Rethinking “Sustainable” Desert Cities: An Interview with Erin Heinz

In a city where monsoon rains are celebrated and water conservation signs are common, sustainability can feel complicated. Erin Heinz, an environmental sociologist and assistant professor of practice in the School of Sociology, says that complexity defines desert cities like Tucson. As growth and development continue despite long-term water scarcity, the contradictions at the center of sustainability become harder to ignore.

Heinz studies what she calls the “paradoxes of sustainability,” meaning the tension between widespread awareness of water scarcity, extreme heat, long-term drought, and the continued labeling of fast-growing desert cities as ‘sustainable.’

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Her work focuses on how cities define sustainability, translate it into policy and planning, and determine whose voices are included, or excluded, from those decisions. 

As cities across the Southwest face worsening drought, extreme heat, and rapid population growth, sustainability has become both a goal and a point of tension. Tucson, often held up as a model for water conservation and desert living, sits at the center of that debate and serves as a key case study in Heinz’s research.

“There’s this existential feeling of lack of water that people in the Southwest are very aware of,” Heinz said. “At the same time, cities like Tucson are labeled as sustainable, with certifications and branding that suggest we’ve figured it out. That contradiction raises a basic question: What does sustainability actually mean in a place like this?”

That issue became harder to overlook as Heinz observed how cities in water-scarce regions continue to expand during what scientists describe as a historic megadrought. That’s why Tucson, along with Albuquerque and Las Vegas, became central to her research because of their shared environmental constraints and the limits those cities are forced to confront more directly than larger metropolitan areas.

By contrast, Phoenix, which benefits from its size and priority access to Colorado River water, Tucson occupies a more vulnerable position in the region’s water system.

Heinz believes this vulnerability makes the city an especially important place to examine long-term planning and sustainability claims. She points to water scarcity as a defining constraint shaping Tucson’s future.
 

“Tucson isn’t first in line for water. That reality forces us to think more carefully about interdependence, about whether self-sufficiency is possible, and about what kinds of growth make sense over time.” 

In her recently published book, Concrete Mirage: Governance, Equity and Sustainable Cities in the Southwest, Heinz uses Tucson as a lens to examine how arid-region cities attempt to balance growth with scarcity. Growth is often treated as a marker of success, she said, even as environmental costs become harder to ignore. 

In Tucson, that disconnect shows up in everyday decisions about water use, housing development and land use, as well as broader debates about how limited resources should be allocated. Those debates are closely tied to environmental justice. 

Heinz’s research highlights how the benefits and burdens of development are unevenly distributed, with marginalized communities often bearing the greatest costs of pollution, infrastructure, and resource shortages.

“People who are already vulnerable tend to live closer to highways, airports and other infrastructure,” Heinz said. “They experience more of the negative impacts of development, which is related to the fact that they don’t always have the same access to decision-making spaces.”

She added, “Sustainability planning is often highly technical, which can make meaningful public participation difficult. Without equity built into the process, policies meant to promote sustainability can end up reinforcing existing inequalities.”

After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, Heinz worked at Boston University with researchers focused on decarbonization and energy transitions at the city and state level. She said comparing Tucson to cities like Boston underscores how regional context shapes environmental policy. 

“While East Coast cities plan for flooding and excess water, desert cities must plan for long-term scarcity,” Heinz said. 

Looking ahead, Heinz believes the most pressing questions facing Tucson and other similar cities are not technical but collective — how much growth is enough, what trade-offs are acceptable, and how communities define a good quality of life in a changing climate.

“These are difficult questions,” she said. “But asking them honestly gives us a better chance of continuing to live and thrive in places like Tucson.”

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