ABSTRACT
Arizona is an urban state. Most outsiders think that it is populated by cowboys on the range and that there is an Indian on every street corner, but that is far from reality. Those impressions may have been somewhat true in earlier years, for in 1900 only 16 percent of the population was urban, but today over 80 percent of the people live in cities. The population is concentrated in the large metropolitan areas and in Phoenix and Tucson in particular (Map 5.1). Accentuating this population concentration is the fact that 55 percent of the state's population lives in Maricopa County, and 21 percent in Pima, and most of the other 24 percent live in the smaller towns scattered across the state.
