This report funded by the City of Scottsdale and completed while Ken McCown was a faculty member at Arizona State University in the College of Design is a 'sustainability atlas' for Scottsdale. The report explains how Scottsdale connects to a supporting infrastructure; and the sustainability of those systems. The atlas identifies the critical issues for the city with regards to its infrastructure and provides a platform for resilience planning and transition design with residents of the city. Below on this page is the executive summary of the report, all images are clickable to become full sized.
Cities are connected to their regions and now globally by the systems that support them. Energy costs and other factors will force metropolitan areas to optimize their regional infrastructures and resources
Basic data about Scottsdale; the city is at the 'corner' of the development in the valley and hemmed in by parks with only one major connection - the 101 freeway. In some ways, it is similar to Manhattan - with minimal connections. Manhattan is shown at the same scale as Scottsdale.
Two major trends influence the sustainability of the systems supporting Scottsdale; energy and climate. Climate includes drought and climate change, along with urban heat island. Issues of energy includes Peak Oil, potential carbon legislation ( real possibility at the time of this report) and rising residential energy demand These charts show impacts upon each system that require attention.
Two major trends influence the sustainability of the systems supporting Scottsdale; energy and climate. Climate includes drought and climate change, along with urban heat island. Issues of energy includes Peak Oil, potential carbon legislation ( real possibility at the time of this report) and rising residential energy demand These charts show impacts upon each system that require attention.
Scottsdale has two primary water supply systems; one from the Colorado River, the CAP,and one 'local' supply from the SRP. One system is more susceptible to climate change, one more susceptible to drought.
Not only is the water from the Colorado River shared by the states, the water is shared in Arizona between agricultural and municipal uses.
Showing what systems supply water to the different sections of Scottsdale can reveal where climate change and drought could affect the city.
The big story in water is the energy used. The CAP system is the number one energy user in the state as water is pumped 'uphill'.
Not only do we need to look at the supply for sustainability; we need to look at the use. By reducing water use on outdoor landscaping in Scottsdale, the city could get a year's worth of water every three years.
The strategy is to 'go after the big piece of the pie.' Let's minimize the seventy percent use.
Energy mapped in Arizona; 99% of the energy supply is fossil fuel based, and 1% is renewable.
This diagram shows energy uses in homes - and the increase over time.
Homes, due to their rapidly rising quantity and rising level of demand in each, are the primary issue for the power companies. Homeowners wanting to use solar likely will not be able to use it as a sole system due to the demand in the unit being more than what they could supply on their roofs. Reducing demand may allow a resident to be able to get their energy from a roof solar system.
This diagram shows the national agriculture supply - there is a weakness in the connection to the Southeast. Other information includes the rising reliance on crops from Mexico and California's reduced water allocation for agriculture and their susceptibility to drought and climate change.
Energy used in the agricultural system. Note the high use on the use end - much of this feathers into the storage of food shown in the energy section of this report. Eating fresh food could save energy!
Also note the extremely high amount of energy devoted to fertilizing. This is based upon natural gas; what are opportunities to reduce this amount? Fertilizing is also the biggest contributor to water pollution.
There are two transportation issues, freight and passenger. The Scottsdale Airport is busier than the San Diego airport. At the time of this report, it generated enough activity to make the Scottsdale Airpark the number one job center in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
This air transportation system is susceptible to peak oil, and much of the freight is related to high tech industries. A few of these companies do not have direct rail connection, making them perhaps vulnerable to a spike in oil prices.
At the metropolitan scale, Scottsdale is in an increasingly unfavorable logistics situation. The freight logistics hub is moving outwards and away from Scottsdale's business and retail hubs. During the time of this report, when oil prices spiked, the company with the longest supply change on this map went bankrupt.
A significant story in energy is the timing of delivery. Coal and nuclear is the base load, and natural gas takes care of peak loading conditions driven by the need for cooling during the late afternoon. Can buildings be designed and retrofitted to remove the need for natural gas?
Passenger transportation is predominantly to and from work. By combining Census data with Department of Transportation data, we are able to see where people live and work.
The 101 freeway is chronically choked with car traffic due to the confluence of travel to the job centers shown in yellow and the homes shown in red. A darker red means more commuters from those areas.
The top shows job-housing balances in each area of the city. A good balance lies with in between 1 to 1 and 2 to 1. A scarcity of homes in an area leads to high prices for homes.
One way to deal with transportation issues is to balance jobs and housing through mixed use, another is to look at multimodal connectivity in transportation.
Scottsdale is a car dominant culture for passenger travel. This page shows a list of the efficiency of transportation modes for energy use per passenger. Note that vanpooling might be a viable means of transport.