A Comprehensive Regional Framework for Sustainability

Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award Number: 1929765

Co-Is/Co-PIs: Michael Walsh, Katharine Lusk, Katherine Einstein, Pamela Templer

Abstract:

Many U.S. cities are simultaneously confronting two interrelated, but tragically siloed issues: environmental impact and access to affordable housing. Central to both is sound land use policy. Where people live, what people build, and what people keep or make green matters not just to a neighborhood, but to the nation. Cities have a responsibility to their local constituencies to deliver services and establish sustainability pathways for long-term community prosperity. The question of how to encourage affordability, equity, and sustainability in urban development is a grand challenge facing cities across the U.S. and around the world. The conference will bring together a community of scholars, policymakers, and community groups to define a research agenda that explores integrated sustainability pathways and outcomes from a tradeoffs and co-benefits perspective. Though the focus of the conference will be regional in the Boston metropolitan area, it will also actively engage other cities to build city-to-city learning networks.

This conference will lay the groundwork for developing the new science, data, and methods needed to inform integrated urban sustainability outcomes across local-to-regional-to-national scales. The objective of the conference is to build a shared scientific and community vision for investigating, experimenting with, and developing multiple pathways towards urban sustainability, including transformative practices and technologies targeted at mitigating and adapting to environmental changes while simultaneously meeting the demands for affordable housing. Organized as a highly interactive working summit, this conference will bring together approximately 75 scholars, community groups, and public officials to examine these multiple objectives holistically. Core themes will emerge from a blend of brief keynote presentations and panel discussions. The participants, organized into groups with diverse representation, will identify and build consensus about the critical priority knowledge and resources needed to promote the development of convergent sustainable pathways for socio-economic, demographic, and infrastructure transitions.

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