ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the difficulties of protecting minority concentrations from an expanding white suburban population and the problems of adjusting a plan to the competitive demands of Hispanics and African Americans. The design of the adopted plan is especially interesting because it employs the device of a narrow corridor, and thus is similar in kind—if not in bizarre degree—to the affirmative action gerrymanders struck down by the Court in Shaw v. Reno and other decisions. In 1982, the City of Phoenix faced a movement to force the city to convert from its at-large electoral arrangements to a single-member district system. The minority population of Phoenix had grown significantly in the previous two decades and was growing even further in some areas of south Phoenix. The City Council, which had hoped for relatively little change in the politics of the city was taken aback by the first elections within the new district lines.
