City of Phoenix's Climate Action Plan Addresses Urban Heat Issues

Phoenix AZ

01 December, 2021

2:28 PM

Description

As a part of the City of Phoenix's efforts to address the growing concern of urban heat, the city's 2021-2022 budget included a $2.8 million climate and heat readiness investment, which contained the resources to create first publicly funded municipal government office focusing on heat anywhere in the world according to Deputy City Manager Karen Peters. The new Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, which is being led by ASU Associate Professor David Hondula, was created as a result of the heat issues that the City of Phoenix is facing, which raise both economic and health related concerns. Maricopa county had a total of 2,414 heat-related emergency room visits and 323 heat-related deaths in 2020. According to the City of Phoenix's 2021 Climate Action Plan that was approved during a City Council Policy Session on Oct. 12, 2021, "If all the annual heat-related deaths in Phoenix happened at once, it would qualify as a natural disaster." Hondula explained that heat-related deaths "are moving in the wrong direction rapidly and Phoenix has the highest rate of those heat-related deaths in our county." In order to create effective and sustainable solutions to these issues, the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation will be guided by the Climate Action Plan, which outlines five different heat related goals. This includes the goal to increase tree and shade canopy coverage across the city to 25 percent by 2030 as a part of the Tree and Shade Master Plan. The plan was approved in 2010 and is supported by over $5 million in annual funding to city departments. One of the initiatives under the Tree and Shade Master Plan is the Streets Transportation Department's Tree Planting Program, and the Department is also launching a new "Cool Corridors Program." The program will plant nine miles of cool corridors each year, according to the Climate Action Plan. The Climate Action plan explains that each corridor will be approximately one mile long and contain up to 200 trees and other cooling assets. Each corridor will provide up to 60 percent shade coverage for pedestrians According to Urban Heat Island/Tree and Shade Subcommittee chair Ginger Sykes Torres, the "hope [is to] to create a network of cool corridors throughout the city both on arterial city streets but also on neighborhood canals and other spaces where pedestrians need them most." Out of the $2.8 million of the City of Phoenix's 2021-2022 budget that was dedicated to climate and heat readiness, $1.5 million "is allocated to support the Street Transportation Department's Cool Corridors Program with additional funds to the Parks Department including five new positions for tree planting and maintenance and updates to our tree inventory," Peters said. Another issue that the new Office of Heat Response and Mitigation is facing is environmental equity. "We have a clear understanding of the inequitable burden of heat and distribution of cooling resources in Phoenix," Hondula said. "Those differences not only result in tangible consequential impacts for the people who live and work in our hottest neighborhoods but also hold back our entire city and region for maximizing their potential." By 2030, the Memorandum of Understanding with American Forests hopes to reach "tree equity" meaning that all of Phoenix's neighborhoods will reach a minimal standard of tree canopy cover. "I'm glad we'll be able to do a two-pronged approach and simultaneously address those who are most vulnerable as well as implement solutions to mitigate heat and produce a more comfortable city," Mayor Kate Gallego said.