Phoenix General Plan 2015
Core idea
Compact centers & corridors
Why it matters
Desert metropolis sustainability push
Description
The voter-ratified general plan for Phoenix, Arizona, adopted in 2015 under the banner PlanPHX. It reoriented one of America's archetypal low-density desert metropolises towards a structure of compact centres and corridors, building on the Valley Metro light rail spine, and emphasised walkable cores, infill, heat mitigation and water-conscious development in place of continued fringe expansion.
Significance
The plan signals the mainstreaming of sustainability and transit-oriented thinking in Sunbelt cities long defined by automobile-led sprawl. Its significance lies in the tension it embodies between corridor intensification rhetoric and the continuing pull of peripheral growth, making Phoenix a recurring case in debates on retrofitting suburbia and planning for extreme heat in arid metropolises.
What shaped it
- The compact city (1973-1990s)
- Transit-oriented development (TOD) (1993)
- The Next American Metropolis / Charter of the New Urbanism (1993 / 1996)
Sources
- https://ballotpedia.org/City_of_Phoenix_General_Plan_Ratification,_Proposition_100_(August_2015)
- https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/pdd/growth-infrastructure/general-plan/previo