Gober & BurnsPhoenix’s Urban Fringe

The Size and Shape ofPhoenix’s Urban Fringe

Patricia Gober & Elizabeth K. Burns

The relentless march of residential development at the urban frontier has capturedthe attention of urban geographers and planners since Blumenfeld’s classic study

of metropolitan expansion in 1954. Blumenfeld likened growth at the fringe of thePhiladelphia metropolitan area to a “tidal wave” of metropolitan expansion. Writingsome forty years later, geographer John Fraser Hart (1991) used the metaphor of “bowwave” to describe urban expansion in the New York metropolitan area. These historicalstudies described the dramatic transition in land use on the edges of metropolitanareas as urban replaces rural and the built-up area meets open space.

Using a unique new data set of housing completions, we now have an opportunity toupdate and refine the study of the urban fringe over a shorter time frame and a finergeographic scale. Past studies of urban fringe development in North America reliedheavily on census data and used counties, municipalities, and clusters of census tracts asunits of analysis (Blumenfeld 1954; Hart 1991; Pond and Yeates 1993). Althoughimmensely useful in describing the general pace and direction of urban fringe develop-ment, these studies could not, because of their coarse geographic scale, tell us muchabout the internal structure of the fringe itself.

We incorporate approaches to urban fringe morphology analysis that recognize therole of local building cycles, the complexity of landowner decisions, and the impor-tance of preexisting land uses (Whitehand 1987). We use a spatially referenced data set,assembled by the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), that contains 235,122new housing completions in the Phoenix metropolitan area from 1 April 1990 through30 June 1998 to examine how the wave of new construction spreads over time andthrough space during a period of rapid economic growth and metropolitan expansion.Results yield preliminary generalizations about the pace of rural-to-urban land conver-sion, a model of urban fringe morphology, and further hypotheses about developmentstrategies on the urban fringe.

This study has wider interest in examining urban fringe formation in fast growingmetropolitan areas. Metropolitan Phoenix is widely viewed as the prototype of low-density development. We contend that the processes of urban fringe formation identi-fied here have particular importance for newer metropolitan areas whose growth con-ditions mimic those of Phoenix.

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Journal of Planning Education and Research 21:379-390© 2002 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning

Abstract

Annual changes in the amount and loca-tion of residential fringe development inmetropolitan Phoenix are tracked from1990 to 1998 using local records of hous-ing completions. New development cov-ered a wide geographic area in 1990 butbecame more geographically concen-trated with time. Metropolitan Phoenix isorganized into five belts: (1) an outer ruralzone, (2) an area of pioneer settlementwhere the construction of single-familyhousing began in 1990, (3) a peak zone ofintensive development, (4) a zone of infill,and (5) a built-up area where little newconstruction occurs. Multiple-family hous-ing construction occurs primarily in theinfill zone. Between 1995 and 1998, newhome construction moved outward at thepace of almost one-half mile per year to anaverage distance of 18.94 miles from themetropolitan center. Planners can use in-formation about the size, shape, type, andtiming of urban fringe development to an-ticipate infrastructure and service needs.

Patricia Gober is a professor of geographyat Arizona State University where she isaffiliated with the Central Arizona-PhoenixLong Term Ecological Research (LTER)Program. Her research is concentrated onissues of population and urban geography.She is a past president of the Association ofAmerican Geographers and currentlyserves on the Board of Trustees of the Pop-ulation Reference Bureau.

Elizabeth K. Burns is a professor of geogra-phy at Arizona State University where sheis affiliated with the Central Arizona-Phoe-nix Long Term Ecological Research(LTER) Program. Her research focuses onissues of urban transportation. She servedas executive-on-loan to the city of Phoenixin 1998-99 and is a member of the Ameri-can Institute of Certified Planners;ekburns@asu.edu.

