Ladd Keith

Assistant Professor of Planning and Sustainable Built Environments
Faculty Research Associate, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy

Programs

  • School of Landscape Architecture and Planning
  • Sustainable Built Environments
  • Urban Planning
Ladd Keith

Cannon/Douglass House

Areas of Expertise

  • Climate action planning
  • Climate change
  • Extreme heat
  • Urban planning

Degrees

  • PhD in Arid Lands Resource Sciences, The University of Arizona
  • MS in Planning, The University of Arizona
  • BA in Media Arts, The University of Arizona

Biography

Ladd Keith, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and a faculty research associate at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. An urban planner by training, he has over a decade of experience planning for climate change with diverse stakeholders in cities across the U.S. His research explores heat planning, policy, and governance to help communities increase their heat resilience. He is currently the UA lead of the Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the heat research lead of the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, co-investigator of the Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and co-investigator of the Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health (SCORCH) funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He also founded and led the Sustainable Built Environments undergraduate degree program offered in person, fully online, and globally in Peru and Ecuador. He has a Ph.D. in Arid Lands Resource Sciences and an M.S. in Planning from the University of Arizona.

Selected Interviews and Coverage

Journal Article Publications

  • Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, Lauren Jensen, Shaylynn Trego, Erika Schmidt, and Philip Berke. (2023). Evaluating urban heat mitigation across networks of plans. Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X231215780
  • Trego, Shaylynn, Sara Meerow, and Ladd Keith. (2023). Heat planning in small and medium-sized cities: A Collaborative application of PIRS™ for Heat in Kent, WA, USA. Socio-Ecological Practice Research. (5)4, 409-422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-023-00166-6
  • Keith, Ladd, C.J. Gabbe, and Erika Schmidt. (2023). Urban Heat Governance: Examining the Role of Urban Planning. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. 25(5), 642-662. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2023.2244446
  • Chambers, Samuel N., Heidi E. Brown, Ladd Keith, and Erika Austhof. (2023). Development of a Geographic Human Heat Balance Equation to Support Public Health Analyses: An Arizona Urban Sun Corridor application. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment. 32(2023), 101009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2023.101009
  • Chambers, Samuel N., Geoffrey A. Boyce, Daniel E. Martinez, Coen Bongers, and Ladd Keith. (2023). The contribution of physical exertion to heat-related illness and death in the Arizona borderlands. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology. 46(2023), 100590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2023.100590
  • Sami, Ida and Ladd Keith. (2023). How do streetcar transit users and streetcar decision-makers perceive heat risk? Journal of Public Transportation. 25(2023), 100045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubtr.2023.100045
  • Hughes, Halley B., David D. Breshears, Kimberly J. Cook, Ladd Keith, and Joseph R. Burger. (2023). Household energy use response to extreme heat evaluated with a biophysical model of temperature regulation: An Arizona case study. PLOS Climate. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000110
  • Crisman, Jonathan Jae-An, Ladd Keith, Ida Sami, and Gregg M. Garfin. (2023) Designing Chill City: An interactive game supporting public learning about urban planning for extreme heat. The Journal of Environmental Education. 54(3), 225-239. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2023.2183173
  • Iuliano, Joseph E. and Ladd Keith. (2022). Near Misses and Split Routes: Comparing Rider Behavior, Driver Interaction, and Route Choice for Cyclists. Journal of Transportation Safety & Security. 15(11), 1148-1171. https://doi.org/10.1080/19439962.2022.2155745
  • Brown, Heidi E., Ladd Keith, Valerie Madera-Garcia*, Anissa Taylor, Nicholas M. Ramirez, and Irene Ogata. (2022). Greening up for mosquitoes: A comparison of green stormwater infrastructure in a semi-arid region. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association. 38(2), 109-112. https://doi.org/10.2987/21-7055
  • Meerow, Sara and Ladd Keith. (2022). Planning for extreme heat: A national survey of U.S. planners. Journal of the American Planning Association. 88(3), 319-334. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2021.1977682
  • Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, David M. Hondula, V. Kelly Turner, and James C. Arnott. (2021). Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics. Nature. 598(7879), 29-31. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02677-2
  • Keith, Ladd, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, Erika Austhof, Ida Sami, and Mona Arora. (2021). Extreme Heat at Outdoor COVID-19 Vaccination Sites. Journal of Climate Change and Health. 4(2021), 100043. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100043
  • Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, and Tess Wagner. (2020). Planning for extreme heat: A review. Journal of Extreme Events. 6(3&4), 2050003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S2345737620500037
  • Austhof, Erika, Vjollca Berisha, Ben McMahan, Gigi Owen, Ladd Keith, Matthew Roach, and Heidi E. Brown. (2020). Participation and Engagement of Public Health Stakeholders in Climate and Health Adaptation. Atmosphere, 11(3), 265. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11030265

Selected Other Publications

News, Research and Projects

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Hot city, blurred

Extreme heat is the deadliest climate hazard in the U.S. How are urban planners tackling it?

In a paper published in December 2021 in the Journal of the American Planning Association, ASU's Sara Meerow and UArizona's Ladd Keith analyzed the results of their extreme heat survey of planners from diverse cities across the United States to establish baseline information for a growing area of planning practice and scholarship that future research can build on.

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Downtown Tucson

Sustainable Built Environments Professor Ladd Keith Provides Insight for CBS Story on Tucson’s Climate Action Goal

Ladd Keith, CAPLA assistant professor of planning and sustainable built environments, was quoted in a February 17, 2022 KOLD-TV story on Tucson’s goals to become carbon neutral by 2030. “We need to make sure the most vulnerable in our community are taken care of when we address climate change.”