Northwest Center for Livable Communities
Executive Summary:
Above all else the NWCLC is a tool for students to learn and implement the academic resources afforded to them here at the University of Washington to help better the environment around them. With 30 years’ experience, we are looking to take the next step forward to develop a multi-discipline studio (open to all majors) that will look to implement strategies for sustainability within the communities students live, work, and go to school. This studio would be interdisciplinary with the hope to involve students from all the disciplines of the College of Built Environments namely urban planning, architecture, community environment and planning, landscape architecture, construction management and real estate but, as well as other colleges and their departments. This could be students from global/ public health, communications, business, engineering, economics, sociology and the list goes on. This studio would continue the goals of NWCLC while allowing a new focus at the University of Washington campus. This studio development will create long term and sustainable infrastructure that will bring the design and management resources at the College of Built Environments with, the long term planning of the Campus Sustainability Fund(CSF). In conjunction we will be forming a speaker series that focuses on subjects of sustainability, design, building that will be public events, outside of the studio. With this series we will not only educate the large student body and the public, but hope to attract more students to the studio. Below is our mission statement, we feel it aligns well with that of the CSF.
“The goal of the NWCLC is to partner with NGOs, Government Agencies, Non Profits, and Community Members to provide community driven, urban planning work within the scope of sustainability, cultural equity, and economic vitality. This is done through expert led and student driven work, which is facilitated though the foundations home at The University of Washington. Putting community and sustainability above all. The NWCLC seeks to build relationships within our community, from Seattle, to our more global community. With project types ranging from Feasibility Analysis, to detailed Urban Development Plans, the NWCLC's portfolio is wide ranging and ever growing.
With over 30 years active and approximately 300+ hours of professional experience, the NWCLC has made a name for itself in The Pacific Northwest as one of the leading Non-Profit Urban Planning entities at not only the University of Washington Seattle Campus, but throughout the Region.”
The NWCLC looks to build a long term partnership with the CSF. While the NWCLC is currently financially sustainable at the level in which we operate. We are seeking funding to allow us to expand in order to facilitate partnering with CSF and the university capital projects department. This would allow us to provide planning and organization work for at least one project a year. The particular project selected for UW students would be through a studio class.
Student Involvement:
- As stated above, the studio is made up entirely of students
Student interaction will be, from day one to project completion.
- Student recruitment will be handled by the new marketing materials as well as a heavy recruiting camping within the college of built environments. Any outside class hour’s work that is needed to be done, will be typically be handled by students recruited from the class. Furthermore, most organizations that we partner with CSF, UW Farm est. will be student run as well.
Education & Outreach:
The marketing for NWCLC recently went through a rebranding and is more visible than ever. With the development of a brand new website, new logo and marketing, student body perception of the class has risen steadily. Currently there are fifteen students within the course and (our maximum) and that number has been steady for two years. The studios have been well received by the student body. To date, more than 90+ students have already been involved with NWCLC. While our community projects mentioned above, have impacted literally thousands of people with in the greater Seattle metro area, there are with plans to do projects in Eastern Washington in the near term.
With more developments occurring, the body of work can only get better as we look to expand. That being said while we look to improve the NWCLC reach, that does not mean there will be a drop in quality. Quite the opposite. One can see the improvement in project quality as the years have go by. We expect this trend to continue. We would like to take this time to invite any member of CSF to attend a final review or mid-year review, to be able to see the projects we are currently working on. Of course, if the partnership between CSF and NWCLC came to fruition, any member is of course welcome to attend a project final review for future UW campus projects as well.
Furthermore, we hope to gain massive support from the student body, with our speaker series and the projects that are designed and built on campus. We plan to leave a lasting footprint of sustainability on campus.
- Energy Use
- Food
- Living Systems and Biodiversity
- Transportation
- Waste
- Water
- Environmental Justice
As mentioned in the Accountability & Feasibility section of the full proposal PDF. We are seeking a long-term relationship with CSF, one that may not involve long-term funding but one that would be focused in cooperation. By essentially becoming the student design firm on campus, CSF could introduce projects on an annual basis that would serve to continually expand the work portfolio of the studio.
In the Timeline portion we mention that we would like to have summer quarters as a time to begin development of projects as well as check on the maintenance of previous projects. With that in mind, we expect typically the actual maintenance of individual projects would be done by facilities or by the individual groups that we partnered with on campus.
Long-term funding wise, these projects would most likely be funded by capital projects, facilities, or on campus organizations. CSF would NOT be seen as a yearly financial supporter.
Environmental Problem:
- The main issue the NWCLC looks to address are issues relating to the sustainability of in communities. Similar to our namesake we look to develop visibility of sustainable issues (though the speaker series) and sustainable solutions (through the studio), these are the primary goals of our Center currently. Unfortunately, we lack the financial resources and infrastructure currently to be as effective as we can at the local campus level.
- If provided with the grant from CSF, the NWCLC will address these issues with by:
- Developing a speaker/event series- This will allow people that might not be involved at Gould Hall to come and see issues of sustainability, as well as be introduced to the many concepts that are covered within the studio. A secondary goal would be to reduce the fear of joining a studio as a non-major.
- Developing of a non-major multi-disciplinary studio that will partner with various organizations on campus, including CSF, with the goal of completing at least one project a year on campus, in the area of sustainability. The planning, design, and implementation of the projects would be completed by students.
Explain how the impacts will be measured:
Project monitoring will be completed by a deliverable to CSF and supporting organizations this would be sent out at the completion of each quarter. These may be in the form of project reports or project presentations that could be given with all parties that are involved. Of course the project monitoring may look different for each project, but a deliverable will be developed for each project before is undertaken.
This funding request is a: Grant
If this is a loan, what is the estimated payback period?:
Budget:
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Non-CSF Sources:
Timeline:
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