The International Living Future Institute launched a variety of new resources during the Living Future unConference 2017 to help teams and communities. In an effort to integrate those updates and make the Institute’s community-scale program more accessible and current with market conditions, our team launched the Living Community Challenge (LCC) version 1.2 Standard.

LCC Standard

Primary updates in the Living Community Challenge 1.2 Standard include incorporation of the Zero Energy Community Certification^SM (ZEC Certification) re-brand and a decrease in the number of required Living Building Challenge (LBC) projects in an LCC Community.

In keeping with Living Building Challenge 3.1 updates in March 2017, we have further simplified the new Zero Energy program. The LCC has removed two Imperatives: 19 Beauty + Spirit, and 20 Inspiration + Education. Imperative 01 Limits to Growth remains, along with the requirement to supply 100% of the community’s energy needs on a net annual basis by on-site renewable energy. No combustion is allowed. For communities that do not meet the Imperative 01 Limits to Growth requirement, we encourage teams to seek Zero Energy Building Certification^SM (ZEB Certification) for each of your buildings with the updated requirements of the Living Building Challenge.

The number of required LBC projects within an LCC Community has been decreased to a minimum of 50%. This is reflected on p. 15 of the LCC 1.2 Standard: “A majority of capital projects developed or renovated by the community (50% or more by area or individual building count) must meet the Living Building Challenge for the project to earn Living Community certification.” Three certification pathways are still available for communities, which includes Living, Petal and Zero Energy. It should be noted that if the Community decides to pursue Petal or Zero Energy Certification^SM, the LBC Certification for the majority of capital projects should be in alignment with the same LCC Petal or Zero Energy Certification pathway pursued (example: An LCC Water Petal community should contain at least 50% individual LBC Water Petal projects). There are always unique conditions, so please feel free to contact us at lcc.support@living-future.org with any questions.

The Institute will make every effort to reduce the burden of registration and certification fees for projects pursuing the Living Building Challenge within the Living Community Challenge project boundary area (see LCC Handbook – Section 4, Process). Communities may be eligible for a discount, and the project team should contact us and provide information detailing the number of buildings, building types, phasing, etc. While the Institute does not have a formal discount policy for multiple buildings, we are working to create a holistic policy and are happy to work with project teams on one-time exceptions in the interim.

LCC Handbook

The May 2017 Living Community Challenge 1.1 Handbook guides communities pursuing versions 1.1 and 1.2 of the LCC Standard. Two Imperative-specific updates were added in chapter 5. A new exception under Imperative 01 Limits to Growth is LCC I01-E6 05/2017

Sites Designated for Increased Density acknowledges unique cases to provide controlled human-centered development in new urban cores within an urban growth boundary. See pp. 26-27 of the LCC Handbook 1.1 for compliance information and stipulations.

A new clarification has been added to Imperative 11 Living Materials Plan. This clarification provides Living Community Challenge teams additional guidance for creating a Living Materials Implementation Plan by clarifying the requirements for community-owned buildings, infrastructure and landscapes and buildings that are not community-owned. See p. 29 of the LCC Handbook 1.1 for more information.

As always, any community leads and programmatic questions can be directed to LCC Manager Marisa Hagney at lcc.support@living-future.org.

The Living Community Challenge (LCC) calls upon planners, developers, policy-makers and community members to rethink how they design, build and plan for community-scale projects, including streets, blocks, neighborhoods, campuses and more. The LCC provides a vision and framework that can lead a community towards the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment.

Early October marked the launch of the Living Community Challenge Standard, Version 1.1, and the companion LCC Handbook, Version 1.1. This 1.1 version is a tweak to the 1.0 Standard that was launched in May 2014.

Alicia Daniels-Uhlig, LCC + Policy Director, shares that “communities pursuing the Living Community Challenge will be pleased to see alignments with the Living Building Challenge version 3.1 such as Petal and Net Zero Energy Certification pathways, registration guidance between the LBC and the LCC programs, and further clarification of the LCC process.”

