New mobility culture calls into question the commute and opens new options for city planning and commute patterns. Our study found almost two-thirds of Gen Z consumers would be willing to accept a longer commute in a self-driving vehicle. While the single driver commuter experience is generally perceived as bad, unhealthy, and stressful, the “we” commute of mobility culture could be a positive and healthy experience similar to today’s train commutes.

Using tools like algorithms and sensors, smart cities increase the quality of life for their residents, by making these communities cleaner, safer and healthier. When done thoughtfully smart cities efforts can also strive to make cities more inclusive and equitable. At the end of the day, it’s all about the people who live in these communities and making their interactions with city and/or county services easier and better.

Coordinated approaches are preferred for building urban drought resilience. Over the long term, a “trust but verify” policy can be more effective than the “better safe than sorry” approach of the mandate because the former encourages local suppliers to continue investing in diversified supplies. A good model is the stress-test approach the state adopted toward the end of the drought, which allowed local utilities to drop mandated conservation if they could demonstrate that they had drought-resilient supplies to last three more years.
In the wake of the drought, the state has adopted measures to improve information sharing, including a system for urban suppliers to provide regular updates on their supply situations. To encourage all agencies to prepare for more extreme droughts, urban water management planning documents must now address how suppliers would manage longer droughts.

Things get complicated in a desert city where water use has a direct and tangible impact on quality of life. While Phoenix water is affordable for basic, indoor needs, it is purposefully not affordable for outdoor water use to drive conservation. That conservation signal has worked very well and the use of desert landscapes has exploded. Those landscapes are good for local flora and fauna, but do little for, and maybe even exacerbate, the unrelenting urban heat island that keeps summer temperatures above 100 degrees even at night. Wealthy families, oblivious to the cost, plant lawns that mitigate the urban heat and increase property values. Poorer families swelter. As we face a hotter and drier future, the tradeoffs between conservation and quality of life will come into greater focus, and environmental justice will be the center of that conversation. 

In the face of our climate crisis, most of these cities have ambitious plans to become carbon neutral with zero net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These cities plan to generate all electricity with renewables. At the same time that wind and solar power are being massively deployed, buildings and people are becoming more efficient, requiring less electricity.

Getting to 100 percent renewable electricity, however, does not cut even half of a city’s GHG emissions. Buildings typically use natural gas (methane) for heating, cooling, hot water, and cooking. Vehicles spew emissions by burning gasoline, diesel, natural gas, and other fossil fuels. To take advantage of renewable electricity, buildings and transportation will need to be all electric and efficient.