Given that the conference was being renamed, we were contracted to develop an event logo and identity. Care was taken to develop a distinct, modern brand highlighting OHESC’s identity rooted in the state of Oregon, higher education and collaborative endeavors.

From an event management perspective, below are a few of the many successful aspects of the conference:

• VENUE: Smith Memorial Student Union –  The layout of space was good, accommodating exhibitors, student summit and all breakout sessions on one floor.
• AUDIO VISUAL: PSU AV – The equipment was excellent quality and offered at a very low cost,  along with responsive and proactive technicians.
• CATERING: Aramark – The food quality was amazing, especially the custom lunch with the local vendors. We received many positive comments from organizers and attendees and the use of real dishes and glassware contributed to the value of a sustainable event.
• REGISTRATION: The registration process ran smoothly with help from volunteer and dedicated SE staff onsite and the check-in rate was extremely high at 88%

• “Staff were able to answer all questions and never seemed unable to find the information we were looking for.”
• “Professional and very supportive” “The event team was phenomenal!”
• “Friendly, efficient staff. Passionate attendees, great mission. Good food.”

View select photos from the 2013 event below. A full portfolio of images is available here, courtesy of Andrew Paul Photography.

As the event managers of the conference we had a great time coordinating and assisting such a dedicated group of people working toward the same goals. The experience started December 10th at Oregon State Universities LaSells Stewart Center for a special pre-conference screening of Willamette Through Film. The following two days of the conference turned out spectacularly with three inspiring keynotes, seven plenaries + reports and nine informative break-out sessions.

On the technical side of things one of our favorite logistical aspects of this event was the OSU venue. Between the LaSells Stewart Center and the CH2M Hill Alumni Center, the facility provided everything that we needed and then some. The staff, AV technicians, and catering team were all on their game and definitely left us with a great impression.

The conference was filled with liveliness, great connections and lasting conversations; check out the photos from the conference below.

You don’t get to be Chief People Officer without a keen understanding of what motivates us as human beings. Vail Resorts’ CPO, Mark Gasta, works to uncover our drivers as professionals and to create behavior change that not only benefits us as people, but supports the bottom line and sustainability as well. In our Q+A, Mark shares his expert insights on moving people to embrace sustainability with dramatic results.

GoGreen: A lot of talk around sustainability for business focuses on efficiency and systems. What about the people? Where does the human element factor in and how important is it in the grand scheme of things?
Mark Gasta: Businesses are a system, and all of these factors play together. So if we are thinking about the environmental system, or other pieces of the system, and not paying attention to the human aspects of it, ultimately it won’t be sustainable. The system will become imbalanced.

In order to create organizations that do both well and good, we have to ensure the entire system is taken into consideration and that all intersections are tended to. Then we can maintain our profit margins, while also accomplishing our mission as an organization in the community. None of the elements in the system are mutually exclusive. When we drive shareholder value, we not only give that value to them, but we can then reinvest in our employees, our guest experience, our communities and environments–all are inextricably linked.

GG: From the human resources perspective, is sustainability a selling point for recruiting talent and retention rates?

MG: It is an incredibly strong selling point, because people want to feel good about the organization they work for. People want to understand how their efforts can contribute to a larger purpose. It doesn’t matter if the employee is coming just because they love the sport (in our case) and want to be a part of that sport. The stronger that connection is, the more they want to share this sport with others and share nature with others.

Its been proven through research that when people spend time in nature, it makes them want to protect it more and has a positive impact on their own personal values. You can build out that value chain and connect people with those higher purposes—and it doesn’t matter really what that higher purpose is as long as it’s greater than just showing up and punching the clock.

From this perspective, sustainability first creates greater success for the organization, but also results in greater engagement and satisfaction for the people working there. Getting back to the recruiting piece of it, when someone is contemplating their life and dreaming up how are they going to make a difference, they want to be part of something bigger. Sustainability helps us show that we can easily draw out their potential to have a very positive impact in the areas they care about.

GG: You also work with students in higher education. Are you seeing a greater tendency from this next generation of employees to place a higher value on sustainability?
MG: Oh, without a doubt. It’s on the minds of many kids coming through school right now. And that’s very refreshing and exciting. I read an article about a recent Harvard Business School graduating MBA class that had over 50% of its members sign a pledge that they would never work for an organization that did harm and that they would only work for organizations that did good.

People are looking for something more in their career. In the past, it took a catastrophe or something negative to cause people to be reflective and ask, “how am I going to make a difference” or “am I going to look back on my life knowing that I lived the life of purpose?” Today, I think those values are being engrained in us earlier on. Maybe it’s parents, maybe it’s technology giving people a better world view—but whatever the cause, it’s a good thing.

GG: What are your thoughts on where the responsibility should lie for succeeding at sustainability? Should it be with a green team or the sustainability officers or the executive team?
MG: The primary responsibility should not lie with a sustainability officer or green team. Now, should those parties be the conduit of educating others and providing tools and resources to help people understand how to drive and support green efforts – absolutely. But the reason I say no is because my goal is to make sustainability obsolete. Sustainability should be woven into the fabric of the culture and just be part of the business planning process. We should do it not because it’s going to result in altruistic successes, but instead because it’s the right thing to do for the business.

The beautiful thing about sustainability is that the pure definition of it is “be around to live another day.” If you’re not around to live another day, from a business standpoint you’re going to fail. If you want your business to be successful in the long-term, you have to ensure you build it in a sustainable way—which means paying attention and finding the balance for all of those key stakeholders. That includes not taking more than you give, as it relates to the environment, and ensuring you are not doing harm. Both can come back to bite you through brand reputation or negative aspects of compliance. That is the minimum expectation. From there companies have a unique opportunity to competitively differentiate themselves by becoming sustainability leaders and actually enhancing their surroundings.

