Land use in the Valley

PHOENIX — The Valley needs more housing.

In order to build housing, land must be zoned for it. Some regions of the Phoenix metro area are zoned for more residential units than others. Some Valley cities have little vacant land remaining, while others have 90% vacant land available for future development. The Maricopa Association of Governments maintains a Valley-wide land use map in 2022 that uses broad zoning categories as a proxy for the complex tapestry of zoning types found throughout the metro area.

ABC15 obtained this data and analyzed it.

Where we live in the valley

According to census data, the Valley has a population of approximately 4.8 million people living in the two counties of Maricopa and Pinal. The two counties have a combined area of ​​14,600 square miles, making the Phoenix metropolitan area the second-largest census-designated metropolitan area behind the San Bernardino-Riverside-Palm Springs region, located east of Los Angeles.

Despite the vast area, the 4.8 million residents live on just six percent of that land; 937 square miles are devoted to single-family and multi-family residential housing.

Apartment residents live on sixty square miles, a little less than one-half of one percent of the Valley’s land.

In fact, only 14% of Maricopa County and 5% of Pinal County are classified as developed land. Another 14% of Maricopa and 20% of Pinal are privately owned but not yet zoned for commercial or residential use. Another category of land available for development is held by the Arizona State Land Trust.

The largest category of land, about 55%, is not zoned for development as it is land owned by tribal entities or the federal government.

Some Valley cities have more residential land use than others. The city with the highest proportion is Paradise Valley. The wealthiest suburb in the Phoenix metropolitan area is zoned for 77 percent single-family residential use and 0.2 percent multifamily use. Following Paradise Valley, with more than half of its available land allocated to residential zones, are Gilbert, Chandler, Litchfield Park and Carefree.

Tempe was the only city in the Phoenix metropolitan area to have 10 percent or more of its land use allocated to multifamily housing. Guadalupe, Fountain Hills, Chandler and Scottsdale followed as the places with the highest proportion of mixed-use residential areas within their boundaries.

The most densely populated places in the Valley are mostly the cities with the least amount of land devoted to residential zoning. The small town of Guadalupe has 0.7 square miles of residential zoning. Using its population estimate for the 2022 American Community Survey, the population density rate came out to 13,000 people per square mile. More than double the city’s actual population.

The only other city in the Valley with a population density greater than 10,000 was El Mirage.

The undeveloped lands of the valley

When you factor in already developed land, two-thirds of the Phoenix metropolitan area is unavailable for development in the near future. Any future development would have to occur in the remaining five thousand square miles that, according to data from the Maricopa Association of Governments, are available for development. Most of this land is in southern Pinal County, an area closer in miles to the Tucson metropolitan area, or in a desolate stretch of desert that stretches from Buckeye to Wickenburg.

In total, just over half of the developable land in Maricopa and Pinal counties is part of the state land trust. The next largest category is privately owned vacant land, which is mostly untouched desert. Agricultural fields make up fifteen percent of the land, and the remaining three percent is a mix of other undeveloped parcels and abandoned agriculture.

Several Valley cities are running out of available land to develop. Tempe has the smallest share, with just three percent remaining. Paradise Valley, Chandler, Guadalupe and Youngtown are also nearly fully developed. In all four, undeveloped land accounts for less than ten percent of the total available land. Gilbert is the last remaining original boomtown. Eight square miles of undeveloped land remain.

At the other end of the spectrum are Valley cities and towns on the outskirts of the metropolitan area with huge amounts of available land. Four of the top five places with the most land are located in Pinal County and span hundreds of square miles. Eighty-eight percent of Coolidge and eighty-one percent of Casa Grande are available for development. The only city in the top five in Maricopa was the city of Surprise with about 68% of available land.

Zoning and land use are only part of the equation. Development in Arizona must also come with assurances of long-term water availability.