EcoDistricts: Bridging the Gap Between Plans and Projects

Abstract

As cities around the country are experiencing renewed development, growth, and investment, the concepts of sustainable development are being implemented to help create built environments, which benefit the citizens, the environment, and the economy. These sustainability concepts are often included in a city’s comprehensive plan, or are prepared in a separate planning document. The non-profit, Portland, OR based organization, EcoDistricts, has noted that often these sustainability values and policies fall short of creating or implementing tangible change in the built environment due to lack of support, funding, or any number of other restrictive factors. The EcoDistricts approach is one that involves communities and partnerships with governments and other organizations to develop plans for small districts within a city, to guide and encourage sustainable development projects within that district. This paper is a qualitative analysis comparing the comprehensive and sustainability plans to the EcoDistrict plans of three projects to determine how EcoDistrict plans implement sustainability projects compared to a cities comprehensive or sustainability plan. The cities and projects studied include, the Seaholm EcoDistrict in Austin, TX; the Little Tokyo EcoDistrict in Los Angeles, CA; and the SW EcoDistrict in Washington D.C.