EcoDistrict / Just Community Certification

We are thrilled to share that we became a certified EcoDistrict/Just Community in summer 2022—a culmination of three years of visioning, planning, and convening hundreds of neighborhood stakeholders to craft a collective vision for Lloyd.

Lloyd EcoDistrict is the first and only certified EcoDistrict/Just Community in Portland and across the entire state of Oregon, and only the fourth on the West Coast. 

What is an EcoDistrict/Just Community? 

Neighborhoods sit at the heart of some of the most complex challenges facing cities today—and they are also the building blocks of sustainable cities.

Across the globe, cities are making significant investments in critical water, energy and transportation infrastructure systems. As cities are undergoing the biggest growth of the past 100 years, the number of neighborhood-scale projects is increasing at a record pace: neighborhoods provide a uniquely valuable scale to introduce and accelerate investments that can achieve profound improvements in equity, resilience, and climate protection. 

In short, neighborhoods are small enough to innovate and realize the hopes and desires of a local community, and big enough to leverage meaningful investment and public policy. 

The EcoDistrict/Just Communities framework is a new model of urban development to empower just, sustainable, and resilient neighborhoods. The EcoDistricts / Just Communities Protocol, developed by EcoDistricts at the Partnership for Southern Equity, guides communities to take a collaborative, holistic approach to develop and set achievable goals for prioritizing equity, resilience, and climate protection at the neighborhood level. 

Lloyd EcoDistrict is the first certified EcoDistrict/Just Community in Oregon and only the fourth on the West Coast. To see a full list of certified EcoDistricts, click here

How did Lloyd become an EcoDistrict/Just Community? 

Though Lloyd EcoDistrict as an organization has had “EcoDistrict” in our name since our inception, we only just became an officially certified EcoDistrict in 2022 after completing a comprehensive, multi-year process. 

A large poster with the words "What is your Vision of HEALTH & WELLBEING with the Lloyd EcoDistrict Neighborhood? (health, safety, food systems). There a lot of multicolored posted notes stuck to the board with words written on them.
At events around Lloyd on online, community members provided feedback to shape the roadmap.

This process began with the development of a formal Imperatives Commitment in 2018-2019 to center equity, resilience, and climate protection in our work and decision-making. The process took a pause in the first year of the pandemic, and in 2021-2022 we completed the year-long process of completing the certification application. This included: 

  • Completing a comprehensive assessment of existing local plans and ongoing activities by others across the neighborhood, city, county, and state
  • Hosting an in-person visioning session to assess all community priorities in October 2021
  • Conducting a community-wide survey to discern top priorities in November 2021, which received over 200 responses
  • Hosting a virtual Town Hall to solicit feedback and input in February 2022
  • Conducting numerous individual and small-group meetings with community stakeholders 
  • Synthesizing the feedback from all of these activities to create a 2030 roadmap for Lloyd, including current benchmarks and target goals for Lloyd for the EcoDistrict priorities of place, prosperity, health & wellbeing, connectivity, living infrastructure, resource regeneration, and peace, as well as the imperatives of equity, resilience, and climate protection
  • Identifying strategies to achieve each target goal outlined in the roadmap, as well as assessing the logistical and financial feasibility of each strategy 
  • Submitting an 80-page application in spring 2022

Lloyd EcoDistrict Roadmap

Our collective vision and strategies developed during the certification program are encapsulated in the Lloyd EcoDistrict 2030 Roadmap, which includes 60 objectives for building a more equitable, resilient, and climate-prepared Lloyd. The EcoDistrict/Just Communities Certification Roadmap Summary document is a summary of the full Lloyd EcoDistrict 2030 Roadmap, an 80-page document submitted by Lloyd EcoDistrict to become a certified EcoDistrict/Just Communities neighborhood in 2022. This summary document includes a basic overview of the certification process and 60 objectives outlined in the roadmap. For a copy of the complete roadmap, email info@ecolloyd.org.