To Sum It All Up...

I hope you guys all had a great learning experience through your internships! I know I did. 

Having this internship was truly a great experience. I learned a lot about the actual role of sustainability within Maricopa County as well as county procedures for executing projects, whether sustainability-foucused or not. The county, like many other organizations and institutions, still has a long road, but getting on the road is the biggest step. All of the events I spoke of in this blog, with exception of the career fairs, I found out threw my internship and the people I met during that time. Threw my supervisor, I met many fascinating people that are at the center of transforming Phoenix into city that can be called sustainable, instead of being known as the "Least Sustainable City" as Andrew Ross represents it in Bird on Fire. It was truly priceless. 

Almost There!

This is the last full week of the semester, and I have to admit I have been on a bad case of senioritis, but I am sure I am not alone. We are almost there guys!

In the end, we ended up evaluating five different departments for OffSET. Our goal was eight, but we hit a minor road block when our supervisor had jury duty for a couple of weeks. We completed and distributed all of the assessments and recommendations between 4-7 days of the evaluation. I would like to know, and this is a possible task for future interns of GGP, if any of the departments considered our recommendations and if they executed them. 

Phoenix Urban Design Week - Day 5

Day 2 of the Retrofitting Sprawl Symposium consisted of a panel of local developers, including the Ranch Mine, Habitat Metro, Desert Viking, and Venue Projects: Kitchell-Perez, who discussed historic preservation, adaptive reuse for industrial and commercial properties, and residential rehabilitation in making the "American Dream" a sustainable one. It was interesting to see the corporate perspective on how to go about changing neighborhoods, and whole cities for that matter, to become more sustainable. I must admit, it was not as insightful as the first day, but still very informative.

Phoenix Urban Design Week - Day 4

Today was the first day of the Retrofitting Sprawl Symposium. Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williams -- authors of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs -- Presented on how abandoned stipmalls and big box stores on the fringe of cities don't have to become blight but instead be retrofitted into schools, community centers, urban hubs, etc. Nan Ellin, who is a former ASU faculty and creator of CanalScape, presented on what constitutes good urbanism, which she argues to be knowledge, skills and talent, and resources. Sh also spoke of her project CanalScape, which aimed at creating urban hubs throughout metropolitan Phoenix where canals meet major streets, and spoke of her new project along an old rail line Salt Lake City. Galina Techevia, Urban Planner, presented on a strategy to repair sprawl and promote sustainable communities. The symposium was attended by insightful people with innovative ideas.

Phoenix Urban Design Week - Day 3

I had the great opportunity to attend a debate focused on sustainability in Phoenix between Andrew Ross, author of Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable Phoenix, and Grady Gammage Jr., Senior Research Fellow at the Morrsion Institute for Public Policy. Topics included water, the economy, policy and social sustainability. When speaking of revitalization, regarding urban design and economy, Grady Gammage had a top-down approach to the argument in saying that experts should go into places -- neighborhoods, communities, etc -- and fix the problem. Andre Ross argues that an alternative model should be executed where people from within the community are given resources which allow the capacity to create leaders and promoters; communities need to change organically. This debate was really insightful to what experts and residents alike think and have to say about the growth of Phoenix.

Phoenix Urban Design Week- Day 1

Today marked the beginning of Phoenix's first Urban Design Week. Urban Design Week is meant to focus on the importance of urban design as being essential to the city's community development, economic growth, and sustainability. Today consisted of a lecture, Images of America: Downtown Phoenix, which was a reflection of the book with the same name. The presenters, Jim McPherson, Seth Anderson, and Suad Mahmaljin, promoted historic preservation, adaptive refuse, and quality development for downtown Phoenix, as well as the rest of the valley. The book came out to promote the Arizona Centennial and highlight Phoenix and its rich history in this young state. It was a very informative lecture that included photos of Phoenix, then and now.

Bike Racks in County Buildings

A project that my supervisor, Jonce, was in the process of implementing was installing bike racks in all of the county departments in downtown Phoenix. In order to figure out where the best places to install them, we walked around all of downtown, going to each county building and projecting where the racks should be placed. We had a map of the buildings in the downtown area, and would mark on the map where the bike racks should be placed. In, addition we took pictures of what the area looked like. Th goal is to have bike racks in every building by the end of next year.