reflect resi-dents’ visions of good communities (and that are actuallyenforced) can all alter the outcome. In some Westernplaces such tools have already made a difference, and ourprojections understate their success. Oregon and a fewWestern communities have effective growth manage-ment. But we think these projections still capture theoverall growth patterns of most of the West.

Nevertheless, our projections are certain to be wrong,in one way or another. Our population estimates might be

too conservative, or the way our model spreads develop-ment on the landscape may not adequately account for thegrowing demand for rural residences, larger lots, and multiple homes. Alternatively, some political, economic orcultural change might slow regional in-migration or reduce the region’s fertility. Maybe more Westerners willdiscover the joys of living “downtown” rather than out onthe suburban edge.

Growth and land use are largely local issues. Growthoccurs in everybody’s backyard, most new subdivisionsattaching to existing ones and wiping out someone’sopen space view. So Westerners fret over developmenteven as they enjoy both the benefits of growth and theregion’s enduring legacy of great open spaces. The visionand power to alter the future, somehow to balance thebenefits of both growth and land conservation, mustcome from the local level.

Our projections also suggest that there is value in co-ordinating growth and land use patterns among commu-nities and across regional landscapes. The pattern andrate of growth matter as much as its total footprint.Growth tends to follow riparian areas, to fill in spaces be-tween communities, and inevitably to fragment naturaland agricultural landscapes. Protection of communityseparators, viewsheds, agricultural land, and wildlife cor-ridors could yield a new blueprint for the West in whichthe settlement landscape at last matches the region’s incomparable beauty.

AcknowledgmentsThis project was supported by a grant from the Williamand Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Futures team thanksTom Precourt, Patty Limerick, and Roni Ires. At theCU-Boulder Publications and Creative Services depart-ment, Katie Henry managed the project, Polly Chris-tensen created the report design and production, andLinda Besen provided careful editing.

Thanks to John Fielder and the Colorado Sprawl Action Center for use of aerial photographs of development.

14

Conclusion: A “Business-As-Usual” Future?

The Western Futures Growth Model (WFGM) projectsfuture housing density as a main surrogate of overallgrowth and land development. It applies population esti-mates and a set of spatial rules to distribute future housingacross the landscape. The model assumes that all land ex-cept federal or state lands (also minus some private landthat is covered by water or on especially steep slopes) isopen to development. Thus it does not “know” whereland-use tools like conservation easements, urban growthboundaries, or local open space programs have already pro-tected land from development. The model produces sce-narios of the future that can be compared to expectationsor goals, and tested for the effects of land-use planning.

The maps are based on 2000 U.S. Census Bureaublock-group and block-mapping units. Current (2000)patterns of housing density were based directly on theblock-level estimates of housing units. Historical pat-terns (prior to 2000) of housing density were based onblock-group level estimates of the number of housing

units, which were then spread to blocks based on the2000 distribution. Population projections (which drivethe housing density) were based on county-level popula-tion forecasts by state demographers where available,which we extended by adding an increment of popula-tion for each future decade equal to the populationgrowth (total, not rate) in the last available decade of of-ficial estimates (because official estimates do not extendas far into the future as we wished, to 2040).

The model uses these basic rules in projecting futurepatterns: (1) Growth is computed as the average growthin each of four density classes (urban, suburban, exur-ban, and rural), and these are computed locally within aradius of about 1,000 meters from the center of each cen-sus unit. (2) Growth estimates are then spread through-out the entire unit so that future growth is notconstrained to occur where it had previously, though ar-eas that grew in the past are first to get additional den-sity. This approach means that future growth rates occur

in a similar way as they have in the past, but since growthis parameterized locally, not within some artificial ana-lytical unit like a state or county, different valleys or re-gions within a county can grow in a unique way. (3) Thedistribution of new growth is adjusted according to ac-cessibility to the nearest urbanized area. That is, urban-ization and conversion to suburban and exurban landuse typically occurs in locations that are accessible to ur-ban areas, but on the fringe, where land is undeveloped.Accessibility is computed as minutes of travel time fromurban areas along the transportation network (majorroads and highways). (4) The number of housing units isforced to meet the demands of the new populationwithin a county. That is, the number of new units in acounty is proportional to the number of additional peo-ple in a decade. Housing density is not allowed to de-cline over time, even in the few areas of the West that arenot growing or are actually losing population.

15

Appendix: Our Land Use Modeling Methods

Endnotes

1 American Farmland Trust. 1995. Alternatives for Future Urban Growth in California’s Central Valley. Washington,DC.

2 United States Census, “Large Suburban Cities in Westare Fastest-Growing, Census Bureau Reports”; availablefrom http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/

www/2003/cb03-106.html; accessed August 4, 2003.

3 Morrison Public Policy Institute. 1998. Hits and Misses:Fast Growth in Metropolitan Phoenix. Arizona State University.

4 Shaun McKinnon. 2003. “Growth at the Edges: Devel-opment Pushes Beyond Valley’s Boundaries.” The Ari-zona Republic. Available from: http://www.azcentral

.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles; accessed May 12,2003.

5 Morrison Public Policy Institute. 1998. Hits and Misses: Fast Growth in Metropolitan Phoenix. Arizona State University.

Biographies

William R. Travis is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

David M. Theobald is a Research Scientist at theNatural Resource Ecology Laboratory and an AssistantProfessor in the Department of Recreation and Tourismat Colorado State University.

Geneva W. Mixon is a Research Assistant in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Thomas W. Dickinson is an Information and Technology Specialist in the Computing and ResearchServices branch of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

18

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