Because it’s the right thing to do from a business perspective, the ultimate responsibility lies with an organization’s leaders. When they fully understand sustainability, they will see it meshes with the philosophy that wise decisions are those that consider the long-term viability of a company over short-term gains—and that short-term thinking ultimately does not result in a lasting success.

GG: How accountable do you think employees should be towards achieving the overall success of those strategic decisions and those goals?
MG: I think of it a little differently. I don’t think about holding employees accountable, so much as figuring out how we can inspire them to the chase the possibilities, Most people don’t wake up saying, “I want to destroy the earth today” or “I want to do things wrong today.” The responsibility lies with the folks who are leading this charge. They need to drive education, communication, and empowerment. It’s about helping people see how can they make a bigger difference, what their role is and their potential for aligning with a higher purpose.

We also need to create access to those paths and show how our teams can do all of this within their particular role. Every single person has the ability to make a positive difference . So, it’s not about holding employees accountable, it’s about inspiring them to be a part of something greater – which they naturally already want to do, in my estimation.

GG: Have you seen unintended consequences of a positive nature in other areas of your organization that have arisen from your sustainability efforts?
MG: Absolutely. It is all connected. I’ll go back to what we talked about earlier—that it’s all one system and you have to factor in all aspects of the system in order to create a sustainable organization. For example, as we work on employee engagement, many people may not immediately translate that as part of building a sustainable company. But taking care of the most foundational opportunities for employees allows them to become interested in things that create greater value-adds for the company overall.

When we do a regression analysis on our employee engagement scores, we see that the greatest driver in our company—the biggest difference we can make in further engaging our employees—is around sustainability. Our employees want to know how they can further influence our company’s work in the community and the environment, so we have been focusing on how to tie sustainability and employee engagement together.

As a result, we have never seen greater success as it relates to things like our guest satisfaction scores. This greater engagement we’ve fostered is resulting in higher guest satisfaction and it’s directly related to our efforts to help employees understand how our company makes a difference, and how they can personally contribute to our sustainability initiatives.

GG: What kind of organizational change is usually necessary to succeed at creating this very integrated system? What are the most common shifts needed or trends that you see?
MG: I think the greatest challenge for most of us is learning how to operate outside our silos. It’s easy to get stuck in them because that’s what we have control over. Thinking outside of those lines can be overwhelming. Be it a business unit or a department or a location – people are worried about themselves. They are not worried about everyone else.

Going back to the HR, many departments will plan their own strategy for the coming year, but how often do entire organizations bring the planning to a shared platform? Very few make that leap and even fewer take the more important step of looking across the full matrix to find points of integration and collaboration. But unless we look across all of those disparate agendas to ensure we have cross-coordinated our efforts in order to move forward together, we will always have the possibility that things will get out of balance. For example, you might have the greatest learning and development team in the world, but if your compensation and benefits programs are not competitive – you’re going to fail.

The key is to regularly look across the matrix and coordinate agendas at every level within the organization. If any aspect gets out of balance, you are going to stop moving forward and it is not a sustainable long-term solution.

GG: What would you say is the biggest barrier you’ve run up against in maintaining balance? How did you surpass it?
MG: Working outside silos is an on-going challenge. It’s hard and that ‘s why people don’t do it very often. It is easier for me to close my door and just worry about my work. If you take a collaborative approach, now I have to worry about everyone else’s work and how it fits together to create systems that are mutually supportive. Constant communication is required, as is a true commitment to a shared vision.

A very simple example: if my CEO came in right now and asked me to create a frontline bonus program for employees, I could close my door, pull up old documents of other frontline bonus programs created over time and come out in a few hours with a sixty page document that is a perfect frontline bonus program on paper. But would that be successful or would it fail?

It would fail, because I failed to ask a lot of questions that require looking outside of my own silo. What technologies are necessary to pay these bonuses and measure these successes? Are the measures I put within the program driving the right behaviors to lead to the right outcomes? Have we communicated to employees how they will be rewarded based on the desired behaviors and why that’s important to the overall success of the business? Have we trained leaders to help connect this rewards program with the outcomes we want? On and on and on—you can begin to see all the systemic interconnections in just that one example. Unless I work with all of those constituents—unless I coordinate across that matrix—the program won’t be successful.

GG: OK, lightning round (:30 or less!).

1. Best book you’ve read that’s not about sustainability, but totally applies to it?
MG: “How Then, Shall We Live” by Wayne Muller

2. What’s the worst great idea you’ve put in place and turned out to be a flop? How would you make it better the next time around?

MG: We have what we call “Street Teams” in our organization. Traditionally Street Teams are a group of people that go out before a band hits the city and do things like chalk the sidewalks and post posters all around to gain excitement around the bands coming in to town. We have established street teams at all of our resorts and the idea is that they are the voice of our employee population—they are owning and fostering a culture around the environment and engaging our workforce further. We are utilizing them for outward communication and to gather information. It is a great idea, but it’s really hard to implement, organize, and to keep it alive, plus figure out how to fully leverage it. So, I still believe that it is a great idea—but it is certainly not optimized and it is a constant struggle to keep going.

3. The number one concept you drill into your students’ and employee’s heads about sustainability?
MG: Find and live your passion. You want to be able look back on your life and feel fulfilled in it. That is defined differently for each of us, but in order to do that we have to understand ourselves—what we believe, what’s important to us, what are we good at, what we like and dislike, what gives us energy. Once you find those answers and live them daily, success will result personally and professionally.

