Tucson, Civano, and the Sustainable Energy Standard

Abstract

ABSTRACT Civano was originally conceived as the “Tucson solar village,” in Arizona as an outgrowth of builder and consumer interest in solar designs with a natural and appropriate extension of desert living. Led by the Metropolitan Energy Commission, a number of local builders and environmentalists obtained a commitment from the Arizona Energy Office to fund the planning and design of the prototype community. As research progressed, the planners soon began to contemplate comprehensive extensions of their original idea, including energy and water conservation, solid waste reduction, and lower air pollution. “Solar village” soon became a much larger concept, and the community of Civano began to take shape. It was to be sustainable, and it was to incorporate many of the compact, life-enhancing, and socially integrated aspects of America's small towns. The goal of the Civano project is to demonstrate the marketability of sustainable community development on a large scale at affordable prices. This 820-acre traditional neighborhood development utilizes proven available technology to reduce natural resource usage substantially below current levels. The property is located on state trust land in the city of Tucson, southeast of Houghton and Irvington Roads; zoning in the area was modified to support the Civano project. At the time, Civano was the largest development experiment of its type, and perhaps still is. Though only completed through the first phase of construction, the Civano experiment has already yielded very interesting results in all areas of development research from water and energy conservation to planning methodology and standards testing. The following report, fourth in a series, shows the early results of energy and water use in Civano as compared to the city of Tucson before and after the implementation of mandatory national energy codes adopted in Tucson in 1995. The results are a testament to the effectiveness of the Sustainable Energy Standard as applied in Civano. The Civano project went mainstream in 2001, when the state trust land was auctioned to private developers. If all stays on course, all four construction phases of Civano will be completed by 2014.