ASU Project Cities has been awarded the President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness, a university-wide initiative to recognize the work of ASU faculty, staff, and programs for their work in social embeddedness. As part of ASU’s charter and design aspirations, social embeddedness encompasses the university’s commitment to serving its surrounding communities by sharing its resources and knowledge networks through mutually beneficial community partnerships.

Since Fall 2014, Dr. Nalini Chhetri and Anne Reichman have facilitated community-based projects with students through relationships built via the Sustainable Cities Network, and through these partnerships, Anne recognized the opportunity to connect the research, knowledge, and innovation produced by ASU with local communities interested in working towards a sustainable future.

 

Inspired by the Sustainable City Year Program at the University of Oregon, Project Cities was launched with the City of Apache Junction as its first partner. Since its inception in 2017, Project Cities has partnered with four Arizona communities to facilitate 75 applied project opportunities with ASU faculty and students. Engaging a variety of disciplines across the university, projects tap into the experiential learning of students to research and devise cutting-edge solutions to our most pressing and complex challenges. 

 

As we celebrate the last five years of Project Cities, we continue to recognize the dedicated efforts of our partner faculty and students to produce real-world solutions for our surrounding communities. Highlights of student work include drafting design guidelines for the Town of Clarkdale’s downtown district, site recommendations for the recently opened Apache Junction Dutchman Dog Park, and the award-winning work to propose affordable housing solutions for the City of Peoria. 

We recognize our community partners for being champions of sustainability and appreciate the efforts of our dedicated faculty members and student visionaries. 

Project Cities is a member of the Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities Network (EPIC-N) and is administered by ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and the Sustainable Cities Network. Stay up to date with Project Cities and the Sustainable Cities Network by following us on social media or subscribing to our newsletter.