4. What’s one piece of advice you would give to an organization just getting started on a sustainability strategy?
MG: Help your people understand the potential of sustainability—that it is not just altruistic, but it allows you to do the right thing and make smart business decisions.

5. One piece of advice you would give to an organization ready to take things up a notch?
MG: Similarly, when you help your team see the greater potential in sustainability, you will have the foundation set to reach new heights. Again, I think it is about education, empowerment and making sure you are speaking to the triggers of your audience.

Mark Gasta is the Chief People Officer and a sustainability advocate at Vail Resorts Management Company. He is also a featured speaker at the 2012 Sustainable Opportunities Summit and share insights on driving sustainability via behavioral and organizational change with attendees, March 21 in Denver, Colorado. Learn more about the Summit at: sosummit.org.

Day 1

Day 2

The Lloyd District is one of Portland’s five Pilot EcoDistricts and is moving forward to build a green-minded, diverse and unique neighborhood with a strong identity and strong ties to sustainability with a business case baked in. District Sustainability Director, Sarah Heinicke, shares her vision and an update on how this neighborhood is tackling environmental and social issues, while seizing opportunities, all at the district scale.

EcoDistricts: Each of the Portland EcoDistrict Pilots are quite distinct in terms of neighborhood culture and circumstance. How does the Lloyd District differ from its counterparts in the program and what priorities have come out of that unique perspective?

Sarah Heinicke: The Lloyd Eco district is comprised of large superblocks, suburban-style office development and governmental uses. The board itself is comprised of leaders from those key stakeholder firms and institutions. Currently there is no representation from the relatively small residential population, or small businesses interests, though we intend to reach out to those communities.

These are the obvious differences when you think of Lloyd District compared to Foster Green, or South Waterfront. Those are material differences, but I think we have a lot more in common than not. The process of implementing these kind of transformative changes on this scale, the issue of board involvement, community advocacy, and the prospect of implementation in a bearish market are challenges all the districts face no matter what their mix.

We are just now initiating our project priorities discussion and although I don’t have a final list to share with you, I can tell you there is a lot of excitement to just get started on something. It’s my job to make sure the project mix is right—from big multi-year, multi-stakeholder efforts to smaller, simpler projects. Projects that are feasible, impactful, executable and have a funding mechanisms built in are the strong favorites. Another priority that has emerged is getting our governance structure in order sooner rather than later so that we know exactly where we stand and to approach the community for support, either in terms of mission or funding.

EcoD: You’ve been in your role for several months now. What kind of vision has your working group developed for the Lloyd EcoDistrict in that time? How is success defined now that you’ve become acquainted with the project, the stakeholders and their priorities?

SH: We are developing a vision statement of sorts that reflects what we feel to be uniquely Lloyd —what set us apart, gives us an edge, and provides a compass to orient our priorities. It’s a work in progress, but essentially the board would like to develop a brand that speaks to the fact that projects that go forward in the Lloyd District have to make financial sense, and have a solid real world business case in support of them, in addition to a environmental and social equity component.

EcoD: Developing an EcoDistrict seems like an inherently political process, given the number of stakeholders and varied interests for outcomes. How do you successfully accomplish goals in that political environment without any “power” so-to-speak?

SH: Time will tell, I suppose, but I think any movement or group of people working together on something must have respect, patience, compassion, consensus and hard work in place to get anything done. The EcoDistrict is not a command/control model of action. We have to learn to work together as a board and as a community if we want to get anything done in the finite sense of projects and programs in the Lloyd EcoDistrict (and in the larger city/global picture). The Lloyd EcoDistrict partners have to learn how to trust and collaborate with each other. So old forms of “power” may be irrelevant in some cases. We are on the cutting edge of figuring out how that can work.

EcoD: How important are the more emotional benefits, such as sense of identity, to the success of an EcoDistrict? And how do you measure these kinds less tangible outcomes?

SH: I think the sense of identity will ultimately be critically important to the EcoDistrict’s success long-term, but I think it’s premature to try to roll out an identity campaign for a movement that has yet to accomplish anything or gain significant momentum. If we were to do that, I think we would risk losing credibility and perhaps be guilty of being “all hat, no cattle.” Once we get some projects going, and widen our influence to include residents and small businesses, we will be able to reassess and start to lead with a sense of identity that has substance behind it.

EcoD: You’ve mentioned on several occasions that social equity needs to play a key strategic role in the development of the Lloyd EcoDistrict. Why is this so critical? And has a concrete direction been established to address the subject? 

SH: An EcoDistrict is a holistic enterprise. We can not attempt to make right-headed decisions about how to build better, do infrastructure better, promote health and connectivity, and restore of our natural environment and then not include the human condition in that. The EcoDistrict should be seen as an economic development tool and a big part of the tools’ function is to try to address job creation for all sectors of the population.

Our board does not yet have concrete plan of action for achieving this, but we are considering ideas such as working with workforce development agencies, the trade unions, non-profits, and the County to help deliver a jobs component to some of the proposed projects involving existing building retrofits. We’re also working with a Portland State University undergraduate business Capstone course, and they are specifically helping us develop a business case for including a workforce component in the projects we pursue.

EcoD: Is there collaboration between the Pilot District groups on shared interests/challenges/situations? For instance, the SoMa and Lloyd EcoDistricts both have an interesting mix of large and medium scale business interests plus urban residential communities to appease. Are the lines of communication open during the process? If so, how?

SH: The lines of communication are definitely open, Kirsten Cowden and I have met several times and have a regular meeting on our calendars because we also recognize the inherent similarities in our districts. A board member and I have shared our initial process hurdles, and I think I speak for both groups when I say we wish there was more time in the day to share information and work together. I suspect we will pioneer a number of process oriented models for project assessments, governance, finance models that SoMa will be able to use when they are ready.

