Emerging ASU scholars gathered Friday evening at the Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory to present 10 five-minute-long presentations on urban issues.
PURL Jam is an exhibition that brings together up-and-coming scholars from a variety of schools and disciplines at ASU to showcase innovative urban research that explores all matters of spatial, historical and theoretical inquiry using visual methodology. This year, PURL Jam was held in the penthouse ballroom of the historic Security Building in downtown Phoenix. This ballroom was once home to Walter Bimson, a famous banker and developer of Phoenix who built his penthouse on top of the Security Building in the late 1950s.
V. Kelly Turner, a fourth year Ph.D student at ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, and Dorothy Ibes, a Ph.D candidate for the same school, started the event with a presentation on the impact of homeowners’ associations on residential water demand management. Turner said homeowners’ associations often are labeled as “anti-environmental” because they sometimes restrict use of solar panels and require water-intensive landscaping.
“Water is a paramount concern in arid cities like Phoenix,” Turner said. “There’s population growth on one hand, and climate change on the other.”
According to their research, however, Turner and Ibes could not find a significant relationship between water consumption and a homeowners’ association presence.
Bo-gyeong Min, a third year Ph.D student from ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, had five minutes to solve the issue of increasing ridership of the Phoenix light rail. Her solution was to provide Park and Ride facilities where there is a high density population.
“The stations with Park and Ride systems are far more likely to have a higher passenger rate than other stations,” she said.
Juan Declet-Barreto, a geographer and Ph.D student in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, proved through his research that the Phoenix metropolitan region created inequitable areas of extreme heat exposure for low-income and minority groups throughout history. The same discrimination has carried through to the present day, he said.
This discrimination was a threat, Declet-Barreto said, to people who are most in danger from climate change.
In the final presentation, Stephen Buckman, a Ph.D candidate in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, displayed his workings with Canal Oriented Development to explain the challenges of creating “vibrant urban hubs” in Phoenix. Buckman said that the grand scheme is to create these hubs following the natural path of the existing canal that goes through Phoenix. He was specific to mention, however, that not every canal should be modeled after the Scottsdale Waterfront.
“When I go to community meetings and I talk to people, they are scared that we are going to put a Scottsdale Waterfront into their community,” he said. “That’s not really what we’re after.”
He said that they want to create places that fit within the given community.
Contact the reporter at dmzayas@asu.edu
