Design the Future

“We need as many people working on this as possible,” says Kathryn Wright, Program Director for Building Energy for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN). In this role, Kathryn supports people working in 250 US and Canadian cities and counties on decarbonization, climate justice, and resilience.The USDN recently released an Equity and Buildings framework to help practitioners approach the built environment in a more holistic and people-centered way. “We are all striving for a just transition and to combat climate change,” Kathryn says. “And if we look at the history of the built environment in North America, it is built on unjust principles. We have to work together, as a network of professionals and practitioners, to keep that history from repeating itself as we are about to drive investment into built environment in order to get to the greenhouse gas mitigation goals that we want.” 

Robyn studied architect, civil engineering, and city and regional planning, and today she  is the Long Range Planning & Sustainability Manager at the City of West Hollywood. Robyn notes that building genuine, long-lasting relationships within and across industries and communities is the key to meaningful, district-scale sustainability work. “Transformation is happening at the local government level,” she says, “and it’s so important for us to learn about what’s working. That’s why the networks and relationships are so valuable.” She attributes the growth of sustainability activity at the local level (even when it’s not called that) to the thought leadership shared via those networks, such as the Government Alliance on Race and Equity and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network. At the moment, Robyn is working on a Climate Action & Adaptation Plan that centers equity and addresses the drought and heat that is ahead for the community of West Hollywood. And she is thinking a lot about the gnarly problem of decarbonization of existing buildings, which is a challenge facing communities of every scale.

Katie Ackerly, a principal at David Baker Architects and the firm’s sustainable design lead, is committed to elevating the critical importance of high-performance, equitable housing as the essential core of a successful, resilient future. Katie would like to see more focus on the big questions. “What is the value of housing to society?” she asks. “And why is it so expensive to build? If we can tackle the construction market, that would go a long way toward increasing the performance and resilience of homes for people and communities.” In addition to the many things that are usually associated with climate-responsive housing, she says, such as energy, water, materials, waste, and ecological impact, “we should also be talking about many layers of human experience. What about home improves the ability for people have a stable, thriving life? What allows them to be safe and well?” 

Marta Schantz is senior vice president at the Urban Land Institute, where she has been building ULI's Greenprint Center for Building Performance -- a community of practice -- into a vanguard of real estate sustainability. ULI is tackling transformational initiatives including net zero and decarbonization. “I’m proud that a real estate industry group is declaring decarbonization a priority," Marta says. ULI recently released an electrification report because, she says, “most of real estate hasn’t yet realized that buildings need to electrify to be truly zero carbon. Our report is the business case for new buildings and retrofits.” 

This week, we turn the spotlight on host Lindsay Baker who has just been named CEO of the International Living Future Institute. Lindsay is a building scientist, market mover, and climate activist focused on transforming the built environment to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis. Most recently, she was Global Head of Sustainability and Impact at WeWork; before that, she grew a smart buildings software startup, Comfy, to acquisition, and held roles at the US Green Building Council and Google. Linday is excited to be transitioning back to the non-profit world after being in the private sector for a decade, and thrilled to work with ILFI team and community. “I think ILFI is perfect to be instigating some of the needed changes in our movement and industries. It is already a leading-edge and progressive voice,” she says. “I think we need more urgency, more action, and less equivocation about what can be done.”  

Dana Bourland is committed to solving our housing and climate crises in ways that advance justice. Dana led the creation of the environment program at The JPB Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in the US. Before that, she helped create the Green Communities program (at Enterprise Community Partners), a set of criteria now required by 27 states.Dana is also the author of a new book, Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises, published this year by Island Press. Dana conceived it as a thank you to the imaginative, committed people working in affordable housing, but the call to action is clear, and it is for us all. “Mainstream America doesn’t know what’s going on in affordable housing on the green building and equity front,” Dana says. “It is within our grasp to fundamentally change the course of human history -- if we address these two crises together. We can provide housing at the rate and scale we need and address climate action.” We can do this, she says, if we all show up in a way that is accountable to communities who have never gotten the resources that they deserve.

“We are energy social workers,” says Daphany Rose Sanchez. She founded Kinetic Communities, which advocates and implements strategic energy equity market transformations for New York communities, to respond to a representation gap in the energy sector. She got interested in this as she studied sustainable urban environments and redlining and other policies. “I started to see a correlation between the opportunity for generational wealth, sustainable housing, and climate response,” she says. “I wanted my career to be an intersection of housing, climate, and economic mobility.” These days, she works on pathways to electrification that involve workforce development, housing, and financial security.  “Transitioning off of fossils fuels is important, but we have to understand that our buildings are filled with people, so our climate solutions must address the social and cultural fabric of the community.” 

Johanna Partin is Deputy Director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, which works to help electrify California with clean energy. “We are not going to be able to counteract emissions or have healthy cities without getting off fossil gas,” she says. Johanna studied microfinance abroad but migrated from international development to a hyper local focus, working with San Francisco Mayors Newsom and Lee, and then to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group; she founded and directed the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. “Cities tend to be more ambitious than their state or national counterparts,” Johanna says, “because they are on the front lines of climate change, and in cities, the climate issues are clearly about people and their lives.” 

Martha Campbell is a Principal in RMI’s Carbon-Free Buildings Practice, focused on decarbonizing the U.S. building stock using standardized, affordable, attractive building construction methods and innovative business models. Martha has worked in the ski industry and for Goldman Sachs and doing field organizing in Northern New Mexico. A stay at an off-the-grid hostel in Australia prompted her to wonder, “Why don’t we build everything this way?” At RMI now, she is working to decarbonize the  economy using market based approaches. And that early question still drives her. “I want to move to a place where this is just how you build things.” And, she points out, it’s not just about decarbonizing: “It’s about making sure that buildings are healthy and safe places to live. We need to build resilience, too.” Some of the biggest challenges relate to a recalcitrant industry’s stakeholders who are scared of change. Campbell and RMI are trying to prove that a new model can benefit many. 

Landscape architect Pamela Conrad is a principal at CMG Landscape Architecture and founder of Climate Positive Design. She grew up in rural Missouri, has a background in plant science and regenerative design, and today is focused on climate mitigation and resilient design in the public realm. The role of landscape architects in  carbon sequestration is something she explored as a Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellow, which led to Climate Positive Design’s challenge and Pathfinder tool. “I wanted to understand the impacts of my projects, so I built a landscape carbon calculator. But the the real challenge is to reach positive,” she says, “to offset footprint as soon as possible and then shift to taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.” The way she sees it, if landscape architects worldwide shifted to using the targets that the Climate Positive Design defines, “we could sequester more than we emit by 2030 and remove even more by 2050. We can begin to reverse global warming.”