EcoD: What kind of public reporting structure is planned for the EcoDistricts? Will some sort of status updates be available for the public using social and online media, so we can keep up on how the pilots are taking shape?

SH: As a non-profit we are not obligated to fulfill public reporting laws, though we certainly want to share all the progress and good news we have. We would love to have a very robust website, which is updated and linked in to appropriate social media outlets when we have news to share. Right now we are working to get a website launched, with relevant, up-to-date, useful content that keeps people engaged and interested (and willing and able to help the cause). A lot of the success or failure of this organization in the first years will be dependent on how we can motivate and procure excellent help from volunteers.

As we partner with agencies that do have public reporting requirements, they will share that information to their stakeholders as well. Right now our public partners are the Mayor’s Office, Portland Development Commission, and Metro.

Sarah Heinicke is the Lloyd District Sustainability Director, and a speaker at the third annual 2011 EcoDistricts Summit, October 26-28 in Portland, Oregon. Find details on the  EcoDistricts Summit at ecodistrictssummit.com.

The City of Portland has been a major driver behind the EcoDistricts approach to sustainable development—and the world is taking notice. City of Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability Director, Susan Anderson, lets us in on why the district scale works, its potential as a global standard of sustainable development and the key aspects for cities to get right.

EcoDistricts: What inspired the City of Portland to drive the development & adoption of a district-scale model for sustainable innovation—i.e., the EcoDistrict?

Susan Anderson: Essentially, EcoDistricts are small enough to act quickly but big enough to have a meaningful impact. They also offer the potential for collaboration at a multi-block scale, creating opportunities that aren’t possible either city-wide or on a building-by-building basis. Over the last 10 to 12 years Portland has seen incredible strides taken in building performance—we’re beginning to see net-zero energy buildings, for example. But we also know that a district-scale approach creates opportunities to link buildings and achieve performance together that is much better than each building can do individually. The whole district can be much more than the sum of its parts. Solutions like district energy, for example, become feasible.

Working at district scale also taps into a powerful identity—the neighborhood. In Portland, neighborhoods provide a strong organizing identity that connects and motivates residents and businesses. Creating an EcoDistrict can both benefit and contribute to neighborhood identity, and the community development that results can create a powerful positive feedback loop.

Just as we’ve seen success at the building scale, we see even more options for a district. At a community-wide level we make plans, policies, investments and run programs, often quite successfully. We also know how, in most cases, city-scale change happens slowly. EcoDistricts offer the promise of delivering projects on a much-accelerated timeline, and one that is driven by the businesses, residents, and property owners in a district, not by the city.

EcoD: Why do you think this model is working in Portland? Is it something unique about our city culture or do you believe the EcoDistrict model can work anywhere?

SA: EcoDistricts clearly have promise in almost any urbanized area, and district-scale approaches are delivering great results in a number of European cities as well as places like Dockside Green in Victoria, British Columbia. Portland’s culture of collaboration significantly elevates the opportunity here. We already have strong neighborhood-level identities, and Portland businesses are famously collaborative, sharing ideas and recognizing the potential to do better individually by working well (and more) collectively. Portland also has a great foundation of relationships and organizations, like the transportation management associations, which have both delivered results and established relationships.

EcoD: What elements have to be in place for EcoDistricts to be successful?

SA: The basic ingredients to a successful EcoDistrict are simple: multiple sites in close proximity, a shared commitment to improving performance and an open mind. From there, it can get very technical, very quickly. Districts that have a variety of uses and structures, for example, are likely to have more opportunities to share and assist one another—think of a school and a church sharing a parking lot, for example, or the classic energy example of a skating rink and an indoor swimming pool. The ice rink is constantly trying to keep the ice frozen and get rid of heat, and the swimming pool has a constant need to keep the water warm. Instead of each facility handling its energy needs on its own, a pair of heat exchangers and a pipe connecting the two can result in huge cost savings.

You’ll rarely find two districts doing the same thing. The opportunities and priorities are almost certain to vary, and that’s perfectly appropriate. One size doesn’t fit all. The critical thing is to establish goals and a mechanism for working together, and then start with a doable set of projects, building momentum as you go.

EcoD: What role do cities play in transforming EcoDistricts from lofty ideas into reality? And specifically, what role has the City of Portland played in the development of the Five Pilot EcoDistricts currently underway?

SA: EcoDistricts don’t necessarily require a role for the city government, and there is a great deal the private sector can do without the city’s involvement. Often, however, city regulations may complicate options, and the city needs to be ready to explore ways to meet the outcomes that regulations are intended to accomplish in ways that may depart from the prescribed pathways. And as owner and steward of the right-of-way—streets, sidewalks and public spaces—the city frequently does have a role, since sharing physical assets often means crossing the right-of-way.

During this initial pilot phase in Portland, the city has been quite involved in supporting the districts. The Portland Development Commission has provided funding to the Portland Sustainability Institute to facilitate the initial processes to establish the five pilot districts. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has helped gather and analyze data to establish baseline performance information. But it is the district property owners, businesses and residents who have put in the longest hours, sorting out how they want to organize themselves, what their priorities are and how they want to proceed.

EcoD: How does the development of an EcoDistrict(s) affect the vitality of a city? Does the impact stop at the borders of the district or does it permeate the rest of the neighborhoods as well?

SA: The distinct focus of EcoDistricts is to improve energy and resource conservation at the district level. Other elements of EcoDistricts bring forward long held approaches and practices related to asset-based community development and community empowerment. The real implementation of these elements can support a culture and practice that can spread to other districts and neighborhoods, thereby affecting parts of the city outside designated EcoDistricts.

