Phoenix has been a concrete jungle for as long as I can remember. It’s consistently hotter than Tucson despite being 100 miles north and only 1000 feet lower in elevation.

I sometimes wonder how much the city could do to help itself by drastically changing its urban planning process.

Add trees (mesquite does well in Tucson) where possible. Cover any blacktop with solar. Use highly reflective/white paints or rock for exposed surfaces. Implement reasonable public transit… except it’s notoriously hard to design for such sprawl.

Another fun idea would be to dig deep and create large subsurface buildings to reduce AC usage.

There are so many buildings in the southwest that are built to withstand the temperature differences 100 years ago. Seems like a new standard needs to be adopted.