Ecodistricts
“Think globally, act locally,” is one of the earliest adages of today’s environmental movement. As communicators, our experience tells us that most people see global issues through a local lens. Or to put in another way, people’s willingness to devote a piece of that precious bandwidth we call caring is inversely proportional to the distance an issue resides from one’s home. That’s why the proliferation of neighborhood-based sustainability initiatives, sometimes called eco-districts, really caught our eye.
Thankfully, the Bullitt Foundation, which funds a number of these neighborhood scale initiatives, stepped forward to support a research initiative to help shed light how residents view sustainability in their own back yards. We also were able to work in partnership with two Bullitt-funded organizations that are leaders in this field. Portland’s Verde launched Living Cully in 2010 in an effort to “reinterpret sustainability as an anti-poverty strategy.” Seattle’s Capitol Hill Housing launched the Capitol Hill Ecodistrict in 2013 to promote a “socially equitable, environmentally resilient and culturally vibrant neighborhood.” Our research found a number of common themes that we believe are applicable beyond the boundaries of the Capitol Hill and Cully neighborhoods, and we believe the findings show that initiatives like ecodistricts have great potential to fill a real need in many communities. Download the full report to learn more.