What we do not know is the potential for a community-driven approach to EcoDistricts to accomplish maintained results and the pace at which these results can be accomplished. It is likely that sustained results will take some level of staff or expert involvement in developing and implementing these community driven initiatives. It is also very possible that the community driven objectives will go beyond the resource conservation objectives that are at the heart of EcoDistricts.

The city lacks resources to staff and support these kinds of efforts outside a limited number of districts. It is important, then, to have an approach to EcoDistricts that allows for learning and consideration of what is actually exportable to other districts given city resource limitations.

EcoD: Can EcoDistricts help cities do better by marginalized and/or income districts? How can gentrification be avoided in the process of uplifting these communities?

SA: The benefits of community development efforts including EcoDistricts should be linked to addressing the barriers to opportunity faced by marginalized populations and low-income districts.

Gentrification refers both to the increase in property values that come from neighborhood improvement as well as the involuntary displacement of residents and businesses if and when the property values in a neighborhood rise to the point that they are no longer affordable for current occupants. Increase in values is almost an inevitable result of success of community development efforts once they reach a certain level. The strategies to avoid the injustice inherent in involuntary displacement must be developed and put in place as part of a long-term EcoDistrict or community development strategy. The effectiveness of those anti-displacement strategies are limited, so there is a dilemma built into our approach.

A basic question may be: Are there levels of accomplishing the objectives of an EcoDistrict approach that will be less likely to tip a neighborhood into market-driven involuntary displacement? It seems like that is possible, but we have yet to analyze this in depth.

EcoD: What aspects of the process do you feel city planners most need to be attentive to in order to contribute to a successful EcoDistrict?

SA: There are several areas:

(a) Being skilled in and thoughtful about what it takes to have a successful and truly community-driven initiative develop.

(b) Having useful measures of progress and success that help evaluate the effectiveness of the approach and justify the expenditure of resources needed to realize results.

(c) Cultural competence and community organizing skills.

(d) A level of knowledge of technical approaches to district-scale resource conservation practices sufficient to identify and bring technical resources to an initiative where necessary.

(e) An understanding of the economics of community development and investment, especially related to resource conservation.

EcoD: What do you feel are the most significant impacts that EcoDistricts make on a city? What are the value propositions that you feel no city should be able to ignore?
SA: EcoDistricts offer the promise of a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. They also have the potential for placemaking that combines a new geographic identity with extremely high performance, and that combination can create a destination—a place people go to enjoy, appreciate and be inspired. A successful green building is a powerful articulation of a host of issues—water, energy, waste, toxics—all of which are important but can be abstract until they are embodied in a structure that people can experience. So too can EcoDistricts offer an experience—a place people can walk through, look at, touch, hear—that is vastly more powerful than the same features spread out across a city. Arguably, the only way we ever will get those features throughout the city is by first concentrating them.

One final value proposition of EcoDistricts is in showing what is possible. The world is searching for solutions to urbanization, to resource scarcity, to poverty, to climate change, to a host of issues that are growing in urgency. We need examples of what a super high-performance district looks like, what technologies it uses, how it links natural and built environments, how it can be financed. Whoever develops these solutions will be well positioned to export their expertise and products to cities throughout the world, and that means jobs in the near term and environmental and social benefits for decades to come.

Susan Anderson is the Director of the City of Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability (BPS), and a featured speaker at the third annual 2011 EcoDistricts Summit, October 26-28 in Portland, Oregon. Learn more about the City’s role in supporting the development of thriving EcoDistricts at portlandonline.com/bps. Find details on the 2011 EcoDistricts Summit and register at ecodistrictssummit.com.

EcoDistricts: How does the development strategy change when working at the district scale rather than on a single structure?

Naomi Cole: It’s an entirely different strategy at a district scale. When working on a physical structure, the overall goal is pretty clear: a successful structure, like a new or retrofitted building, bioswale or energy system for example. When working at an EcoDistrict scale, there are potentially hundreds of projects and strategies to achieve the overall goal of environmental and social performance improvements.

At the district scale, we consider projects in the built environment as well as programs around people and behavior. And most importantly, the mechanisms for achieving these projects become much more complex because there are many more stakeholders than in a single structure. At a minimum, we have neighbors, developers, institutions, a city and utilities. Development at this scale requires a new process for making sustainable cities. We created EcoDistricts to provide a framework and approach for creating sustainable neighborhoods that includes new models of governance, assessment, project innovation, finance and policy.

EcoD: What is the most surprising unforeseen challenge you’ve encountered since working at the district scale and what solution or solutions have you discovered to address it?

NC: The process takes a long time. Stakeholder engagement and buy-in is, in many ways, the most critical step, and that process is dynamic and difficult to control. After we built our EcoDistricts framework we thought we’d be able to progress relatively efficiently in our pilot districts. But the process of engaging neighbors, formalizing partnerships, committing resources and building local capacity is very process heavy and takes time. Engagement has to be done right in order to get to the next steps of assessment and project implementation, which is where we all want to be.

EcoD: What is the single biggest driver of success for the development of an EcoDistrict? Why is it so important?

NC: There are two equally important drivers for success and they are addressed by our first two phases of EcoDistrict development: district organization and district assessment. The district organization process is what I described in the last question — engagement, vision, partnerships, capacity, and governance of stakeholders in an EcoDistrict. If this is done right, the next steps fall into place. The second, and equally critical, driver of success is an effective assessment process to prioritize projects. The biggest question once an EcoDistrict is organized is, “what are the right projects?” An integrated sustainability assessment across a neighborhood is critical for determining high impact projects, low-hanging fruit, and long-term ambitious investments. An effective assessment provides a roadmap for ongoing district sustainability improvements.

