School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences

BACKGROUND: The City of Phoenix initiated the HeatReady program in 2018 to prepare for extreme heat, as there was no official tool, framework, or mechanism at the city level to manage extreme heat. The current landscape of heat safety culture in schools, which are critical community hubs, has received less illumination. HeatReady Schools—a critical component of a HeatReady City—are those that are increasingly able to identify, prepare for, mitigate, track, and respond to the negative impacts of schoolgrounds heat. However, minimal attention has been given to formalize heat preparedness in schools to mitigate high temperatures and health concerns in schoolchildren, a heat-vulnerable population. This study set out to understand heat perceptions, (re)actions, and recommendations of key stakeholders and to identify critical themes around heat readiness. METHODS: An exploratory sequential mixed-methods case study approach was used. These methods focused on acquiring new insight on heat perceptions at elementary schools through semi-structured interviews using thematic analysis and the Delphi panel. Participants included public health professionals and school community members at two elementary schools—one public charter, one public—in South Phoenix, Arizona, a region that has been burdened historically with inequitable distribution of heat resources due to environmental racism and injustices. RESULTS: Findings demonstrated that 1) current heat safety resources are available but not fully utilized within the school sites, 2) expert opinions support that extreme heat readiness plans must account for site-specific needs, particularly education as a first step, and 3) students are negatively impacted by the effects of extreme heat, whether direct or indirect, both inside and outside the classroom. CONCLUSIONS: From key informant interviews and a Delphi panel, a list of 30 final recommendations were developed as important actions to be taken to become “HeatReady.” Future work will apply these recommendations in a HeatReady School Growth Tool that schools can tailor be to their individual needs to improve heat safety and protection measures at schools.

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.