Lithium ion batteries are quintessential components of modern life. They are used to power smart devices — phones, tablets, laptops, and are rapidly becoming major elements in the automotive industry. Demand projections for lithium are skyrocketing with production struggling to keep up pace. This drive is due mostly to the rapid adoption of electric vehicles; sales of electric vehicles in 2020 are more than double what they were only a year prior. With such staggering growth it is important to understand how lithium is sourced and what that means for the environment. Will production even be capable of meeting the demand as more industries make use of this valuable element? How will the environmental impact of lithium affect growth? This thesis attempts to answer these questions as the world looks to a decade of rapid growth for lithium ion batteries.

This project was inspired by Dr. Kelli L. Larson’s research which disproved three common landscaping misconceptions in the Phoenix Valley. The first misconception states that newcomers, not long-time Phoenicians more often have and prefer grassy lawns instead of xeric, desert-adapted landscapes when actually the opposite is true. Secondly, the rise in xeric landscapes is not due to personal choice but rather a variety of other factors such as developer decisions. Finally, Dr. Larson’s research also disproves the assumption that people who possess pro-environmental attitudes correspondingly demonstrate sustainable landscaping behavior, and finds that people with those attitudes actually tend to irrigate more frequently in the winter months. Debunking these misconceptions is important because the long-term impacts of global climate change could have effects on water use in the desert southwest, and promoting water conservation in urban residential landscaping is an important step in the creation of sustainable water use policy. <br/><br/>The goal of my project was to make this information more accessible to broader public audiences who may not have access to it outside of research circles. I decided to create a zine, a small batch, hand-made mini-magazine, centered around disproving these myths so that the information could be distributed to broader audiences. I conducted informal stakeholder interviews to inform my design in order to appeal to those audiences, and constructed a 16-page booklet which debunked the myths and encouraged critical thinking about individual water use and urban landscaping habits. The zine included hand-painted illustrations and was constructed as a physical copy with the intention of eventually copying and distributing both a physical and digital version. The purpose of this project is to create a way of accessing reliable information about urban landscaping for residents of the Phoenix Valley, where the climate and geography necessitate water conservation.

In 1974, with a relatively young and fast-growing city in front of them, the City Council of Phoenix, Arizona charged the Phoenix Planning Commission with studying potential plans for urban form. Through the help of over 200 citizens over the next eight months, the village concept was born. Characterized by an emphasis on community-level planning, unique neighborhood character, and citizen input, the village concept plan provides an compelling lens into decentralized planning. In 1979, the Village Concept, as part of the “Phoenix Concept Plan 2000,” was officially adopted by the Phoenix City Council and has remained a component of the city’s long-range planning ever since. Each village features a core of dense commercial and residential activity, with a surrounding periphery featuring varied densities and land usage. There were nine original villages outlined in 1979. As of today, there are 15 villages. Each village has a Village Planning Committee (VPC) made up of 15 to 21 citizens, each being appointed to the committee by the Phoenix Mayor and City Council. This exploratory study was born out of an interest in the Village Planning Committees and a desire to understand their function as a mechanism for citizen participation in urban planning and urban governance. Similarly, with the rapid onset of the automobile and freeway expansion in the decades after WWII, once-insolated communities in the Valley have become connected to each other in a way that raises questions about how to maintain neighborhood’s unique character while promoting sustainable growth and expansion of the city. Phoenix’s Urban Village Model attempts to answer those questions. The efficacy of the model can be considered from two perspectives––how does it aid in making land use decisions, and how does it promote citizen participation? While there is an extensive body of literature on neighborhood councils in the United States and plentiful analysis of the merits of such models as participatory mechanisms and devices of urban planning, there is a lack of discussion of Phoenix’s Urban Village Model. This thesis aims to include Phoenix in this growing body of work.