EcoD: Are EcoDistricts just a sum of their parts, in terms of benefits, or do the positive impacts grow exponentially when addressed as a collective unit?

NC: Definitely the latter. In fact, we often say, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” to describe the value proposition for EcoDistricts. The intention behind EcoDistricts is a more integrated approach to developing our cities. By thinking district-wide across multiple areas of performance, we see opportunities for investments to do many things at once. Adding bioswales to sidewalks, for example, provides a timely opportunity to lay infrastructure for district utilities, saving huge capital costs by tearing up streets only once. A neighborhood building retrofit program can save energy while also improving comfort, saving on utility bills, creating jobs and increasing property value. We focus on the district scale because it’s a compelling size — small enough to innovate quickly but big enough for meaningful results.

EcoD: What drew you to working at the district scale? Why is this concept so enticing to you personally?

NC: Neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities, so it’s the next scale (beyond buildings) that we have to tackle if we’re going to achieve the kind of ambitious city and regional sustainability goals adopted around the world. My background is in architecture, and I was drawn to architecture because the built environment provides an opportunity to create better places for people and nature. After working on buildings for a few years, I quickly realized that we could only accomplish so much within the walls of a structure. The next opportunity for the sustainability industry is neighborhoods because of the compelling scale.

Social networks enable change, buildings have the potential to share systems, and public spaces are ripe to create community and provide ecosystem services. I like the complexity of the neighborhood scale because we are challenged to consider a range of social, technical, financial and political issues that don’t come up at the building scale, but feel more manageable to address than at a citywide scale.

EcoD: If you could paint a picture of this nation’s cities in 20 years — how does the EcoDistrict fit in? What kind of progress and results do you hope to see over that time as a result of district scale innovation and development? Is there an end game or set of goals PoSI is working towards?

NC: EcoDistricts are a critical step towards eco cities. They aren’t an end in themselves but an important step on the path towards scaling up what works in urban sustainability innovation to address the myriad challenges faced by metropolitan areas. So many sustainability successes are still seen as boutique projects and not transferable. Our goal is not for every neighborhood to become its own independent EcoDistrict. Through EcoDistricts, we aim to innovate at the neighborhood scale to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Then we hope to ultimately make a particular practice, whether it’s neighborhood governance or assessment or finance, become the new norm for how cities operate.

EcoD: What do you think is so compelling about Portland’s EcoDistrict model? Why are cities around the world turning to the Rose City for guidance in developing their own district scale projects?

NC: I think the thing that’s compelling about our work is that we’ve created a framework – a “how to” approach – for getting to sustainable neighborhoods. Every city is looking for this. And while we know what we’ve got now isn’t perfect, it’s the best of what’s out there and it captures lessons learned and case studies from sustainable neighborhood projects around the world. While many cities work in specific neighborhoods with ambitious sustainability goals, we’ve taken a broad approach by developing a transferable framework that we hope can be adopted by cities around the world. In addition, as we respond to inquiries about EcoDistricts, we find that cities are equally interested in our expertise as they are in our leadership in creating learning networks and a place to share lessons learned in creating sustainable neighborhoods.

Naomi Cole is the program manager for Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI) and a featured speaker at the third annual 2011 EcoDistricts Summit, October 26-28 in Portland, Oregon. Learn more about PoSI and their EcoDistricts model at pdxinstitute.org. Find details on the 2011 EcoDistricts Summit and register at ecodistrictssummit.com.

When U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system was founded in 1994, the focus was on individual projects. But sustainable development has evolved since then, and today LEED encompasses singular projects and neighborhood development as well. Learn about how LEED is providing the common language and foundation for district scale development from U.S. Green Building Council Vice-President and EcoDistricts Summit featured speaker, Scot Horst.

EcoD: Can you put some context around LEED’s role in advancing the concept of an EcoDistrict? What kind of positive contributions can LEED buildings, or rather a group of LEED buildings, make towards the development of a district with sustainability at its core?
Scot Horst: The tendency within the environmental movement is to think there is competition between different programs or that various programs are stealing an amount of thinking from a very confined market and that they’re taking it from each other. But, in fact what we know is that if we are going to be successful, we need to leverage all of our different abilities and thinking between many varied programs and approaches. LEED does something very specific—that other programs have not been able to do—which is bringing to scale a level of understanding and a series of different environmental ideas that are very approachable. It helps people who haven’t done this work before figure out how to get into it and what they can do.

What we find is that people who have done LEED projects like to go further on the next one. They like to see if they can do more sustainable projects on their next building, which ultimately leads to a more integrated approach. That’s the point when we start seeing LEED Platinum buildings being pursued and really incredible things put into place. So it only makes sense that if you have an environment where a number of people that have consistently been thinking within this platform and have become well acquainted with all of the different concepts—which we call credits or Environmental Approaches & Ideas—that they start realizing how these concepts work together. You hit that point and it becomes very apparent how all the concepts work towards creating a community or a neighborhood that can be distinguished by the fact that it goes much further even than what our own credits system broaches.

LEED can help reach this result by plowing the ground—getting people interested, getting them involved, helping them understand that a shared language of ideas exists for them and that there are others who are trying to do similar things. Because, once you become a leader, you want to do much more and to expand the impact. That’s where EcoDistricts and sustainable neighborhoods really come to the foreground.

EcoD: How do we use this common language—the LEED system—to bring all of the different stakeholders to the table? Completing a single building has its own set of challenges, but to develop at a district scale makes things considerably more difficult. Does LEED have a role to play?
SH: Yes. What planners sometimes say is that LEED misses the mark because it’s just about a single building, but we know that if we don’t look at neighborhoods, we’ll never get where we need to be. What that perspective ignores is the fact that LEED is successful precisely because it touches the place where people make so many decisions. It gives a lot of people solid direction on all the small decisions that add up to a large thing called a building.

