Our Principles for a Great Desert City

Our downtown is, by nature, the most urban part of the city. However, most of our principles apply throughout Phoenix! We believe that all residents benefit from the ability to safely walk, bike, or take transit.

Phoenix light rail train and downtown area

Urbanism 101

  • The public realm must not be privatized.

  • Density and walkability are the only fiscally sustainable ways to design a city. All other forms of development are a burden on municipal finances.

  • Urban planning and design should leverage best practices and the most recent research in the field.

Biking, Walking & Transit

  • Walking in Phoenix is not viable without shade, and trees are the best form of shade. Heat should further be mitigated through intentional design and material choices.

  • The pedestrian realm must be pleasant, convenient, comfortable, and free of obstacles. While some infrastructure can be placed in the landscaping zone (fire hydrants, trees, light poles, bike racks, etc.), utility boxes should be underground or tucked into alleys.

  • Bicycling must become a significant mode of transit. This can only be achieved through protected bike lanes since the majority of people will not bike in unprotected lanes.

  • The biking experience must feel safe and be ubiquitous, convenient, and comfortable. Bicycle parking should be plentiful, visible, and standardized. Bike share should be supported and encouraged. Policies should support people on bikes (e.g. the Idaho Stop).

  • Effective transit is the transportation backbone of a strong city and frequencies are paramount to effective transit. Particularly in downtown, LRT headways should be less than 10 minutes and bus headways should be less than 15 minutes. BRT should be IADP Gold.

Downtown Phoenix streetscape

Safe Streets

  • Collector, residential, and downtown streets should be designed to force cars to drive slowly and to maximize the space allocated to people on bikes and on foot. Places are either easy to drive through or desirable to be in; they cannot be both.

  • Utilities and back-of-house functions must be kept off the street. Alleys therefore become the utilitarian workhorses of cities and must be preserved as the public asset that they are. Where alleys have been lost, they should be reclaimed.

  • Off-street parking is a poison to urban areas. Parking minimums must be eliminated and emphasis should be put on discouraging off-street parking. Surface parking should be eliminated, residential parking should be unbundled, and office parking should be tied to cash-out programs. Any new garages built should be designed to be convertible to other uses for when autonomous vehicles make urban parking obsolete.

  • On-street parallel parking should be maximized where it can co-exist with pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and it should be priced to achieve ~85% utilization.

group of people walking in Downtown Phoenix

Our Urban Core

historic Luhrs Building in Downtown Phoenix

Better Buildings

  • A city cannot be walkable without density. Residential and office density is what provides the economic support for dense retail, which then lays the foundation for walkability by reducing distances between destinations.

  • For streets to be vibrant and for retail to succeed, people are needed through as many hours of the day as possible. This requires a tight mix of primary uses (residential, office, hotel, museums, etc.) to maintain activity throughout the day.

  • Healthy cities have a diverse mix of old and new buildings in order to offer both affordability and architectural diversity.

  • "Eyes on the street" are critical for comfortable streets. This is achieved by having frequent doors (to different uses) and windows on every floor.

  • Vibrant streets require fine-grained development, defined by varied architectures and frequent access points for separate users along a single block.

  • From parks to streets to housing types, downtown should implement 8-to-80 design, meaning we should design such that eight-year-olds and eighty-year-olds are both able to function safely and independently in our downtown.

  • Blocks should be short to give people a permeable, walkable environment. This means streets should never be abandoned, and abandoned streets should be reclaimed.

  • Beyond parks, a great downtown must have a great civic plaza with a focal point and surrounded by active uses.

  • Public green space must always be within a 5-minute walk (not further than 1300 feet or 3 blocks). These parks need not be large, but should be varied in type and include public restrooms.