� Background

In reviewing the literature, three distinct approaches to thestudy of the internal structure, formation, and evolution of theurban fringe guide our research. First, there is widespread rec-ognition that metropolitan areas expand outward. At very gen-eralized spatial scales, maps of urban expansion show concen-tric growth with linear extensions as local economicconditions, adoption of available transportation technologies,and housing demand are translated into decisions to developland parcels. For more than thirty years, the study of urbanexpansion has been informed by the character of land conver-sion and urban fringe land markets (Clawson 1971; McMillen1989; Thorson 1994), the process of land development andactors involved (Kaiser and Weiss 1970; Brown, Phillips, andRoberts 1981; Gore and Nicholson 1991), and the role of pub-lic planning and private investment (Pacione 1990; Bryant1995; Daniels 1999). The urban fringe emerges as a transi-tional zone of rural-to-urban land use change and land valuechange beyond the built-up edge of urban areas (Firey 1946;Beesley and Russwurn 1981; Bryant, Russwurm, and McLellan1982; Evans and Mabbitt 1997).

A second approach focuses on specific efforts to conceptu-alize the urban fringe using a wave metaphor that captures thefront of new development at the edge of rapidly growing NorthAmerican cities (Blumenfeld 1954; Boyce 1966). Blumenfeld’s(1954) classic study of 1900 to 1950 population growth in thePhiladelphia area used groups of census tracts to study one-mile-wide concentric zones of development stretching outfrom the city center. In the process of expansion, his zoneswent through a series of stages beginning with a period of slowpopulation growth and the first visible signs of urbanization, asecond period of rapid population growth representing thepeak of population growth, a leveling-off period after the peakhas passed, and a final period of population decline. Becausethe crest of Blumenfeld’s wave of new development was locatedat three to six miles from the city center in 1900 to 1920 and atseven to ten miles in 1940 to 1950, he concluded that the wavepushed outward at the rate of about one mile per decade. In asimilar vein, Hart (1991) used the notion of a “bow wave,” thestanding wave that remains immediately in front of the bow ofa ship moving through water, to characterize the expandingedge of the urban area. He argued that the dynamism of landuse change at the fringe often has been overlooked as scholarsand policy makers try to fix the urban fringe location.

In recent studies of rural-to-urban land conversion, Pondand Yeates (1993; 1994a, 344; 1994b) posited a wavelike model.They identify five stages, beginning with an agricultural stagecharacterized by little urban development, followed by aperiod in which agricultural land begins to be drawn into the

urban field and latent signals of future development appear. Ata third stage, visible signs of urbanization reach a pinnacle,while in a fourth period, exurban and transitional propertiesbecome absorbed into the expanding urban area. At a finalstage, urban development is complete. The ramification of thismodel is that planning interventions should be enacted earlyin stages 1 and 2, before the crest of the wave of new develop-ment forecloses opportunities to shape the developmentprocess.

Inherent in the stage and wave models of urban fringedevelopment is the notion of a spatial diffusion process. Theurban fringe emerges from the cumulative impact of changeover time reflected in an S-shaped curve. Whether measuringland use change or population change, the process starts with afew early instances, widespread adoption then quickly affects amajority of the area, and the process is completed when lateadopters make the transition. Studies do not clarify whetherthese stages occur uniformly within the urban fringe.

A third approach is the long-standing tradition of Euro-pean scholarship on urban fringe morphology based on, first,German, and then English and Scottish studies of cities withdetailed historical records about local economic conditions,residential and nonresidential building cycles, and parcel-based changes in property ownership (Whitehand 1987). In1960, M.R.G. Conzen established this approach in English-language research when his study of Alnwick, Northumber-land confirmed the emergence, redevelopment, and persis-tence of urban fringe belts within an urban area across multi-ple decades and successive cycles of building activity.Whitehand’s (1967, 1987) studies of Glasgow and neighbor-hoods of London confirm that the pattern of fringe land useemerges from an uneven pace of urban development. Duringa building cycle, parcels for residential use are commonlydeveloped first, while parcels occupied for institutional usessuch as hospitals, churches, schools, parks, fields for teamsports, and golf courses are developed last.

