The Reid Park master plan reimagined Tucson’s central park through a year-long process of bilingual public engagement to determine what Tucsonans want out of their city’s largest urban park. The resulting plan weaves heat and flood resilience into the park’s beloved community spaces while incorporating new recreational attractions.

Gene C. Reid Park (Reid Park) serves a range of community recreational, ecological, and cultural purposes. Throughout the park’s history, new features were incrementally added to the park to meet the evolving needs of the community. Incremental growth without a larger comprehensive plan to guide individual projects resulted in a collection of features that are individually well-loved and used, but together lack a cohesive circulation network, infrastructural logic, or place identity. The master plan is designed to ensure that future improvements to Reid Park will help it evolve into a cohesive, functional, and efficiently planned and maintained amenity for all of Tucson that addresses the needs of a changing community, city, and climate.

Birds eye view of Reid Park in relationship to downtown Tucson, showing context of green spaces and urbanized zones

Reid Park is connected to downtown Tucson via Arroyo Chico Greenway, an intermittent stream bed flanked by multi-use paths. The park is the largest major greenspace in the urbanized zone between the Rillito and Santa Cruz Rivers

Overall site plan showing the comprehensive vision for the park with labeled areas such as the Zoo, the ponds, the circulation paths, and the recreation areas

The master plan provides a comprehensive vision for the future of Reid Park. It will guide park improvements over the next several decades.

Reid Park Reimagined: Robust Community Outreach

The Reid Park Reimagined engagement process was a citywide effort that was an integral part of the master plan. From the outset, the team and city wanted as many voices as possible to envision a park for Tucson that was authored by the people it will serve. To do so required a multifaceted engagement approach that involved digital communications, in-person events, surveys, stakeholder interviews, and one-on-one conversations, all of which were conducted in Spanish and English. The outreach resulted in four guiding principles that act as a common set of criteria with which to evaluate the success of the proposed plan and ensure that the reimagined park would be:

Illustration of Guiding Principles for the master plan

A Park That Builds Connections
Southwestern Sustainability and Resilience
Sincerely Tucsonan
A Truly Central Park

Design team member showing board with illustrated site plan to community members

The outpouring of community input through stakeholder interviews, open houses and pop-up events, surveys, emails, and media impressions shaped the master plan

Family fest event with design team member standing on large site plan and pointing while explaining to a community member with her child

Six different pop-up events contributed to hundreds of community interactions, and an overall 7,119 points of engagement

Connecting Park Features with New Pedestrian Pathways

Reid Park master plan unites the park’s existing and new destinations with a central loop of pedestrian, biking and jogging lanes. Water is the major driver of the plan’s overall form. Existing water bodies at Barnum Hill are preserved and enhanced through restored vegetation and protection of banks. Flood mitigation features are realigned to expand the available area in the center of the park, improving circulation, and transforming the park into a naturalized landscape while creating new educational and recreational opportunities. The plan also seeks to better integrate the park with surrounding mobility infrastructure by creating welcoming gateways at the park’s corners and new parking facilities.

Illustrated diagram featuring park programs and community destinations

Community destinations and programs are dispersed and connected throughout.

Illustrated park map showing the adjacent neighborhoods and plazas

Programmed plazas sit adjacent to neighborhood thresholds, serving as gateways into the park.

Illustration showing the park loop trail with pedestrians, bikers and runners

The Loop Trail connects the major destinations within the park and acts as the central multi-use circulation spine, providing space for walkers, runners and bicyclists.

Harnessing Natural Desert Ecology to Build Resilience

The future Reid Park utilizes unique natural resources to create a cohesive central park for Tucson. In many parts of the American Southwest, climate change has intensified in a see-sawing pattern of scorching drought punctuated by unprecedented flooding. The plan is driven by its climate, efficiently using available water resources to create an oasis of shady groves, refreshing water features, and unique gardens punctuated by native plants inspired by the Sonoran Desert. The community’s desire for a more natural landscape directly reinforced the strategic goal of strengthening the park’s resilience, and the master plan bolsters the park’s resilience to these threats while expanding its role as an essential part of the surrounding city’s heat and flood resilience strategy.

Parks are both key to resilience and threatened by the impacts of climate change. Heat, drought and flood emergencies are increasing in Tucson.

Reid Park is already an oasis in the hot city, but this role depends on the use of exotic tree species, temperature predictability, and the availability of water, a scarce resource made scarcer by droughts.

At the Center of Tucson’s Green Infrastructure Network

Tucson’s green infrastructure is characterized by a network of rivers and washes (arroyos) with smaller patches of open space at major county and city parks. Its urban center is framed by two large rivers, the Rillito and Santa Cruz, and these riparian corridors connect the city to the surrounding wildlands.

Illustrative diagram showing Citation Wash realignment

The plan views Citation Wash as more than a functional component of Tucson’s flood management system and imagines how it can also become a vibrant recreational asset that improves the park’s ecological performance.

Illustrative diagram of park's habitat systems

Reid Park is a unique in how it weaves together native and introduced ecological systems. The plan continues this tradition by creating novel habitats inspired by the Sonoran desert’s multiple ecozones, from the low desert basin to the high oak woodlands.

Illustrative diagram showing tree canopy and climate comfort systems

To further improve the usability of Reid Park in all seasons, the plan proposes additional trees and strategic use of water resources for cooling features.

The plan views Citation Wash as more than a functional component of Tucson’s flood management system and imagines how it can also become a vibrant recreational asset that improves the park’s ecological performance.

Reid Park is a unique in how it weaves together native and introduced ecological systems. The plan continues this tradition by creating novel habitats inspired by the Sonoran desert’s multiple ecozones, from the low desert basin to the high oak woodlands.

To further improve the usability of Reid Park in all seasons, the plan proposes additional trees and strategic use of water resources for cooling features.

The park’s existing arroyo, Citation Wash, is realigned into a natural, meandering form that slows down flood waters and adds flood capacity for increased retention, infiltration and availability to surrounding native vegetation. Flooding is leveraged again at La Ciénega, a novel habitat inspired by the Sonoran’s vanishing vernal pools, which showcases plants and wildlife important to the Tucson community and connects people to nature through a series of boardwalks, bird blinds and educational overlooks. This bowl in the landscape directs water away from parking lots and pedestrian corridors and towards Citation Wash and turns intermittent flooding into a demonstration of local riparian wildlife that improves the park’s ecological performance.

Illustration of new expanded central playground with local flora and fauna, water features and tree canopy

An expanded central playground incorporates the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert while deploying several cooling strategies such as a misting cloud pavilion, interactive water feature, ramadas and tree canopy.

Hydrology: Making Every Drop Count

Water conservation was an important goal of the city and community for the future of the park, but water use reduction should not come at the expense of the shade trees, water features and turf areas, which make Reid Park an oasis of community heat resilience and recreation. Rather, the team’s approach to water use was to ensure that every drop was dedicated to its best and highest use. Turf will be reduced and located where it is most important for recreation and events. With the realignment of Citation Wash and leveraging flooding at La Ciénega, topography is used to capture and direct water to vegetation. Water intensive non-native trees will be slowly replaced by regional species that provide more shade per gallon. Lastly, splash pads will recommit a water budget that was once dedicated to turf and focus it on a refreshing play feature. Water use is now directed to areas which will have the highest impact on the heat resilience of vulnerable communities while also fostering healthy outdoor play and fitness.