Designing South Central PHX Series · Design Talk
DESIGN
TALK
"Community Stewardship"
vs Displacement Through Gentrification
South Central · Rio Salado · Phoenix, AZ
South Central Bridge · Rio Salado · Phoenix
South Central Bridge Lookout · Rio Salado
Protectors of the Salt River The Sagrado Design Empowerment PHX AZ (LAND)
Sagrado Gallería · South Phoenix
Opening

The Land Remembers.
And So Do We.

We opened the way we begin all things at Sagrado — with poetry, with prayer, with permission. Abby Lopez offered her words from the Protectors of the Salt River, with her son present, grounding us in the understanding that stewardship is a lived practice, carried between generations.

By the time the evening was through, nearly fifty people had filled the room: elders, organizers, architects, neighbors, and young people, each carrying a piece of the story of South Phoenix and Central City. Each one a steward.

This was a gathering of people who have stayed. People who measure time not in fiscal years, but in the generations before them and the generations still coming.

Pasado
Pasado The Past The Salt River as a living, teeming ecosystem — wider than the Mississippi
Presente
Presente The Present Policy did what it was designed to do — displaced people, polluted the river, raised the heat
Futuro
Futuro The Future South Phoenix Wetlands — harmony of peoples & land, where language, culture, and ecosystems coexist
AI illustrations · Dushawn John-Armenta · Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community

"The path to regeneration is through language, land, and people. Native species and native people. Design can serve healing."

— Dushawn John-Armenta, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community
Rio Salado aerial
Design Empowerment · Reimagining the Central Bridge
Concept 1 — open walkway Concept 2 — shade structure Concept 3 — corten steel
Concept 1 · Open Walkway Concept 2 · Shade Structure Concept 3 · Corten Steel
Eva Olivias
Phoenix Revitalization Corporation
Thirteen Years of Showing Up
Eva Olivias
Executive Director · 13 Years · Central City Planner

Eva spoke about what it means to ensure residents have real agency — not the performed version of engagement where someone hands you a survey, but the kind rooted in relationship and belonging.

She raised Grant Park as a case study — a single-family community where four-story buildings appeared and destroyed historic structures. No one from the neighborhood was part of those decisions. The consultants came on their timelines, not on the community's.

"We have to learn to be policy movers, urban planners, and water stewards to make change happen. Nobody is going to do it for us."
"Central City South is not opposed to development. We need a grocery store, we need jobs. But it needs to be friendly to what already exists here."
Fernando Ruiz
Espíritu Community Development Corporation
Sixty-Eight Years in South PHX
Fernando Ruiz
Espíritu CDC · 68 Years in South Phoenix

Fernando arrived with his wife, his daughter, and his granddaughter. Three generations in one room. Sixty-eight years in South Phoenix.

He told us about the neighborhood near Central and Roosevelt — at least fifteen hundred years of human presence. Artifacts still turning up in the soil. Indigenous ball courts once stood where parking lots sit now.

When the city proposed five- and six-story buildings, he asked: What will this place look like a hundred years from now?

"Place a plaque. Tell me about who was here before me. This was a thriving Indigenous community."
"We are America — if you don't forget the rest of the continent, north and south."
68
Years in South Phoenix
3
Generations Present
1500
Years of Human Presence
We Stayed

What Staying
Actually Costs

Fernando told the room the full weight of staying. His community has buried its young. They have survived violence, loss, and decades of disinvestment. People told them to leave for wealthier parts of the Valley. They chose to stay.

South Phoenix is home to the largest food bank in the area, feeding six thousand people a month. The community built its own charter school — the oldest in Arizona — because nobody else was going to do it for them.

"If you are not willing to commit to community, don't build here."
South Plaza · South Phoenix
South Plaza · South Phoenix · A neighborhood that built its own
What Real Engagement Looks Like

The conversation turned to what community engagement actually means — not as a line item in a grant budget, but as a way of being.

The group discussed the ongoing tension with developers who arrive with financing already secured and only need to check a box for "resident input." The city approves eight-story buildings in communities that have been single-family for generations.

"We are in relationship with the community. They come to us and tell us what they need. We are already in relationship beyond any specific project."
"Why did you come to community and not listen to them? This is about people. Do you know three of your neighbors?"
Congressman Ed Pastor · 1943–2018
In Memoriam · The Legacy He Left
Congressman Ed Pastor
1943 – 2018 · Arizona's First Mexican-American Congressman

Before we can talk about what we want the Ed Pastor Station to become, we have to honor who Ed Pastor was. He served Arizona's 4th Congressional District from 1991 to 2015 — a staunch advocate for environmental justice, infrastructure equity, and the communities too often left out of both.

He secured federal funding for urban environmental restoration along the Salt River. He championed water conservation policies that balanced growth with ecological sustainability. He demanded that underserved communities be included in policy decisions — not as afterthoughts, but as the point.

The station bearing his name should carry that legacy forward. Not just as infrastructure, but as an act of community care.

South Central Bridge Concept 2
Ed Pastor Station · South Central Extension · "It should feel like First Fridays on Roosevelt"
Ed Pastor Station & the Future of Central

Fear of Displacement
Is Real

The room spoke about the Ed Pastor Station with both grief and vision. It should feel like First Fridays on Roosevelt: art, family, food, gathering. Not another cluster of eight-story buildings approved without community consent.

The community is asking for buildings that feel comfortable next to the single-family home next door.

"Fear of displacement is real. How do we manage the change coming and not be pushed out?"
Zoning, Eminent Domain & the Fight to Stay

VFWs and corner bars sit in R3 and R1 zones with liquor licenses grandfathered in. Retroactive zoning leaves communities trapped. Then came the word no one wants to hear: eminent domain.

At Roadrunner, four hundred families own their trailers but not the land beneath them. One community member described a property taken after years of escalating offers — and they received nothing.

"We need good lawyers. We need to talk to tribal leaders about water rights, to the companies trying to own what flows beneath us."
Roadrunner Mobile Home Park · South Phoenix
Roadrunner Mobile Home Park · South Phoenix · 400 families own their homes, not the land beneath them
Rio Salado vision render — people living alongside the river today
Vision for the Rio Salado · People living alongside a restored river today · Design rendering
What We Need at the Table

Clear Asks.
Grounded in Reality.

15
Homes purchased through Phoenix LISC
$110K
Purchase price per home
$300K
Current value — 5 years later
The investment is working. The commitment is real. The question is whether the city and its partners will match it.
Protectors of the Salt River · Sagrado mural
Closing Story

The Beavers Fixed It.

In the middle of the heaviest conversation of the evening, someone told this story: a canal broke on the Salt River. Civil engineers planned and designed for months, waiting for budget approval.

Beaver at the river's edge

The beavers fixed it.

The room laughed. But the lesson was real.

Nature knows how to repair what has been broken. Communities do too — when they are trusted, resourced, and left to do what they already know how to do.
Protectors of the Salt River · Sagrado Gallería · South Phoenix
The Sagrado Gallería interior

With love and solidarity,

Sagrado Gallería · South Phoenix