The detailed and time-consuming analysis characteristic ofthis approach to urban fringe morphology requires integra-tion of regional economic and building cycle information withparcel-specific land use and ownership change. This approachhas the value, however, of confirming general patterns ofurban change from place-specific findings that reflect the localrange of public and private decisions (M. P. Conzen 1968;Vance 1977; Whitehand 1987). Healey connects this traditionwith British planning practice through examination of landuse change (see Healey et al. 1988) and, more recently, thereshaped public-private context for city rebuilding during theThatcher government of the 1980s (Healey et al. 1992).

To summarize, our study of the urban fringe of metropoli-tan Phoenix draws elements from all three traditions. The gen-

380 Gober & Burns

eral process of urban fringe creation and change can beexpected to reflect local economic, social, and planning condi-tions. Our research occurs within a regional economic con-text, focuses on change in broad categories of single-familyand multifamily residential development, and includes theexpectation that wavelike expansion can be identified both intime and in space. We pose the following research questions:

1. Does the fringe operate as a wave of new home construc-tion? If so, where does this wave peak, and how wide an areadoes it encompass? What happens to this wave as economicexpansion and population growth continue?

2. How does the character of urban fringe change over time?How fast does the crest of the wave of urban expansionmove? What is the internal structure of this emergingurban fringe? What are the characteristics of zones thatprecede, coincide with, and follow the peak ofdevelopment?

3. Where and when is single-family and multiple-family hous-ing constructed along this continuum of newdevelopment?

� Data and Method

A newly available data set allows us to examine the urbanfringe at much finer spatial and temporal scales than has beendone previously. This data set, a georeferenced record of hous-ing completions in the metropolitan area, was assembled byMAG, the local council for governments. MAG, in its role as aregional clearinghouse, maintains quarterly and annual tabu-lations of residential completions submitted by twenty-sevenlocal jurisdictions, including twenty-four cities, two Indiantribes, and unincorporated Maricopa County. A completion isrecorded on the date that the certificate of occupancy isawarded. Each jurisdiction reports completions by residentialcategory, including single-family units, townhouse or condo-minium units, apartments, and mobile homes. Each construc-tion completion record also contains the completion date, per-mit type, number of residential units, street address, andlatitude and longitude coordinates.

We divided the metropolitan area into four quadrantsroughly equal in area (Southeast, Northeast, Northwest, andSouthwest) along the lines of Sargent (1988) because eachquadrant has local conditions that affect the extent and formof recent residential development (Figure 1). In the South-east, Indian lands do not block the main path of expansion,agricultural lands are available for rapid conversion to urbanuses, and there are few public open spaces or physical barriersto expansion. In the Northeast, barriers include Indian landsand mountainous terrain where public open spaces have beenreserved. Development primarily is on open desert where ini-tial costs are higher than in areas where large tracks of irrigated

agricultural land are available. To the Northwest, agriculturallands are readily available. In the Southwest quadrant, physicalbarriers, the nation’s largest municipal park (the 18,000-acreSouth Mountain Park), lack of internal access on arterialstreets, and social bias against minority residents have limitedlarge-scale development.

For each year between 1990 and 1998, we used a Geo-graphic Information System (GIS) to measure the distancebetween each of 235,122 housing completions and a centralreference point in downtown Phoenix. The center of metro-politan Phoenix is an appropriate regional reference pointfrom which to measure distance because, despite the prepon-derance of decentralizing forces in the metropolitan area, cen-tral Phoenix remains a viable economic, cultural, and trans-portation node. More than 11 percent of regionalemployment in 1995 was concentrated within a centralemployment district in downtown Phoenix and nearby centers(Figure 1). The center remained a point of high accessibilitywithin the regional freeway system, and the city of Phoenixengaged in an aggressive program of downtownredevelopment.