The evolving Standard and Handbook will continue to support the five communities registered to pursue the LCC, and the over two-dozen communities around the world exploring the feasibility of LCC. Some of the update highlights include:

• Expanded certification options,
• An elaboration on the Vision Plan and Master Plan process

The new Living Community Challenge Handbook explores what types of communities can use the LCC and Imperative-by-Imperative clarifications.

The LCC has seven performance categories (also known as Petals): Place, Water, Energy, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty. Noted below are some key changes for each Petal:

• Place: The minimum percent required for food production based on Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in I-02 Urban Agriculture, has been aligned with Living Building Challenge (LBC) version 3.1, which reduced requirements from 80% for communities with a FAR of 0.05% or less, to 50% for communities with a FAR of 0.09% or less. I-04 Human-Powered Living clarifications include mobility plan requirements aligned with LBC version 3.1.
• Health and Happiness: I-10 Resilient Community Connections requirements previously for Transects 5 & 6 now apply to all Transects to ensure that all sensitive infrastructures, such as lift stations, sub-stations, sewage treatment, community centers, schools and the like, are out of the flood plain.
• Materials: Communities can no longer use the Living Future Carbon Exchange to satisfy I-12 as it is no longer in operation due to the complexities of navigating a shifting global market, and there is an Exception that allows surplus renewable energy to satisfy some of the community’s required carbon offsets
• Equity: Existing communities may be exempt from some prescriptive requirements of the I-14 table if they can demonstrate the community is human-scaled, and document that advocacy measures have been conducted in alignment with the intent to create human-scaled rather than automobile-scaled places. Within requirements for I-18 JUST Organizations, the list of firm types that are eligible have been expanded.

Download these resources here. 

Pg. 15 of the 1.1 Standard

Learn more about creating a fruitful urban landscape from Jackie and other experts during the Urban Agriculture and Community Food Systems webinar, part of the Living Community Challenge series. 

Seattle’s Beacon Hill Food Forest is the first project on public land in the United States. The food forest is tended to by the local community and offers an open and ethical harvest to anyone who visits. The project has gained national and global attention because of the team’s vision to share freshly-grown food on public land. Designed as a permaculture garden, its roots are reaching into the local community and also planting seeds in the minds of food security organizers far and wide.

The Beacon Food Forest is a revival of the commons is sparking a vibrant community: local neighbors from various ethnic backgrounds; young people finding hope in the planting of trees; skilled carpenters and landscapers; office workers looking to get their hands in the dirt; and local school kids all come out to work parties every month (over one hundred have attended each event over the past four years).Watching children eat from the berry shrubs and vegetables is a good measure of success, too. The core organizing team, comprised of 30-40 dedicated volunteers, is continually inspired by the level of participation. The core team’s duties range from managing plants, to writing grants, to coordinating with city officials, and teaching workshops.

The process of creating this public space has been arduous at times. “The Ecology is the easy part,” said Michael Pilarski, a seasoned permaculture farmer and educator with 40 years experience, in reference to the challenges of creating the Beacon Food Forest. The community has met with City officials to amend city code, learned how to make decisions with a newly-formed group, and spread the message of ethical harvesting to a neighborhood that speaks over 52 languages.

Permaculture provides ethics and principles for designing human landscapes, which includes the social aspects. Our project is guided by the principles of “Use and Value diversity” and “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback,” among other permaculture values. These values apply to the land and to our interactions with one another. People gain resiliency when they learn how to work together and obtain skills to feed their families. As a result, they are more well-equipped to handle life changes that come their way. The Beacon Food Forest provides food, but it also provides skills and a place to feel good about the future of our community.

Our community food forest now serves a variety of purposes:
• A place to plant perennial food crops that will enrich the soil and regenerate the land.
• An emergency hub for earthquakes. It’s a place for people can gather to problem-solve and create solutions.
• A space for our community to learn how to work together toward a common vision.

