Resilience Building in Action

Community Co-Design to Address Extreme Heat in Phoenix

Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing—and hottest—cities in the United States. Longer, more intense heat seasons increasingly affect daily life, particularly for residents and small businesses in neighborhoods with limited shade, cooling resources, and mobility options. Recent record-breaking summers have underscored the urgent need for solutions that are effective and grounded in community priorities.

Resilient Cities Catalyst (RCC) brings together community and city partners to co-design and accelerate climate-ready solutions for extreme heat, ensuring interventions reflect local needs, align with city priorities, and translate planning into action. Since 2023, RCC has partnered with the City of Phoenix and the local nonprofit Unlimited Potential (UP) to advance solutions through a community-driven design process.

Building sustained capacity is central to RCC’s approach. In partnership with UP and the City, RCC developed engagement modules to understand core needs in priority neighborhoods and co-design interventions tailored to each community. RCC provided in-person facilitator training, equipping City staff and UP’s Promotoras—bilingual community health workers—with the knowledge and tools to independently lead workshops, adapt materials, and scale community-driven resilience across neighborhoods. Using this approach, the team facilitated bilingual workshops in eight neighborhoods, engaging 690 residents to identify challenges, set priorities, and co-design actionable solutions for extreme heat and mobility. Building on this work, the City of Phoenix continues to collaborate with UP on additional resilience projects, while insights from workshops continue to guide the City’s planning for urban forestry, transit access, and heat mitigation.

RCC adapted this model for door-to-door outreach with small businesses in key commercial corridors, co-designing quick wins and long-term interventions to enhance their resilience to extreme heat. Insights from this engagement informed early-action pilot solutions in partnership with the City, including pop-up cooling and shade activations, small business “cool kits” with shade and seating enhancements, and tree planting paired with stewardship programs to support long-term care. These pilots are complemented by efforts to expand local cooling and hydration networks and integrate heat-safety messaging into placemaking, reinforcing public health while activating neighborhood spaces.

Through this approach, RCC accelerates climate-ready solutions from engagement to implementation while building lasting capacity among city staff, community leaders, and small businesses—creating a scalable model for sustained, community-driven heat resilience across Phoenix.