We then took the 235,122 distances and graphed them byone-mile units radiating out from the central reference pointin downtown Phoenix. Graphs represented the number of newhousing completions at each one-mile distance from the citycenter in each quadrant for each year between 1990 and 1998.To smooth out the graphs, we calculated five-mile runningmeans for one-mile sectors. We also calculated the mean dis-tance from the city center for each of the four quadrants on anannual basis between 1990 and 1998. Results revealed the loca-tion of the peak of new home construction, how concentratednew development was around that peak, and how far that peakmoved from 1990 to 1998. Separate analyses for single- andmultiple-family housing completions allowed us to draw con-clusions about where apartment and condominium construc-tion fits into the overall pattern of urban fringe development.

� Phoenix: The Study Setting

Rural-to-urban land conversion in contemporary Phoenixoccurs in a regional setting of desert agricultural developmentthat began more than one hundred years ago. At the end of thenineteenth century, irrigated agriculture in the Valley of theSalt River attracted a steady stream of migrants from the Eastand Midwest. By the end of World War I in 1920, 279,000 acreswere under cultivation, the historical peak for agriculturalland in the Valley (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau ofthe Census 1920). The city of Phoenix was the commercial andbusiness center for a prosperous agricultural hinterland. Today’s

Phoenix’s Urban Fringe 381

suburbs began as agricultural villages providing low-ordergoods and services to surrounding farming populations(Sargent 1988; Luckingham 1989).

World War II triggered an economic boom and populationexplosion for Phoenix through the region’s air force bases anddefense industries (Luckingham 1989). Hundreds of thou-sands of military personnel who passed through the regionduring the war years were potential migrants, and the militarypresence laid the groundwork for later development of theelectronics industry, a mainstay of postwar economic

development. By 1955, an expanding metropolitan area wasfocused on the city of Phoenix. Permissive state annexationlaws, low development costs, and expanding demand fueledlow-density growth.

Although urban growth steadily displaced agriculturalland, the region maintained a significant agricultural presenceas recently as 1975 (Figure 2). After 1975, the sheer magnitudeof population growth and new home construction, as well asaggressive municipal annexation, supported the strong prefer-ence for low-density, single-family living (Hepner 1983).

382 Gober & Burns

Figure 1. Morphology of urban Phoenix.

Phoenix’s Urban Fringe 383

Figure 2. Changes in agricultural and urban land use in metropolitan Phoenix, 1912 to 1995.Source: Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project.

Agricultural land was relegated to the edges of the metropoli-tan area. Although some urban development, particularly inthe mountainous and picturesque northeastern quadrant,occurs on open desert, the majority of new homes, stores, andoffices today are built on formerly agricultural land (Figure 2).While municipal annexation laws were modified by the statelegislature in the mid-1980s, urban land development contin-ues to occur primarily within cities where developers have anassured supply of water (Gammage 1999).

The character of urban development in recent years pro-vides timely evidence for examining the wave model of urbanfringe development. Historic land use maps (Figure 2) assem-bled by the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term EcologicalResearch (LTER) Project from multiple sources includingaerial photographs and U.S. Geological Survey topologicalmaps provide only generalized summaries of urban growthpatterns. Even census-based analyses of urban growth patternsmask local detail because they provide five- and ten-year snap-shots that overgeneralize the urban growth process. Althoughthe fringe moves inexorably outward each decade, its structurefrom one year to the next in a rapidly growing boom and busteconomic environment like Phoenix’s is exceedingly irregular.

Since 1990, metropolitan Phoenix has experienced highdemand for new housing from rapid population growth.Between 1990 and 1999, the population of Maricopa County,which includes metropolitan Phoenix, grew by 34.8 percent or739,294 persons to 2,861,395— more numerical growth thanin any other single county in the nation (U. S. Department ofCommerce, Bureau of the Census 2000). Residential growthoccurred primarily at the urban fringe because land and devel-opment costs there are low, employment opportunities areavailable within a forty-five-minute commute, and growth man-agement regulations are weak. To accommodate growth,Phoenix-area communities annexed a total of 214 squaremiles—the land mass of El Paso, Texas—between 1990 and1997 (Gober 1998).