The process of working in the food forest has taught us how to get along despite our differences. We’ve had success in teaching young people public speaking and how to facilitate meetings. We’ve learned from a community of diverse backgrounds and how to make this public land welcoming to everyone. Our lives have all been deeply enriched by this work through its challenges and rewards because this work has opened our hearts.

Project teams often begin to explore the Living Building Challenge by weighing the early development costs with the long-term payback. Although the challenge of allocating capital to renewable energy systems and healthy materials may seem insurmountable, but projects such as HopeWorks Station Phase 2, a project of the affordable housing developers Housing Hope, are proving the feasibility of integrating sustainability into affordable housing. In August of 2015, the HopeWorks Station Phase 2 project and seven other national affordable housing projects were accepted into the Living Building Challenge Affordable Housing Pilot Program (LBC Pilot Program). The purpose of the Pilot Program is to connect leading affordable housing innovators to work hand-in-hand with the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) to forge a path for affordable housing projects to be the most sustainable and healthy buildings in the world.

The process begins by the willingness to engage in asking difficult questions. If project teams aim to achieve a thriving future for all, design and development processes need to take action to bridge public-private partnerships and to empower the residents. We must be willing to answer tough questions:

•How can we decrease or eliminate energy bills?
• How can we use clean energy for 100% of the occupants needs?
• Do our permanent residents and visitors feel connected to their community?
• How can architecture and planning cultivate community?

HopeWorks Station Phase 2 is a 150,000 square foot five-story multi-use building in Everett, WA. With this project, Housing Hope is asking tough questions questions as they work to achieve Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) Certification. The HopeWorks Station Phase 2 project is a unique venture that will provide both living and working spaces for low-income and formerly homeless individuals and families. The top three levels of the building will be affordable housing units, including 1 and 2-bedrooms, studios and dormitories. There will be one floor of offices for the Housing Hope headquarters and the ground floor will include retail space with a 2,000 square foot café, 1,000 square foot kitchen and training facility and a 2,000 square foot commercial public laundry facility.

The project also includes 2.5 stories of projected partially-enclosed, above ground and underground parking, as required by current city code. The site has a Walkscore of 74, ensuring that “most errands can be accomplished by foot.” For longer commutes, the site is conveniently situated in a transit-oriented district, a block from major transit options, including the Everett Amtrak Station and the Everett bus line 201 and 202. By 2023, these bus lines may be able to take residents to the Lynwood Transit Center, a 13-mile trip, to a potential future site of the Puget Sound’s interconnected Light Rail system. How can we work within current limitations, such as jurisdictional-required parking constraints, and the needs of the future population?

The project team is well-equipped to embrace the people-focused philosophy of the LBC Pilot Program, which compels projects to take a step back from the usual tunnel-vision process of housing development.

Housing Hope took the first step to conduct a feasibility study and ran a solar potential analysis to determine the opportunity to meet Net Zero Energy (100% of project’s energy supplied by on-site renewables). Feasibility study analysis are based on the carrying capacity of the site, meaning how much energy could be generated with rooftop photovoltaic panels (PV panels) covering the entire 15,000 square foot roof area. The scenarios provided within the study demonstrated that a solar array system achieving Net Zero Performance would require Scale Jumping to surrounding locations outside of the Phase 2 developments.

Bobby Thompson, Housing Director for Housing Hope commented, “From the onset of gathering project information through the completion of the Feasibility Study, ILFI staff members have been engaged partners in the LBC process. Specifically, they have been instrumental in helping us forge a viable path towards meeting Net Zero Energy Building Certification, and achieving compliance with the LBC’s Energy Petal, Place Petal, and Beauty Petal.”

Based on an analysis that includes parking square footage, the project would need to target an Energy Usage Intensity (EUI)[2] of 6. Given that the existing building programming number was heavily skewed by the demands of the large amount of parking, the target EUI seemed unrealistic. By incorporating a transit-oriented development through mobility design choices including: covered and secured bike storage; shower and changing facilities; and partnerships with businesses and local communities, there was a large potential for human-powered transportation and mass transit. When parking was removed from the equation, the target EUI jumped to 12. Is this EUI achievable given the building type? Housing Hope is willing to find out.

