Urban Design Studio: Rising Phoenix: Intergenerational Housing + Autonomous Universal Access in America's Hottest City
This joint urban studio will focus on one of the most urgent climate, environmental, and urban challenges we face today: heat and urban growth.
Combining research and design, the studio presents a pedagogical model that brings together designers - SMArchS Urbanism (ARCH) and planners (DUSP students) to work together around a shared urban challenge where professional lines are blurred.
The City of Phoenix, and its Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, have asked us to consider three wicked problems facing sunbelt cities as they continue to rapidly grow: affordable infill housing, heat island effects,
and better access to multiple modes of transportation. Students will conduct group planning research as well as site analysis and urban design to comprehensively innovate around the nexus of urban heat--intergenerational housing--autonomous mobility
and universal access design. The goal is to create a new set of block and streetscape typologies for cooler, intergenerational, autonomous living in Phoenix’s South Central neighborhoods.