The decade spans an upswing in one local building cyclewith early years of local economic recession and rapid recoveryin later years. Like the nation’s housing industry as a whole,Phoenix’s housing market is volatile, producing bursts of newhome construction during boom cycles and little activity dur-ing down periods (Figure 3). The most recent cycle began in1990 with a sluggish new housing market occasioned by over-building in the mid-1980s, high vacancy rates, low job growth,and low net in-migration—the region’s traditional engine ofnew home construction. An extremely tight financial marketresulting from the virtual collapse of the region’s savings andloan industry compounded these problems. The slow housingmarket of the early 1990s was exacerbated by the nationalrecession in 1990-91. As the local and national economies

rebounded, new housing construction steadily increased,reaching a peak of almost fifty thousand new building permitsin 1998. The number of new single-family completions estab-lished a new record of 35,574 in 1998, surpassing the previoushigh of 30,479 during the hyperinflationary period of the late1970s (Arizona Real Estate Center 1999).

The vast majority of this new housing constructionoccurred at the outer margins of the urbanized area (Figure4). Although much of the outer ring of the urbanized areaexperienced some new home construction, traffic analysiszones (TAZs) with more than five hundred net residentialcompletions (number of completions minus the number ofdemolitions) were focused on a belt of peripheral land thatclosely followed the pattern of new and proposed freewaydevelopment. Note also the lack of significant development inthe southwestern quadrant of the Valley and the paucity of newhousing construction in the interior of the metropolitan area.Although the city of Phoenix paid lip service to the importanceof inner-city redevelopment, central residential locations suf-fered from a poor infrastructure, a weak retail core, and lack ofparcels of sufficient size to merit new development (Gober,Knowles-Yanez, and James 1998).

� Results

Waves of Urban Expansion

None of the four quadrants showed evidence of well-defined waves of development in 1990 or 1993 during the early

384 Gober & Burns

Figure 3. Number of building permits in Maricopa County, 1980 to

1998.Source: Arizona State University, Center for Business Research.

years of the business and building cycle (Figures 5a-5d). Thedistribution of new housing completions in the Southeast, forexample, looked more like double humps than waves indicat-ing that early development was widely distributed across a rela-tively large geographic area (Figure 5a). An initial peak waslocated between ten and twelve miles from the city center, butthe leading edge of new construction—represented by a sec-ond peak—was at the 17- to 18-mile mark. As the recoverybegan early in the decade, developers appeared to engage intwo strategies: the filling in of close-in, more accessible parcelsof land and, at the same time, expanding outward to developvirgin properties. This two-pronged strategy of developmentended by 1996 when new home construction was overwhelm-ingly concentrated in the outer sector. Only at this point do webegin to see the stereotypical wave of new development. Theaverage distance of new home construction in the Southeastquadrant increased from 16.36 miles in 1990 to 16.47 in 1993,18.81 miles in 1996, and 20.56 miles in 1998, with the greatestgains coming in more recent years (Table 1). Between 1995and 1998, development pushed outward at a rate of about 1mile per year. Ironically, despite this surge in activity, new

home construction took place across a narrower geographicband than was the case earlier in the decade. The standarddeviation of the distance of new home construction declinedfrom 25.2 miles in 1990 to 20.8 miles in 1998.

One behavioral interpretation of our findings is that devel-opers “learn” during the development cycle. As new single-family construction resumes after an economic downturn, itwill be unclear to builders where the more desirable and profit-able locations will be. Therefore, pioneering builders operatein an individualistic manner over a wide spatial domain.Although we do not know how profitable their enterprises are,we do know that they were successful in obtaining the financ-ing to build. Later builders and lenders presumably learn fromthe earlier builders’ experience. Taking a more conservativeposture, these builders and lenders take fewer risks in siteselection and focus their activities on the peak zone of newhome construction.

