In a bid to knit sustainability into large-scale community development, Seattle's Capitol Hill EcoDistrict is exploring several avenues toward greener land use.
As green building practices spread, several cities are experimenting with 'eco-districts.' Applying the principles of environmental sustainability and ecosystem theory to whole neighborhoods can be a lot more powerful than doing so on single parcels alone. In Seattle, the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict hosts a variety of semi-independent sustainability programs under the umbrella of Capitol Hill Housing, a CDC and public development authority.
In a post for ASLA's The Dirt, Katy Scherrer describes some of the ways the EcoDistrict is pushing city-scale sustainability. They include:
- Community solar power provided to low-income housing
- Green spaces with attention paid to pollination and ecosystem development
- Green-focused exceptions to Seattle's "outdated" land use code
Scherrer writes, "If more neighborhoods begin to adopt the EcoDistrict model — wherein a range of partner organizations work in concert — we could see stronger bottom-up pushes toward city-wide sustainability.
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