Title
Approval of Grant for Neighborhood Cooling Initiative (Ordinance S-46818)
Description
Requests City Council to retroactively authorize the City Manager, or his designee, to apply for and, if successful, receive and disburse funds from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Global Ideas for U.S. Solutions: Cities Taking Action to Address Health, Equity, and Climate Change. Further request authorization for the City Treasurer to accept and for the City Controller to disburse all funds related to this item to participating City departments and to co-applicants of the grant including Arizona State University (ASU); Maricopa County Department of Public Health; the cities of Tempe, Mesa, and Avondale: Retail, Arts, Innovation & Livability Community Development Corporation (RAIL CDC); and Trees Matter, to fulfill the requirements of the grant.
Report
Summary
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a call for proposals through C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group for "Global Ideas for U.S. Solutions: Cities Taking Action to Address Health, Equity, and Climate Change". The call offers grants of up to $600,000 for U.S. cities to replicate solutions from the global community. The City worked with local organizations to develop a concept referred to in the application as "Quarter to Cool" - to increase the number of cooling resources in selected vulnerable neighborhoods in the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe and Avondale, while building social capital among residents and fostering innovation in heat governance at the municipal and regional level. The goal is to have at least one cooling resource available in project neighborhoods within one quarter mile of any location. This information will be made available on the Maricopa Healthy app, managed by the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.
The intent of this initiative is to increase cooling resources in a culturally and contextually appropriate manner to help reduce heat illness and death, reduce other chronic diseases by creating healthy and safe communities, promote healthy behaviors like walking, and foster overall improvements that support a culture of health. Cooling features include examples such as drinking water fountains, structured shade and awnings, natural shade, community parks, gardens, designated cooling centers, stormwater features, trees, and pop-up parks. The project will draw from and build upon a Heat Action Planning Process that team members collaboratively developed with community-based organizations and residents over the past few years. Adapting the concept used by the City of Paris to the chronically-hot American Southwest, the project's Heat Action Planning Process leverages social capital and community projects to address urban heat.
The initiative will have three phases, starting with selection of project neighborhoods and mapping of existing cooling resources at the neighborhood and city scales to understand the existing infrastructure and strategize development and implementation of new cooling elements. This mapping effort, based on lists of cooling resources extracted from local, national, and international guidance documents, will allow city governments to identify areas lacking cooling elements. Cooling resource maps will be confirmed and enhanced for the four selected neighborhoods with resident engagement including workshops and a participatory science campaign. This phase will result in newly available comprehensive cooling maps.
Phase 2 will leverage residents’ expertise about their specific communities and cooling needs to prioritize gaps in cooling resources and optimal strategies to fill those gaps. It will incorporate a participatory geodesign process to systematically work toward optimal cooling solutions with respect to location and strategy in each neighborhood. This phase of the project will include small-scale demonstration projects in each neighborhood that will help catalyze thinking and encourage continued participation.
Phase 3 will bring the Quarter To Cool concept to life. City governments and community-based organizations (CBOs) will work together to implement at least one cooling solution that emerged from the Phase 2 workshops in each selected neighborhood. The project budget intentionally includes only a portion of the anticipated costs for implementation to facilitate learning among the network of project participants related to fundraising for cooling solutions. During this phase, the project team will produce a Quarter To Cool Action Guide that will be broadly disseminated, describing the project approach, outcomes, and evaluation.
Quarter To Cool will involve a high level of community engagement in all three phases. Resident engagement will include pre- and post-intervention surveys, asset mapping workshops, geodesign (participatory location selection) workshops, and participation in demonstration projects and solution implementation.
The key outputs that will emerge from this work are maps of cooling resources at the neighborhood and city scale, cooling site availability on the Maricopa Healthy app, demonstration projects and installation of permanent cooling solutions in four heat-vulnerable neighborhoods, and a Quarter To Cool action guide for cities that can compel action beyond this individual project.
The initial application was submitted May 28, 2020 but short-listed cities will be invited to submit further details in July. The granting agency anticipates notifying winning applicants on or about Aug. 31, 2020, with an expected project completion date of Sept. 30, 2022.
Financial Impact
The amount requested for this proposal is $330,000. No City funds are required or committed as part of this proposal, however, existing City budgets in Streets, Parks, and Neighborhood Services could, in theory, be leveraged, where applicable, for relevant activities such as tree planting, home weatherization, or changes to the streetscape in participating neighborhoods.
Department
Responsible Department
This item is submitted by Deputy City Manager Karen Peters and the Office of Sustainability.