In support of the US EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment, the agency’s Office of Community Revitalization provides competitively awarded technical assistance for communities to achieve their desired development goals, improve quality of life, and become more economically and environmentally sustainable through the Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities program. EPR staff have been working with the US EPA since 2011 to design and deliver technical assistance to communities across the country through Building Blocks and other US EPA technical assistance programs.
In 2019, the US EPA awarded technical assistance to City of Tucson, Arizona to explore the topic of Equitable Mobility Oriented Development (EMOD) – a variation of Equitable Transit Oriented Development with emphasis on multiple transportation modes, not just public transit.
EPR staff Jason Espie, Megan McConville, and Jessica Dimmick led the technical assistance for Tucson, planning and facilitating four interactive workshops to identify key community issues, prioritize strategies, and develop specific actions to achieving EMOD. Despite gathering restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, EPR facilitated the workshops virtually, creating interactive exercises that replicated in-person brainstorming and dot-voting with collaborative online tools.
EPR designed the workshops to bring together staff across city departments to craft a shared understanding and common definition of EMOD, define success, and identify challenges. EPR staff presented potential approaches for equitable community engagement with examples of peer inspiration from other communities across the nation. EPR facilitated open and tough conversations about what’s working and what’s not working with the city’s current engagement approaches.
EPR also designed the workshops to introduce various strategies for EMOD implementation, including proactive collaboration, policy reform, expanding access to capital, and site readying, with assistance from John Hersey with RTD, the public transit agency for the Denver region. EPR facilitated conversations in large and small groups to identify implementation challenges and barriers, prioritize key strategies, and develop specific actions for next steps. EPR documented the outcomes and results in a cohesive report.
The City of Tucson is using the EMOD framework to advance the key strategies, including working with community land trusts to ensure long-term housing affordability and exploring mechanisms for raising local capital and building local wealth.