Phoenix Shade Plan Focuses on Bus Stops

A “shade plan” developed by the city of Phoenix takes aim at extreme heat with street trees and “engineered shade” to protect residents at bus stops and in other public spaces. As Ysabelle Kempe notes in Smart Cities Dive, “The recently approved plan is an update and expansion of Phoenix’s 2010 Tree and Shade Master Plan.”

The new plan takes a more focused approach to shade, targeting bus stops first. The new approach comes in part as an admission that the city can’t afford to meet its initial blanket goal of shading 30 percent of Phoenix by 2030, but also refocuses efforts on communities that currently lack shade infrastructure. According to Jacob Koch, who helped the city create the plan, “We want to increase the canopy in the places that need it most and that have not had the same level of investment and public infrastructure, historically.”

According to Kempe, “City officials in Phoenix know that more must be done to increase shade beyond the actions outlined in the plan. The document specifically calls out the need to secure more sustained funding sources for this work and to improve the budget and practices for maintaining trees and built shade structures.”