You’re right in that this is much more challenging working at the neighborhood scale, so I’ve been extremely impressed with what we’ve seen come out of the LEED Neighborhood Development (ND) program and the development of EcoDistricts, because you need a much broader set of stakeholder interest to be successful—many times in areas where people don’t have decision making power. That means you have to find ways to influence people who are the decision makers.

LEED plays an essential role at this intersection, because it’s a practical, well-defined tool that gets a number of people within a project actively engaged and on the same page. When you receive credits for a piece of your project, you know you’ve achieved something. Let’s say you have a neighborhood with 100 buildings and you want to get all of the developers to agree to elevate the energy efficiency in these buildings. You can do that much more easily when everyone is speaking the same language. I see that as the basis for how we build out an EcoDistrict. I’m not saying LEED is essential for us to do that, but I do believe it’s an incredibly valuable tool that can help the process.

EcoD: In terms of organizations making decisions at the district scale—municipalities for example—what do you think about cities using of the LEED system as a requirement for new buildings going forward. Some cities are upholding LEED standards as the minimum for all future commercial buildings. Do you think we need these kind of mandates? Or should the market/private section drive adoption of sustainable development choices?
SH: My personal opinion is that LEED is designed to be a leadership standard. It’s not designed to be a regulatory tool. Governments really do best when they use tools they know best—which are codes and other standards to set a minimum for they want their buildings to do. LEED is really about taking people from that point and saying, well, what else can we do that improves what we have.

The reason I’ve given my life to this system called LEED is because, when I was a consultant, I saw so many people, that had been doing work on buildings for most of their careers, have these moments where they’d go, “I’ve never thought about it that way before.” It’s that transformational moment where they realize that by working with other people they can do something that significantly alters their approach in a positive way and reduces their environmental impact at the same time. It’s a leadership transformation. Once people see that, it changes the way they work. And once they change the way they work, it’s simply not good enough to have a high-performing building, you also want an high-performing neighborhood. It’s the ability to achieve that transformation that’s at the core of whether or not we can create enough of sustainable neighborhoods at scale to make a difference.

EcoD: Can you tell us more about the LEED ND Program and how it works to scale up efforts that started in single buildings?
SH: What we are seeing with LEED ND is that things have changed. When the buildings market was going crazy and building all kinds of new neighborhoods all over the place, the rating system USGBC built made a huge amount of sense. Now what it shows is a series of incredibly good ideas that aren’t well aligned with the realities of the current market. The reality today is that we need to be thinking more about what existing neighborhoods need. We need to figure out ways we can approach achieving real performance in these neighborhoods and how we engage a larger stakeholder group. And this is where I’m so impressed by what EcoDistricts are doing, because there is an excellent confluence between what LEED is doing for existing neighborhoods and the EcoDistricts approach.

Scot Horst is Vice-President of U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and a featured speaker at the 2011 EcoDistricts Summit, October 26-28 in Portland, Oregon. Learn more about LEED and USGBC at usgbc.org. Get details on the 2011 EcoDistricts Summit and register at ecodistrictssummit.com. 

Skanska VP Beth Heider believes in building for the next 100 years—not just the next 10. It’s a strategic shift in thinking that challenges developers and builders to look at costs over time and consider the future—as much as the present—bottom line when making decisions that will affect occupants and owners, as well as city and neighborhood vitality. With energy prices currently soaring and expected to rise even higher, performance becomes a key component of both building valuation and operational costs over time. In our interview, Beth outlines how the LEED system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), continues to help us make more informed decisions going forward.

EcoDistricts Summit: How do you see EcoDistricts playing a role in the planning of sustainable cities going forward?
Beth Heider: From where I sit—using insights gained working for Skanska and with the USGBC—I would say we need to look beyond the drip lines of our high performance buildings and—in the lexicon of the Living Building Challenge—scale jump. We need to look at how buildings act in a synergistic way with other buildings around them and how they work within the infrastructure that lays the basis for a community.

If you look at the statistics, people are moving toward cities and more densely populated communities. I think we have a unique opportunity to take a look at what we’re doing in our communities from a sustainability perspective in a broader way. If we take advantage of that opportunity, it should have wide-ranging effects. It’s going to demand that we look at things in a new light and create political, legal, financial and design infrastructures that are different than those we have now.

As you know, LEED has a number of rating systems. LEED for Neighborhood Development (ND) addresses a collection of buildings and the infrastructure that ties them together at the district scale. Perhaps the greatest impact the LEED ND program will have is how it informs the other rating systems. For instance, the number of credits available for choosing a site wisely has increased in LEED 2009.

EcoD: The LEED platform has been a significant driver of both the construction and mainstreaming of more sustainable buildings. But so much of the day-to-day benefit after a building is “finished” comes from behavior change and interactions with a structure. How do we take the energy that LEED brings to a project and carry it out over the long term—so that we’re not just creating technically sustainable structures, but also using them efficiently? 
BH: One of the things we’ve learned in the green building movement is the importance of using a consistent lexicon—a consistent way to benchmark the energy and environmental performance of buildings. The LEED platform gives structure to the dialogue.

When we started to look at the performance of buildings—it differed from the modeled performance. The notable New Buildings Institute (NBI) study that was done a few years ago on LEED buildings revealed anomalies – something that you can only do when you have a basis of comparison.

EcoD: What did the results show or prove? 
BH: What we found is that there are three key things that influence the performance of buildings—and now I’m not talking about ecodistricts, but rather the individual buildings.

