Log in

innovation

Project Cities moves into third year with Peoria

Program teams ASU faculty, students with city

Posted 1/13/22

Project Cities is kicking off its third year of working with the city of Peoria, bringing ASU faculty and students alongside city staff to improve quality of life for residents.

You must be a member to read this story.

Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.


Already have an account? Log in to continue.

Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here

Otherwise, follow the link below to join.

To Our Valued Readers –

Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.

For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.

Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.

Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.

Sincerely,
Charlene Bisson, Publisher, Independent Newsmedia

Please log in to continue

Log in
I am anchor
innovation

Project Cities moves into third year with Peoria

Program teams ASU faculty, students with city

Posted

Project Cities is kicking off its third year of working with the city of Peoria, bringing ASU faculty and students alongside city staff to improve quality of life for residents.

The program brings cross-disciplinary collaboration and research-backed solutions to complex municipal sustainable challenges, while at the same time adding value to students’ learning experience by providing real-world applications to each student’s field of study.

Past projects have included a P83 urban village visioning project, COVID-19 needs assessment, sustainable waste management, water conservation and drought shortage response plan, and a transit circulator best practices study.

In the fall 2021 semester, the city worked with 66 students and nine faculty members in the Project Cities program.

Current projects in the works include transit and recycling messaging, community engagement strategy, Dark Sky ordinance study, frameworks and guiding principles for historic preservation, as well as safe battery storage in residential areas.

Mayor Cathy Carlat said the Project Cities program is important because the subjects addressed are timely and the solutions found can pave the way for a better future.

“These are things that we would have to pay consultants large amounts of money for, so having the information we need to solve these kinds of problems is a really an important facet of what we can do as a community to help our residents move into the future,” she said.

And the coming year stands to bring a slew of new projects to the city. Potential subjects include fine glass recycling, sustainable growth in the face of water policy and participatory budgeting.

Anne Reichman, director of the Sustainable Cities Network at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, said she is looking forward to a productive semester with the city and hopes to continue to bring value to the city in the years to come.

“We really look to the city to tell us their needs and want to match them directly with the faculty and the classes that we know are coming up,” she said.

Philip Haldiman can be reached at phaldiman@iniusa.org, or on Twitter @philiphaldiman.