Civic Ecology: A Citizen-Driven Framework for Communities

Much of the conversation around sustainable development has focused on designing better “hardware” – energy efficient buildings; renewable energy; leaner, greener infrastructure. While these manifestations of sustainability in the built environment are important, they are not the whole solution. Great communities have robust “software”, the self-initiated, self-perpetuating activities and social networks of local citizens. The Civic Ecology Institute, led by Portland-based SERA Architects, seeks to illuminates how that software and hardware fit together to constitute a complete sustainable community.

The Civic Ecology Institute works with neighborhood stakeholders to design a grass roots framework for community resilience that is civic-public-private partnership based. Civic Ecology integrates whole systems thinking with strong democracy in the service of making great neighborhoods. Through training, facilitation and project work, Civic Ecology helps communities, local government and the private sector co-create a shared vision of a prosperous future and then make it happen.

• How to incorporate grass roots systems thinking into neighborhood-scale planning and design projects
• About a specific tool – resource flow mapping – that has been used to integrate grass roots knowledge into neighborhood and district visioning and goal setting
• Hear specific case studies that have incorporated the Civic Ecology toolkit and the outcomes it has produced.