Ladd Keith

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.

Environmental research interests – Climate action planning, climate change, extreme heat, urban planning.