Moceri Construction attended the Sustainable Connections appreciation
event for major stakeholders, donors and business owners to celebrate another
year of progress. We were also invited to take a walk along the Bellingham Waterfront EcoDistrict. It was an informative tour lead by some of the change – makers
and planners who have seen the project through the entire planning process. Sustainable
Connections takes what they describe as a friendly
approach…
ü Environmentally friendly
ü Environmentally friendly
ü
Business friendly
ü
Community friendly
ü
Government friendly
This approach has
taken the form of an EcoDistrict planning process with the Bellingham community culture as a guide. In essence,
the plan is to create a scalable sustainable city along the waterfront. Here is
a quick summary of the fundamentals for EcoDistrict planning:
An EcoDistrict can be defined as a neighborhood or district
with a broad commitment to accelerate neighborhood-scale sustainability. Neighborhoods are the building
blocks of cities and are also the right scale to accelerate sustainability —
small enough to innovate quickly and big enough to have a meaningful
impact. This link between people and scale makes neighborhoods the most
critical “intervention points” within cities to identify and develop
sustainability strategies.
1. EcoDistricts offer an ambitious way to
look at redevelopment, where focus on demand is matched with behavior.
2. Solutions to urban scale retrofits reside
within transportation, energy retrofits, zero waste, all within existing
neighborhoods and this takes little capital.
3. Connectivity between downtown
Bellingham/Waterfront can create a low carbon economy while greening the built
environment.
(Source: Sustainableconnections.org)
For more information on the Waterfront Planning stages,
please visit http://sustainableconnections.org/
