Is Phoenix Going Green?
Travel Blog • Joanna Kakissis • 05.14.08 | 12:00 PM ET
If you’ve visited Arizona’s largest city, you’ve probably gotten used to seeing it as a dry and increasingly smoggy desert metropolis that’s trying a little too hard to keep its lawns thriving. But if some in the city have their way, Phoenix will look very different in years to come. The city, reports Grist, has embarked on a slow but steady path to sustainability—embracing light-rail transportation and biofuels for its fleet of vehicles—and even greater density downtown to combat sprawl.
Writer Lisa Selin Davis also notes that the city has partnered with the four-year-old Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University to study and improve environmental practices.
Could fast-growing Phoenix soon be an eco-city that celebrates, without trying to erase, its desert beauty? Davis says the idea is “blossoming as slowly as a saguaro.” But it’s blossoming nevertheless.
Photo by laszlo-photo via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
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Lorin Thwaits 05.15.08 | 9:05 AM ET
As a resident, I must say that there is still much to be done. High gas prices have fortunately shifted people’s thinking about how far they can live from work. That will lower the smog level a little. But there’s many other areas left untapped. The vast amount of available solar energy is mind-boggling. I envision arrays of heliostats and mirrors, focused on towers that capture all the heat. Also fleets of small vehicles that are charged from the sun. And hopefully someday lighter-colored asphalt to limit the incredible amount of heat gain we endure from all the blacktop. Temps on the freeways are 5 degrees higher than in other parts of town, which is murder in the summer. And the town itself is 5-10 degrees hotter than the surrounding desert. The “heat island” effect is brutal.