Development in the Northeast and Northwest followed asimilar pattern during the 1990s, when construction occurredacross a wide geographic area early in the decade but becamemore geographically focused by the end (Figures 5b and 5c).

Phoenix’s Urban Fringe 385

Figure 4. Net housing completion density.

There was never enough construction in the Southwest todevelop a meaningful and illuminating distribution, althoughit is interesting to note the bimodal and spread-out distribu-tion of development in a region that was clearly at the very earlystages of urban fringe development in 1998 (Figure 5d).

Results suggest that new territory is being settled at a very earlystage of the business cycle when the overall pace of develop-ment is slow. By the time the public is sensitized to the need forurban growth management, development already has a foot-hold in many outlying areas, and the opportunity for

386 Gober & Burns

Figure 5. Number of housing completions by distance from the city center, 1990, 1993, 1996, and 1998.

Table 1.Average distances of new single-family home construction, 1990 through 1998.

Total Southeast Northeast Northwest Southwest

Year Distance Number Distance Number Distance Number Distance Number Distance Number

1990 16.69 8,859 16.36 3,930 17.06 2,249 18.10 2,483 19.23 1971991 16.79 12,083 16.67 5,442 17.15 3,176 17.74 3,238 18.89 2271992 16.64 16,750 16.50 7,205 17.35 4,806 17.09 4,455 19.58 2841993 17.03 19,482 16.47 7,753 18.08 5,481 17.86 5,861 16.75 3871994 17.44 25,001 17.08 10,314 18.36 6,612 18.07 7,644 16.82 4311995 17.58 25,859 17.72 10,461 19.06 6,870 17.34 7,943 16.67 5851996 17.98 30,553 18.81 11,883 19.04 8,245 17.34 9,696 18.80 7291997 18.68 28,333 19.92 10,262 19.55 7,537 18.19 9,716 19.61 8181998 18.94 29,976 20.56 10,498 19.44 8,142 18.48 10,432 20.14 904

meaningful growth management and open-space preservationis long past.

The focus of new home construction in 1998, representingareas of profitability for builders and lenders and attractivelocations for buyers of new homes, was remarkably similaracross the four quadrants: 20.56 miles from the central busi-ness district in the Southeast, 19.44 miles in the Northeast,18.48 miles in the Northwest, and 20.14 miles in the Southwest(Table 1). Although the quadrants have markedly differentaccessibility conditions, socioeconomic orientations, anddevelopment histories, it appeared that metropolitan-wideforces in the land and housing markets, as well as consumerpreferences, focused development within a relatively narrowband of territory located between 18 and 21 miles from thecenter of the city in all directions. For the metropolitan area asa whole, the peak of new home construction moved outward ata pace of around 0.2 miles per year from 1990 to 1994 and then0.5 miles per year from 1995 through 1998.

The narrow band of new development that characterizedthe urban fringe during the mid- and late 1990s is consistentwith Gammage’s (1999) assertion that metropolitan Phoenixhas a “cleaner edge” than most American cities (p. 68). Subur-ban development in desert areas is, in Gammage’s view, anorderly and contiguous process because development is possi-ble only where an infrastructure exists for water delivery. Thus,leapfrog development five or ten miles from the edge of theurban area is rare.

In answer to our first set of research questions, new devel-opment did not appear in a wavelike form in early stages of thebuilding cycle. It covered a surprisingly wide geographic areaand involved both the filling in of accessible parcels of land,passed over during the previous building cycle, and expansionto virgin properties at the outer margins of the built-up area.Only as the pace of development picked up did new home con-struction become concentrated in the outer zone and displaythe expected wave. During the course of development, newhousing activity moved steadily outward (the average distancefrom the city center for a new home completion increasedfrom 16.36 to 20.56 in the Southeast, from 17.06 to 19.44 in theNortheast, 18.10 to 18.48 in the Northwest, and from 19.23 to20.14 in the Southwest) but became more geographically con-centrated in the process.