One is how the building was designed. Was it designed thoughtfully in the LEED lexicon? Were the points pursued part of an integrated strategy and appropriate to what the building was intended to do? How was the building designed toward environmental and energy performance?

The second thing is how a building is used by its occupants. That speaks directly to your question. It’s the same with cars. If you drive your Prius like it’s a Maserati—you’re not going to get great gas mileage. It works the same for buildings. Fortunately with your Prius, you have a video game built into the dashboard that provides constant feedback on how your actions affect the car’s performance. Toyota puts you in a position to understand the direct relationship between what you do and how that changes energy consumption—which means you’re in an informed position to make decisions. If you want to drive your Prius like a Maserati—fine, but there are consequences that have to do with energy performance and the connected cost of fuel.

The third component is how a building is maintained and operated. Again, using a car analogy, it’s no different than making sure your tires are inflated properly and your oil has been changed recently. If you have all of those things in play, your building—like your car—will function as optimally as possible.

All three elements play into the performance of a project, but the great contribution that LEED makes is a lexicon that allows us to have this dialogue. And that conversation has, in turn, informed how LEED has evolved. As we move forward, the Building Performance Partnership Program is in place to capture electric and utility costs (as of LEED 2009). This new data management platform allows us (USGBC) to link performance of buildings to the decisions that were made or attributes of a project. We can provide owners feedback about the relationship between the points they have elected to pursue versus how their building is performaning on an actual basis (rather than a modeled basis). And this is a huge step between connecting building performance with the design intent reflected in the LEED points system.

EcoD: Do you think there is potential for a tool that—similar to LEED—allows cities to measure their building performance on a municipal scale that would be publically available and encourage friendly competition?
BH: Having reasonable data that is consistent and well-gathered, and feeding into a common metric for municipalities is a good idea—though there are all kinds of challenges around how you verify that the information reported is correct and making sure there is adequate education so people are able to understand how to participate.

There is also the issue of voluntary participation—which is what the LEED program is—versus legislated participation—which you see in places like Europe—that mandates a building’s grade be posted on the building. I think there is a balance there that we have to get right in terms of ensuring broad participation but not creating a mandate that is invasive. We want people to participate in a way that is righteous and consistent.

One of the great things we’re seeing come together at USGBC is that ability to aggregate information. If you get a chance, go check out the GBIG (Green Building Information Gateway) tool, which is available as an app on your iPad or iPhone. It takes the information loaded into the USGBC platform for buildings in a growing number of cities, and lets you click on a building (as long as it’s under the LEED certification umbrella) and view what LEED points were pursued and its carbon index. That tells you where the building stands on its own accord, but also how it stacks up against other buildings around it.

The GBIG analysis lets you see the landscape and when you’re planning subsequent buildings you can then decide whether you’re comfortable with where your building measures up in the marketplace or whether you want to take a stronger market leadership position. You can see what that might entail by comparing your ideas to what has been done within the country or your region. This tool very quickly calculates that information so you know how to plan your next project. It helps propel the market forward and accelerates the ability of developers or owners to make informed decisions. This is the mission of the USGBC: Market transformation.

Emboldened by our own research and feedback from tools like GBIG, at Skanska, our Commercial Development group has decided that LEED Gold will be the floor for all our development projects worldwide. In some markets, we are exploring LEED Platinum and recently, a Living Building, because we’re able to clearly see where our buildings need to be now, but also ask where they need to be in the future, so that people will be interested in leasing them and buyers will be interested in acquiring the buildings.

EcoD: What’s the vision in how stakeholders will use the GBIG tool? Can it help drive district scale sustainable development? 
BH: Owners, tenants and developers need to see where they’re going next and what their portfolio will need to look like in the future. That goes for new and existing buildings. Informed owners, lessees, brokerage houses, banks and insurance providers now have the ability to make a decision about where they want to be 20 years down the road. They can see which buildings match up, not only with their commitment to the environment, but also from a risk profile perspective. Assuming foreign oil and energy prices continue to go up or should some kind of carbon metric be established, GBIG provides the market with crucial information.

When you’re in a retracting market, sometimes you don’t want to think about the future, because the now is difficult enough to handle. But buildings last a long time, especially buildings constructed for institutional clients and in cities, which are designed to last 50 to 100 years or more.

We need to be thoughtful about where each buildings is going to be positioned in the future. Its value could easily erode if other buildings around it are performing at a much higher level. The cost of ownership or occupancy could be so high that people won’t want that energy hog over there when they can have this higher performing building over here. If you’re planning for 100 years you tend to make different decisions.

The ability to provide “buyer beware” information on our buildings will make it easier for people to make informed decisions. I think there is far more acuity in the market than we like to admit. The market is much savvier in regard to the connection between energy performance and long-term value now and growing more so every day. One of the reasons is that the LEED rating system has been around long enough that we are beginning to see performance over time. Banks can base building valuations on precedence rather than projections—which is huge. There is enough LEED stock on the market that we are beginning to see building valuations rewarding those who are doing the right thing from an energy and environmental standpoint. And that makes sustainable engineering/design a more scaleable and viable option for any development—including district scale development—then if you’re doing it just because it feels good or is consistent with a brand.

Beth Heider is Senior Vice President for Green Markets at Skanska and the Chair Elect of the US Green Building Council. She will be a featured speaker on the Leadership Panel at the 2011 EcoDistricts Summit, October 26-28 in Portland, Oregon. To learn more about the 2011 Summit or to register, visit: ecodistrictssummit.com. For 2011 Summit and Portland Sustainability Institute news and updates, follow @PDXInstitute on Twitter and Like facebook.com/ecodistrictssummit on Facebook.