Lloyd EcoDistrict strives to be a living laboratory for sustainability, pioneering collaborative community-scale solutions focussed on climate, equity, and resiliency. For a decade, we have worked to bring together residents, organizations, public agencies, and businesses in Lloyd to educate, set goals, aggregate resources, and catalyze action. However, we know that the coming years will be transformative for our neighborhood and our organization. As we continue to deepen and diversify our work in the community and support this transformation, we are pursuing formal EcoDistrict Certification. This certification, which we expect to complete in 2022, will enable us to better organize our initiatives and serve as a blueprint for Lloyd that is more sustainable, people-centered, and economically vibrant. It will make sure we are developing projects and actions that are impactful to Lloyd stakeholders, and create best practices that we will be able to share with other neighborhoods across the city, state, and continent. 

Becoming and maintaining formal EcoDistrict certification entails four steps: 

1. Commit to equity, resilience, and climate protection at the heart of every decision;
2. Form collaborative governance that reflects community stakeholders;
3. Create an implementation roadmap to guide projects and programs; and 
4. Track and measure impact over time to maintain certification.

Each step is submitted to third-party verifiers to ensure transparency and accountability.

We’ve completed step one in 2019, when we developed a formal Imperatives Commitment to center equity, resilience, and climate protection in our work and decision-making. Over the next year, we aim to complete the next two steps. We will strengthen our collaborative governance processes to ensure that all stakeholders, particularly members of BIPOC and houseless communities, have a voice in our decision-making, leadership, and strategic direction, and create an implementation roadmap to guide our work for the next decade. This roadmap, while keeping climate, equity, and resilience front and center, will lay out goals and an action plan across these seven priorities:

1. Connectivity: We seek to work toward a neighborhood that builds effective connections between people and places, whether that means through the physical street network, the ease and types of mobility, or the neighborhood’s digital network.
2. Health + Wellbeing: We seek to work toward a Lloyd that nurtures people’s health and happiness, particularly as related to projects and outcomes related to active living, health, safety, and food systems.
3. Living Infrastructure: We seek to work toward a Lloyd that enables and connects to a flourishing ecosystem.
4. Peace: We seek to work toward a neighborhood that supports harmony and builds peace.
5. Place: We seek to create a more inclusive and vibrant Lloyd, specifically in regards to Lloyd’s public spaces, culture + identity, housing options, and the equitability & inclusivity of the neighborhood.
6. Prosperity: We seek to support educational and economic opportunities that increase economic development, innovation, and access to opportunity in an equitable and sustainable manner.
7. Resource Regeneration: We seek to mitigate climate change, pollution, and waste. We will work towards being net positive with regards to air, climate, water, and waste. 

As we further define these priorities, set goals, and create the roadmap’s action plans, community engagement will be key to this process so that we can continue to represent the breadth of Lloyd’s stakeholders.

As part of this process, we are convening meetings and events with key stakeholders throughout the neighborhood, including community organizations, businesses, and public agencies. In addition to these meetings, we have crafted this survey to reach as many people as possible who have connections to Lloyd, through living, working, recreating, or other activities. 

The content in the survey is based on initial ideas generated through community events, and we want to hear from as many folks as possible to see which ideas rise to the top. We also look forward to your additional ideas. The survey is anonymous, so please share your honest thoughts; you’ll have the opportunity to share your email separately at the end if you’d like to follow up, be more involved going forward, or be entered into a number of $20+ gift certificates and prizes to different Lloyd businesses including Creo Chocolates, Cultural Blends, Great Wine Buys, Greenbridge Coffee, Lloyd Farmers Market, Upright Brewery, and more!

In short: to create the most inclusive vision for our neighborhood’s future, we want to hear from you! 

Click here to take the survey.

Tags: Community, EcoDistricts, EcoDistricts Certification