After successfully advocating for pedestrian safety and walkability projects to be included in a county-wide bond package (which later failed at the ballot box) Tucson’s Living Streets Alliance capitalized on the momentum to pursue a Complete Streets policy as another way to make the city’s street safer and more accessible. Over three years, working in close collaboration with the City of Tucson Department of Transportation and Mobility, they involved community members, city staff, and subject matter experts to write a policy that had widespread support, included strong language, and was easy to quickly implement.
Supporters and members of Living Streets Alliance outside of the city council chambers after a Complete Streets agenda item was discussed, posing with signs in support of Complete Streets.
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Tucson residents paint the street orange, green, blue, and white during a block party to create a quick-build Complete Streets demonstration project. Photo courtesy of Living Streets Alliance staff.
Project selection criteria and processes were also quickly impacted. In Fall 2021, the city passed its transportation master plan, Move Tucson, which included a list of projects to be funded. Thanks to the Complete Streets policy, the Coordinating Council was involved and potential projects were prioritized using criteria plainly laid out in the ordinance. Organizers’ deliberation ensured that the policy changed not just what was built, but where it was built as well.
Passing a Complete Streets policy did not mean that Tucson’s transportation problems were suddenly solved. In addition to road-widening projects approved in a 2006 ballot measure now beginning construction, some documents required by the policy—such as an implementation plan—haven’t been completed. This means that there aren’t deadlines associated with the tasks outlined in the “Implementation Chart,” which is a potential loss of accountability in the long term. Advocates feel strongly that progress can still continue to be made despite this.
Part V: Lessons learned
Tucson advocates and policymakers understood that Tucson’s community members had critical Complete Streets expertise and that their policy needed to address every aspect of the community, not just its streets.
Community members are experts. The organizers of Tucson’s Complete Streets movement not only engaged community members but treated them as valued participants in the planning process with their own expertise to offer. This is in stark contrast to the typical planning approach, which treats planners and engineers as unimpeachable experts in contrast to community members. By countering this hierarchy, organizers made their policy not only better but likelier to pass.
If it’s not operational, it’s not equity. LSA made sure that equity wasn’t just a goal, but a component of every single process and product. This ensured that, when it came time to write “Move Tucson,” the values in the city’s Complete Streets policy actually turned into planned investments instead of languishing on the shelf.
Complete Streets is about more than pavement. From the start, LSA made clear that Complete Streets is about more than pavement. Organizers believed that what roads look like can’t be disconnected from the social infrastructure around them, nor the processes or people who decide what those roads look like. The inclusion of the elements that described how the built environment impacts the way Tucson residents feel on a day-to-day basis—whether using shade as a metric or mentioning perceived safety and comfort levels—improved the policy and ensured it was sensitive to Tucson’s context in particular.
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Thank you to Evren Sönmez and Emily Yentman at Living Streets Alliance, as well as Patrick Hartley at the City of Tucson, Arizona, for their time and expertise in producing this case study.