Well if its not due to water supply then what lead most all development in tuscon to have rock lawns or desert scrub, while all over phoenix in neighborhoods rich and poor there are grass lawns? I assume this has to do with how local water is priced or how local ordinances are applied with respect to the available water supply, although maybe I am wrong in that assumption and that water has really nothing to do with it.
Strictly speaking, Phoenix does have access to more water.
Tuscon is on top of a mesa, and its biome is the upper Sonoran. It's not quite high desert. The aquifer in the mesa has long been drained and Tuscon has to pump water from the central canal uphill to the mesa.
But it isn't as if the Phoenix is really flushed with water. An accident of legacy water rights from Colorado via the canal makes water available, but that doesn't mean that water supply is local nor sustainable.
Further, those existing water rights are being challenged by Native interest -- water rights are recognized by the age of the claim as senior water rights. Arguably, native tribes have the most senior rights, but even those claims that have been acknowledged by the legal system has not been historically enforced.
Tuscon is also where the Arizona laws allowing greywater was pioneered, as well as curb cuts. It seems to me there is more interest in this kind of stuff in Tuscon than there are in Phoenix.
Here are Tuscon development that are neither lawns nor xeriscaping:
> But it isn't as if the Phoenix is really flushed with water. An accident of legacy water rights from Colorado via the canal makes water available, but that doesn't mean that water supply is local nor sustainable.
Odd to be well so informed overall but somehow not aware of the SRP?! I think Phoenix is flush with water because of the CAP and SRP combo. It sits on the confluence of the Salt and Gila rivers while CAP water comes down canals from the CO plateau.
