The EcoDistricts Institute is a two day workshop and training for city leadership teams across North America. The Institute is designed to help local senior officials work effectively with key private, nonprofit and academic partners to implement a sustainable neighborhood strategy for their community.

Through a mix of interactive plenary presentations and facilitated work sessions, the Institute brings together experts in neighborhood planning, urban design, green infrastructure, project finance and public policy to present best practices from around North America and beyond.

Why an Institute?

A growing group of municipal policy makers, urban designers and community development professionals recognize that the neighborhood is an important scale to test and implement "actionable" sustainability strategies — neighborhoods are small enough to innovate quickly and big enough to have a meaningful impact.  However, there is a shortage of processes and tools to support sustainable neighborhood development, requiring early adopter cities to go it alone.

The EcoDistricts Institute is a peer-learning workshop designed to help city teams overcome these barriers and design an actionable sustainable neighborhood strategy for their own community.

Who Should Attend

Cities committed to creating an EcoDistrict should apply.  Teams must include 4-5 senior officials and practitioners who collectively have the scope of responsibility and authority to lead district scale projects in their community.

Participants must come to the EcoDistricts Institute with an identified EcoDistrict pilot district and have the authority and capacity to create change within the proposed district.

For more details, download the Call for Participation.

Funders

• Blackstone Ranch Institute
• Ecoworks Foundation

Critical Dates

• 1/19/12: Call for Participation is released
• 2/8/12: Informational call for interested cities (12-1:30 pm PT).  To participate, register here.
• 3/16/12: Deadline for submissions
• 4/4/12: Participating cities selected
• 4/13/12: Deadline for cities to accept
• 5/8/12—5/10/12: EcoDistricts Institute

Note: the 90-minute informational conference call will allow interested parties to pose questions about the EcoDistricts Institute and the application process.

Questions

Contact Teague Douglas, Education Coordinator, 503-922-1661.