Zones of Urban Fringe Development

Similar patterns of development within the three quad-rants for which we have a sufficient number of observations tocreate meaningful distributions suggest a five-zone spatial

model of urban fringe development. The model reflects thefact that a large swatch of land is affected by new development,although different sectors are influenced at different rates andin different ways. Using the Southeast as an example, farthestfrom the city center, we found an outer area more than thirtymiles from the city center that was still rural in character andlargely untouched by visible urban development (Figure 6a).Next was an area of pioneer settlement between twenty and thirtymiles from the city center where building began in the early1990s and where it intensified during the study period. It wasthe leading edge of new development. The third zone con-tained the peak of new home construction during the late1990s between thirteen and twenty miles from the city center,where 46 percent of new housing completions occurred in1998. Following the peak was a zone of infill, in which construc-tion peaked in 1993 and then tapered off as large tracts of landfor large-scale development became scarce and new develop-ment was increasingly focused on the outer edge. And finally,there was a zone of built-up area where relatively little new con-struction took place. In the Southeast quadrant, only 697 ofalmost 78,000 single-family homes were built on land withineight miles of downtown Phoenix.

The Northeast and Northwest quadrants followed similar,although not identical, development trajectories (Figures 6band 6c). In the Northwest, the pattern of development wasmore one of in situ intensification than gradual movementoutward. Indeed, the average distance of a new home construc-tion increased only 0.4 miles (from 18.10 to 18.48) during thedecade (Table 1). Thus, in the zone of infill, there was contin-ued development rather than the tapering off of constructionthat occurred in the Southeast and Northeast. We attribute thisintensification to the widespread availability of land in theNorthwest. Until recently, the main thrust of growth in theregion had been in southward and eastward directions, leavingrelatively large tracts of developable land in the Northwest.Only recently has the Northwest emerged as a popular regionfor development.

In answer to our second set of research questions, welearned that the fringe moved quickly in some directions butmore slowly in others, and there was a distinct internal struc-ture to the evolving fringe. Development diffused outwardquickly in the Southeast but more slowly in the Northeast andNorthwest. We also learned that it is less accurate to view thefringe as a narrow line of new development at the outer mar-gins of the metropolitan area than as a process that affectslarge parts of the metropolitan region, albeit at different ratesand in different ways. Only areas more than thirty miles fromthe city center and those within about six miles had little newhousing construction during the 1990s. In between were zones

Phoenix’s Urban Fringe 387

where the pace of new development rapidly accelerated from alow base in 1990 (twenty to thirty miles from the city center),where new housing construction became strongly peaked(thirteen to twenty miles), and where the pace of new develop-ment slowed as developable land became increasingly scarce(six to thirteen miles).

Single- and Multiple-Family Housing Development

To determine where multiple-family housing constructionfits into the model of urban fringe development, we superim-posed the distribution of multiple-family completions onto thedistribution of single-family completions for the period ofmost rapid growth between 1996 and 1998. There was rela-tively little apartment and condominium construction before1996 because overbuilding during the 1980s undermined themarket for new construction long after the economy as a wholeand the single-family sector in particular rebounded. White-hand (1987, 42-43) suggests that the location of multiple-familyhousing in relation to single-family housing reflects principlesof land use bidding. The more intense form of housing bids formore accessible or inner locations during a building boom butis outbid by less intense housing in times of decline.

