[httpz]

It's car optimized because the 110F weather makes it un-walkable in the first place. When I lived in a walkable city, I would prefer to walk 30 minutes than drive. When I lived in Phoenix, I did not want to spend more than 30 seconds outside in the summer.

[fouc]

how's the tree situation though? 110F + lots of huge trees = a lot more tolerable. trees cool shit down big time.

[httpz]

It's a desert so trees can't survive without irrigation. Since water is scarce as well, there aren't enough trees to cover the vast low density area.

[Y-bar]

You can always start small and over decades grow the area. After all that is how cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam became bike friendly, not just a few years, but decades of work.

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_cinnabari or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilopsis?

[pjc50]

As a fellow European: we're prone to underestimating how uninhabitable bits of America are that nonetheless have people living in them. Those are port cities and therefore stable and temperate. You cannot green Arizona.

[fouc]

Just FYI there's a lot of ways to re-green a desert without actually being wasteful with water. There's some really impressive case studies out there. Shaping the land with berms and swales, building walls of trees to prevent water from being leached away by the wind, etc.