School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences
Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.
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- All Subjects: urban planning
- All Subjects: Energy Toolkit
This study examines the creation of a sustainability toolkit that can be implemented in many communities, beginning with Johnson City, Tennessee. This project began in 2019 and will continue to grow indefinitely. For this project, a toolkit that will allow the public to have access to the tools and information they need in order to make their homes more energy-efficient will be created. It will be stocked in the local library in Johnson City Tennessee for free use to the public, as long as they have a library card, they can check out the toolkits. The toolkits will be used by the public, then returned to the library so that they can be restocked and checked out again. This study looks at the market, business and organizational research and the infrastructure of the project. Methods of research included looking at how the need for a change came about, who will benefit, existing similar programs and how they will be used in conjunction with this project, current organizational structures attached to the project, current team infrastructure and what resources are needed to fill the voids. Findings include what financial resources will be required and how they will be acquired, as well as resources that are currently available for this project and what is still needed in order for this project to be successful. As a result of this project, at least two libraries in the Johnson City area will be stocked with several energy toolkits for free and a partnership for future project expansion will have been established. This study looks at the process and what was learned during the implementation of the project.
By avoiding vehicle idling for three minutes every day of the year can reduce 1.4 million metric tons annually, which is equivalent to taking 320,000 cars off the road for the entire year (Canada.ca, 2016). The Automobile Idle Reduction Program (AIRP) is an outreach initiative to prevent carbon emissions from being released into the air by automobiles idling in Maricopa County. The initiative establishes a campaign to promote behavioral changes that target high idling industries: freight and delivery, schools and drive- thru facilities.
Background
Globally, carbon emissions negatively alter the air we breathe and is a leading cause in climate change. These problems adversely affect the global environment and human health. Additionally, they have cancer causing agents in the particulate matter. Unfortunately, over the years, Maricopa County has failed to meet air quality standards for particulate matter pollution which effects the health of residents. By not meeting the air quality standards, Maricopa County can receive sanctions and the Environmental Protection Agency can reject Arizona’s State Implementation Plan. This looming threat can financially impinge the economy of Maricopa County, potentially costing taxpayers a substantial increase in taxes.
Strategy and Solution
To battle the creation of carbon emissions and particulate matter, AIRP has developed a strategy for each industry. In partnership with the Maricopa County Air Quality Department, AIRP will introduce the freight and delivery companies to the Diesel Emission Reduction Act (DERA) Grant promotion to facilitate and fiscally assist with changing older diesel engines into higher efficiency engines that burn cleaner. Provide educators a fifth to eighth grade state approved education program to teach students the importance of vehicle idling reduction at no cost. And work with community organizations to offer a discount at their stores for those patrons who choose to turn their engine off and order inside, rather than idling in the drive-thru facilities. The campaign will market the interest of AIRP to the general public through purposefully placed billboards, light rail wraps, social media pushes, handouts and vinyl stickers.
City governments are increasingly interested in the concept of urban resilience. While theoretical debates continue to develop and critique the value of ‘urban resilience,’ a growing number of cities are organizing policies and projects around the concept. Building urban resilience is viewed as a key concern for cities facing, in particular, climatic threats –although other urban challenges and equity concerns are increasingly prioritized. Support from city leadership and large funding opportunities, such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program, have encouraged some leading cities to create and manage city-wide resilience strategies. Yet pioneering cities have few guideposts to institutionalize resilience. This research evolved out of conversations with city officials in Portland, OR who were interested to learn how other cities were organizing resilience work. We explore how urban resilience is being structured and coordinated in 19 North American cities, focusing on emerging definitions, organizational structures, internal and external coordination efforts, and practitioners’ insights. We situate our findings on emerging governance approaches and lessons learned within the current urban resilience literature on governance by reviewing 40 academic papers and identifying 6 recurrent factors for effective governance. Additionally, we conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with North American resilience practitioners to describe emerging organization trends and share lessons from practice. Based off our interviews, we propose 5 key findings for structuring resilience work in cities effectively. These include: establishing a clear, contextual definition and scope, bringing communities into the process, championing the agreed-upon vision, balancing a centralized and dispersed approach, and recognizing tradeoffs in organizational placement. This research provides practitioners with insights to help facilitate resilience work within their cities and contributed to the scholarly debate on moving resilience theory toward implementation.
This report describes the process by which I created a concise but comprehensive online source of information about best practices in sustainability for urban planners. The goal of the project was to provide accessible information that would help planners in ways that help them comprehend and implement sustainable solutions to common planning problems that are found throughout the United States. To create the website, I researched methods for communicating clearly to planners, took a graduate course in communicating about sustainability, and drew on information that I had compiled on sustainable solutions for transportation, economy, water, green space, and governance.