Article Title: County officials defend water stances

Excerpt: "There are plans to build thousands of homes but without the water assurances they won't be built," Byers said. "Trish Groe doesn't have a clue what we're doing. It's just popular being against Rhodes and other developers." The Kingman supervisor said Groe has come to only a few meetings in Phoenix dealing with water issues. Byers, a member of Statewide Water Advisory Group, and other local representatives have attended almost every meeting. Byers said the county has challenged developers with complying with the 100-year water supply and so far developers have complied. But the county cannot force a developer to comply with the 100-year water assurance, only the state can do that.

Article Title: Suburban property setbacks don't make sense anymore

Excerpt: "Let every house be placed ... in the middle of its plat," said one of America's best-known city planners, "so there may be ground on each side for gardens or orchards or fields, that it may be a green country town, which will never be burnt and always wholesome."

Excerpt: Given the long historic trend of increasing land prices, smaller lots and bulkier houses, however, many suburban setback requirements no longer make sense. Today's typical 5-foot side yard setbacks, for example, serve mainly to mandate sunless, useless slivers of land between houses. Rather than doing away with these vestigial separations altogether, moribund planning codes stubbornly cling to them, stymieing the growth of more intelligent arrangements.

Excerpt: If these sound like radical new ideas, they're not. Cities in Asia and the Middle East have benefited from such arrangements for thousands of years. Nevertheless, Americans who'd like to develop their own land more intelligently still face an almost insurmountable setback battle in most planning jurisdictions. After 300-some-odd years, even William Penn might find that pretty silly.