The Design Brief The Design Challenges, Objectives, and Recommendations

Built upon all previous efforts, students have identify the main thesis of the design brief:

Design a heat-responsive, multi-modal, and mixed-income neighborhood district that can serve as a model for adapting across Phoenix. This design thesis comes with the following design objectives and recommendations:

Equity: Ensure that regional investments in transit and landscape are accessible to residents in underinvested neighborhoods.

Recommendation A: Creating heat-mitigating street connections to increase accessibility to regional transit investments in Southwest Central City Phoenix.

Recommendation B: Re-connecting Phoenix residents to natural landscapes like the Rio Salado.

Mitigation: Improve Phoenix’s climate resilience through adaptable, modular heat-reduction strategies.

Recommendation A: Promoting new block types that maximize wind and minimize sun exposure.

Recommendation B: Strategically locating the tree canopy for high-impact and high-efficiency investments.

Adaptation: Transition Phoenix toward its climate vision by increasing ridership of lower-emission public transportation modes.

Recommendation A: Restoring brownfields into people-centric, multi-modal transportation hubs.

Recommendation B: Increasing TOD with meaningful affordable housing components appropriate for the neighborhood character and with heat-responsive TOD block design techniques.

Proposed cooling corridor framework

Source: Mikaela Strech