Coming Soon: Fresco, Arizona

By William Pounds — for poundsforgovernor.com

Nestled just south of Casa Grande along the I‑8/ATL corridor in Pinal County, Fresco is our bold blueprint for a 21st‑century community that lives, learns, works, and regenerates in perfect harmony. 

People ask me: why build a new city from scratch when our existing cities need help now? It’s a fair question — and it gets to the heart of how real systems change happens.

The short answer: existing cities are working inside a broken set of rules and feedback loops. They were designed for scarcity, sprawling automobiles, and one-way flows of energy, water, and waste. Fresco is not an escape from that problem — it’s a living, testable, scalable intervention that re-writes the rules. If Fresco proves a better way to live, learn, work, and regenerate, the lessons won’t stay inside its ring — they’ll seed retrofits and policy changes across the state.

Below I explain the logic of this Systemic Reboot, grounded in systems science, and how Fresco becomes a replicable path to resilient, equitable cities for all Arizonans.

Systems science teaches us that the behavior of any system — whether a single household, a city, or an economy — comes from its structure: the flows, feedback loops, and incentives that govern how pieces interact. For our cities today, those structures reward sprawl, waste, inequality, and short-term profit. Tinkering at the edges (a new bus route here, a landfill improvement there) helps, but it doesn’t change the architecture that created the problems in the first place.

A systemic reboot means changing the architecture: redesigning flows of people, energy, materials, and information so they reinforce sustainability, resilience, and shared prosperity. Fresco does precisely that by integrating four structural interventions:

1. Radial, mixed-use urban design that minimizes travel distances and concentrates public goods at the center.

2. Closed-loop infrastructure that treats waste as a resource—construction materials, bio-fertilizers, energy storage—so outputs feed valuable inputs.

3. An Automated Transit Loop (ATL) that removes cars from everyday life, cutting emissions and reclaiming public space.

4. A Living Laboratory university at the core that produces research, trains workers, and co-designs transitions with residents.

When these components interact, positive feedback loops appear: shorter trips reduce energy demand; local food systems increase resilience; waste-to-resource systems lower costs and create local jobs; civic co-design increases social trust and makes innovation socially acceptable.

Building Fresco is a strategic pilot on a city-scale. A well-designed pilot lets us:

Prove the economics: show that closed-loop systems lower lifecycle costs for housing, water, and energy.

Lower political friction: instead of forcing large retrofits on multiple jurisdictions at once, Fresco creates a clear, evidence-based model that other cities can adopt voluntarily.

Create a workforce pipeline: the university and innovation belt train the next generation of technicians, architects, and policymakers who will implement retrofits statewide.

Generate exportable policy tools: zoning templates, procurement standards, waste-resource contracts, and transit tech that other cities can copy.

In short, Fresco is not a distraction — it’s an investment in scalable, demonstrable solutions that make reforms easier and cheaper for existing cities.

Fresco is for everyone. That’s not lip service — it’s design. We commit to:

Mixed-income housing guarantees and affordable units embedded across neighborhoods, not segregated developments.

A roof for every willing head as the city scales: affordable housing targets will be written into the charter and enforced through community land trusts and public-private partnerships.

Open access to university resources: scholarships, apprenticeships, and research fellowships for local residents and marginalized communities.

Local hiring and co-design so residents shape how Fresco grows.

Equity is built into the feedback loops: better housing improves health, which increases productivity, which supports local enterprises — a virtuous cycle rather than the extractive dynamics of many legacy systems.

Fresco will be run like an experiment with public accountability. Metrics we will track and publish annually include:

Per capita greenhouse gas emissions

Water reuse percentage and potable water demand per resident

Waste diverted into productive streams (%)

Jobs created in clean tech and circular industries

Affordable housing units delivered and housing cost burden

Educational outcomes and apprenticeship placements


If Fresco fails to meet these transparent benchmarks, the project changes or stops. That’s what pilots are for: real learning, real accountability.

1. Phase 1 — Design & partnerships: build the university core and pilot closed-loop systems with state and federal partners.

2. Phase 2 — Demonstration: house initial cohorts, operate ATL pilots, and publish independent performance audits.

3. Phase 3 — Scale: package policy toolkits and retrofit playbooks for Arizona cities; seed regional accelerators to fund adoption.

4. Phase 4 — Replicate: support other cities in applying Fresco modules to their contexts.

Fresco is a pragmatic systems experiment. It isn’t about abandoning our existing cities — it’s about creating a credible, tested alternative that accelerates their transformation. If Fresco proves what we expect — resilient resources, good jobs, affordable homes, and thriving civic life — it will make the political and economic case for wholesale redesign far easier.

We owe our children more than continued decline in systems that were never designed for longevity or fairness. Let’s prove a better way. Let’s build Fresco — a living laboratory for a just, circular, and sustainable Arizona — and use it to reboot systems everywhere.