In keeping with Whitehead’s assertions, apartment andcondominium construction in Phoenix lagged the crest of thewave of new single-family housing construction and corre-sponded to the zone of infill in the three quadrants wherethere was sufficient construction to generate distributions(Figures 7a, 7b, and 7c). Multiple-family housing, with itshigher population densities, higher lending risks, and moretransient occupants followed single-family housing. Pioneersettlement of the fringe, when land prices are low and vacantland readily available, is dominated by single-family home con-struction. Apartments require an existing market that is estab-lished only after the pioneering single-family homes have beenbuilt. Their transient occupants are less willing than more sta-ble single-family dwellers to put up with the inconveniencesassociated with emerging public and private services becausetheir commitment to the neighborhood is weaker and shorterterm. Moreover, as urban development progresses, landbecomes more scarce and expensive, and thus more appropri-ate for a more intensive and profitable land use like multiple-family housing.

� Conclusions

This study informs on the year-to-year process of urbanfringe development in a rapidly growing southwestern city.Availability of individual housing completion data from MAGallowed us to describe urban fringe development at much finergeographic and temporal scales than previous empirical stud-ies of the urban fringe and to answer our three initial questionsabout the size, shape, and character of the urban fringedevelopment.

First, we asked whether the fringe operates as a single waveof development, where it is located, and how large is its

388 Gober & Burns

Figure 6. Model of urban fringe development and number of housing

completions by distance from the city center.

geographic extent. We learned that the urban fringe did not fitthe model of a highly peaked, single wave of new developmentearly in the 1990s. Only later in the building cycle did the famil-iar wavelike pattern emerge. Moreover, the fringe was regionalin scale and covered a far wider area than any one local jurisdic-tion. Its farthest extent was set early in this building cycle of the1990s. Intensification occurred within this extent in a concen-tric fashion outward from the edge of built-up development,although its pace varied within quadrants of the metropolitanarea. This finding confirms the value of establishing early andcomprehensive growth management plans, open-space con-servation and preservation efforts, development impact fees,

revised zoning regulations, and design guidelines appropriateto new suburban developments and landscapes to shape thistransition. Moreover, these planning activities need to be coor-dinated across multiple jurisdictions because urban fringetransition occurs at a regional scale. Early trends in one com-munity will signal development changes likely to affect adja-cent communities in the very near future.

Second, we asked how the internal structure of the fringeevolves and changes over time, and we identified five clearzones of fringe development. Moving outward, they include(1) a built-up area with little new housing construction; (2) azone of infill activity in which smaller parcels bypassed by thepeak of new construction are filled in; (3) a zone of peak devel-opment in which new home construction is concentrated; (4)a distant zone of pioneer settlement with less new home con-struction; and finally, (5) the rural area with little or no visiblesigns of urban development.

And third, we asked where and when single- and multiple-family housing is built along the continuum of new develop-ment. We found that multifamily housing not only lags single-family construction in time but lags it in distance from thebuilt-up edge. It is concentrated in the zone of infill activity.These findings suggest that once the wide extent of the fringeis set, planners can anticipate a more regular outward move-ment of development. This pattern can guide the timing ofurban infrastructure and institutional improvements for trans-portation, water, and sewer facilities, as well as schools andtheir coordination in capital improvement programs.Allowing for some intensification of demand in the zone ofinfill, as higher-density multifamily development occurs, willhelp anticipate the needed capacity of urban facilities in theimmediate and more distant future.

Public debate in Phoenix has moved away from the simplis-tic “growth is good” mantra of the 1950s through the 1980s to amore nuanced discussion of the pros and cons of managingthe form and density of future development via urban develop-ment boundaries (Gammage 1999). Studies such as ours pro-vide input to this discussion in the form of information abouthow quickly irrigated farmland and open desert are convertedto new home construction, about the changing accessibility ofopen space and mountain views as the metropolitan areamarches outward, about the pace of urban land consumptionin Phoenix relative to other cities, and about how isolated theinner city has become in terms of new home construction.

Authors’ Note: We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Cen-tral Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project andthe assistance of Karen Blevins in preparing the geographic informationsystems files.

Phoenix’s Urban Fringe 389

Figure 7. Number of single- and multifamily housing completions by dis-

tance to the city center, 1995 through 1998.

� References

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