But developing a community in the desert during a regional drought and amid increasing concerns over the effect global warming could have on future water supplies may seem downright impossible.

How to develop water smart, resilient communities in the face of a global water crisis was discussed in depth during a session at the Urban Land Institute meeting last week.

ULI brought in a developer who works in the Southwest U.S. and water managers from Singapore and Las Vegas to discuss the latest technology, development plans and solutions to this growing problem.

Water scarcity is more than a local concern, it's fast turning into a global crisis. Only 2.5 percent of the world's water is fresh and most of that is trapped in glaciers, which, when they melt, run into the sea.

Water consumption has increased 600 percent worldwide since 1950, but in the same time period population has only increased 235 percent, said Stephane Asseline, a principal of EDAW (an environmental planning and landscaping corporation).

The United Nations reports most people need a minimum of 50 liters of water per day. But richer people and countries have far better access to the shrinking supply. And they often waste more than their poorer counterparts, Asseline said.

In the U.S., for example, each person consumes an average of 600 liters of water per day. In the European Union, people use an average of between 250 to 350 liters per day.

By contrast, Africans only have access to an average of 15 liters of water per person per day, far below the world standard. And the Chinese have access to about 90 liters of water per person per day, but much of it is badly polluted.

Water has always been a concern in the Southwest, where summers are so hot and arid that early residents and travelers as well as modern hikers face a quick death without adequate water supplies or knowledge of where the next spring is located.

But water conservation is just now creeping into the lexicon of developers here, according to Amitabh Barthakur, a principal of Economic Research Associates who has consulted on large master-planned communities in the region.

"Water is probably the most valuable resource in the Southwest," Barthakur said. "What little precipitation we get is the wrong amount at the wrong time. A lot of money is spent moving water from where it is to where it is needed."

The region is at a critical point, he said. The Southwest is facing large-scale groundwater depletion, hard to capture urban runoff, waste and competing interests for water among different municipalities and interests.

About one third of water here is used for discretionary purposes (particularly landscaping). Meanwhile, the snow pack that supplies this water upstream is shrinking, rain is less common and more people are moving here every day.

The best solution he has been able to come up with is to develop only large master-planned communities, where resources can be better allocated, open space and washes can be preserved, residential and public landscaping can be easily restricted and a culture of conservation can be built.

It's not been a particularly popular theory — implementing this water-savvy plan requires developed areas to be more dense in order to preserve the open spaces and washes. And many residents balk at restrictions on landscaping — especially the banning of green lawns.

It often takes careful and strict controls by local governments to make such projects work. Land is one thing that is not in short supply in the West, and if the developer down the road is not preserving open space and washes, is offering larger lots at the same price and isn't implementing conservation policies, most home buyers will go there instead, Barthakur said.

It requires local governments to impose slow-growth strategies and create long-term planning that will lessen the impact of development on everyone. Then, if you make it a pleasant place for people to visit and live and get some buy-in on the environmental benefits, they won't mind a smaller backyard or desert landscaping.

Water is an even more sensitive issue in Nevada, the most arid state in the U.S., said Southern Nevada Water Authority analyst Tom Maher.

The southern part of the state, where most of the people live, gets an average of 4 inches of rain per year — about a third of what some other major desert municipalities get. This rain cannot be counted on to meet residential needs or fill the aquifers and lakes.

The water needed to keep homes and businesses operating is piped in from Lake Mead. The state uses its full 4 percent allotment of river flow and even takes a little more, which is returned to the lake after being treated. The Southern Nevada Water Authority and local water distributors impose strict water-use policies. They often say that if residents would conserve more water, there would be enough to fuel the enormous growth the region has experienced over the last two decades.

That growth is at the heart of the state's water woes. Estimates vary, but Maher said the valley could easily have 3.5 million residents by 2030. Add to that the hundreds of thousands of tourists who flock to the area every week and you are going to need a lot more water.

More than half the area's water use is for residential consumption and most of that goes for landscaping.

To combat waste, the SNWA has encouraged residents to rip out water-sucking lawns in favor of desert friendly xeroscapes. It also has implemented a tiered pricing system — use over the recommended amount of water and the price per gallon goes up.

But even that is not enough. Lake Mead is draining rapidly. It's currently 100 feet below normal. The Water Authority's plan for dealing with the inevitable effects of climate change on the water supply, Maher said, is to build a third intake straw in Lake Mead so water can be taken from the lake's lowest levels.

The SNWA is also planning a series of controversial water collection programs — one in the Three Lakes Valley and the other in Lincoln and White Pine counties.

Opponents of the Lincoln/White Pine County plan have nicknamed it the "water grab" and contend the project would drop the water table in that part of the state so low that area residents would have to drill new wells and habitat for native species and migrating water fowl would be decimated.

The Water Authority has also discussed a water exchange with Southern California through which they would get a desalinization plant in exchange for giving Southern Nevada a share of its Colorado River water allotment.

Maher said that California seems to be game, that every major California community is looking at desalinization, but that getting such a project approved on California's coast, where building is very strictly regulated, could be tricky.

Desalinization, though, might not be such a pie in the sky dream. A process that once was exhorbitantly expensive has become almost affordable.

Singapore, for example, has built several desalinization plants to augment its drinking water supply. And as technology improves, the cost of building and running these plants has dropped, said Thai Pan Tan, director of the water reclamation department in Singapore's Public Works division.

He said the water processed in these plants costs about 50 cents per cubic meter today. It's not as cheap as rainwater or snow melt, but it would be cheaper than importing potable water amid a global water shortage.

It's long-term planning like this that could help cities in the Southwest avert a crippling water shortage.