Development Is Inequitable
Our cities and communities are grappling with a number of interconnected and overlapping social and economic challenges, including:
- Rising income and education inequality
- Growing health disparities
- Accelerating housing insecurity and homelessness
- Rising political polarization and distrust
- Increasing threats of violence against marginalized communities and people of color
- Growing levels of social isolation and social disconnection
- Loss of culture and local knowledge in the face of rapid development
Climate Change is Accelerating
The climate crisis is here, and our cities and communities are now frequently experiencing the impacts of a warming planet and devastating ecological losses, including:
- Growing number of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, wildfires, and floods
- Unprecedented biodiversity loss
- Sea levels rising and coastal erosion
- Shrinking freshwater reserves
- Growing water and air pollution from agriculture, ranching, forestry, and industrial processes
What Makes the Protocol Unique
The Protocol is a comprehensive and rigorous community-centered, process-based equitable and regenerative development framework, management tool, and verification platform that:
- Centers inequity and climate change as core drivers for change
- Provides a rigorous and practicable pathway for action
- Centers the community in all aspects of planning and implementation
- Applicable in district, neighborhood, and campus settings
- Promotes trust and a broader sense of ownership
- Requires the creation of key targets and performance metrics
- Emphasizes shared values and collaboration
- Acknowledges professional and lived experience
- Supports ongoing implementation and verification over time
What the Protocol Helps Spark
The Protocol helps community and urban development teams transform neighborhood, district, and campus by creating:
- Robust civic-public-private project governance models that support sturdy and effective civic partnerships that honor and embrace the wisdom and needs of the community;
- Comprehensive performance-based implementation plans that leverage public, private and civic investment and community action, and
- Robust process management and monitoring tools to measure impact over time.