Ladd Keith, Assistant Professor, UA School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, associate faculty, the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy
Wednesday, September 14, 2022,
2:30-3:30 pm,
ASA Koffler Great Room
Heatwaves; water, food, and energy shortages; wildfires; shrinking wildlife; floods; acidification of the oceans. These conditions are a daily part of our news. We have an expert here in Tucson who can help us understand how communities like ours can mitigate and manage heat for equitable urban heat resilience.
Returning to ASA to follow up his September 2021 talk, “Keeping Homes and Cities Cool,” Ladd Keith spells out the next steps in response to ever increasing urban heat zones. An urban planner by training, Ladd Keith has over a decade of experience planning for climate change with diverse stakeholders in cities across the US. He served a full term on the City of Tucson’s Planning Commission and chaired the development and adoption of the city’s comprehensive plan.
A third-generation Tucsonan, Professor Keith has a PhD in Arid Lands Resource Sciences and an MS in Planning from the University of Arizona. He currently lives in Tucson with his husband, two children, their dog, and a Sonoran Desert tortoise.
Keith will present an overview of the increasing risks of heat due to climate change and the urban heat island effect along with the impacts of heat across urban systems, drawing from his new guidebook, Planning for Urban Heat Resilience, published by the American Planning Association and free to download. He will also present his latest research on integrating heat mitigation efforts across community plans, using the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard (PIRS) for Heat methodology to ensure that planning efforts are targeting the neighborhoods with highest heat hazard and heat vulnerability. He will discuss the PIRS for Heat results and recommendations for the pilot communities of Baltimore, Boston, Ft Lauderdale, Houston, and Seattle, and suggest how the findings might help us here in Tucson.
Compiled by Rosemary Brown, Academy Village Volunteer