Bobby Thompson is a key conduit between ILFI and the Hopeworks project. He noted three areas of the collaborative process that have been particularly helpful for his organization:

• Analysis of net positive energy production through solar photovoltaic scale jumping: The scenarios provided within the Feasibility Study demonstrated for Housing Hope that a solar array system achieving Net Zero Performance will require Scale Jumping to surrounding locations outside of the phase 2 development.

• Design and specification suggestions that will lower the project’s energy consumption: Defining and providing definition to design suggestions (envelope and mechanical improvements) combined with material/building system suggestions (VRFs, Prosoco R-guards, etc.) allow Housing Hope to create an architect RFP with better definition, and also a working document that can be used by their design team upon selection.

• Achieving a “Human Powered Living” project that encourages a human powered lifestyle through design and development: The Feasibility Study provides guidance for creating a project that promotes and encourages healthy living through design choices believed to mitigate the necessity for traditional residential and commercial parking requirements per the City of Everett. Through the suggestions given by ILFI, it’s our belief that what the City views as “transit-oriented development” can be achieved through “mobility” design choices. This includes covered and secured bike storage, shower and changing facilities for employees that bike to work, and partnerships with neighboring businesses and the local community for advocacy for developments encouraging human-powered transportation and mass transit.

For affordable housing developers, it is difficult to overcome the barrier of implementing sustainable design into their projects with the capital funding challenges that exist. But through the Living Building Challenge Affordable Housing Pilot Program, participants such as Hopeworks Station Phase 2 are able to define and clarify design goals with meaningful, applicable data. This data will help answer those tough questions and ensure the creation of sustainable structures for a thriving, inclusive community.

To learn more about the Living Building Challenge Framework for Affordable Housing and other important projects from around the United States, join ILFI’s Five-Part Affordable Housing Webinar Series.

It is no surprise that the standard development model in the United States is deeply flawed. The narrow maximization of economic profit that drives much development often results in the broad diminishment of human, environmental, and aesthetic values. This pattern of extracting value from people and the land is not new; even ancient Rome was known to have slumlords. Yet, there is a distinctly American version of development fueled by the myth of the frontier, migration, real-estate speculation, and creative building technologies that have all converged into a wildly efficient extractive development model, which is not a good long-term strategy for anyone, and often results in the displacement of people who live in the development sites. It does not have to be this way.

The area around Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood illustrates this extractive model in a particular context. For the past year, a team led by the Institute and including many community partners has been working to create a Living Community vision for the neighborhood. This vision reverses the trend of degradation and displacement and creates a people-centered model that adds value to the many ecosystem services that are vital to building healthy, resilient and inclusive communities. Through this process, we have found that there are various opportunities to realize environmental and social equity goals using the Living Community Challenge as a framework. The lessons learned through the work in Seattle are not unique to this place and can be replicated elsewhere in support of truly sustainable communities around the globe.

A LEGACY OF DISPLACEMENT

Shortly after landing in the present day Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle, early settlers set up a sawmill to process the lumber dragged down the densely forested hills. The first of the hills to be logged, First Hill, became the premier high-end residential neighborhood in the burgeoning city. Just south of this hill was the path used to drag the logs to the mill, which became known as “Skid Road” and is now known as Yesler Way.  In the mid-1800s, Seattle was a remote outpost, and along its skid road grew public houses, hotels, places of worship, businesses of all varieties, and even the City Hall—all catering to the swelling numbers of loggers, trappers, and families that were enticed by the opportunity in the region. This neighborhood became a dense and vibrant settlement with people from a variety of backgrounds living and working together. By the early 20th century, the people native to the place had largely been forced off of their land and into reservations, though the Duwamish people continued to use the tidal flats of Elliot Bay as their traditional fishing and gathering grounds. In 1901, the hill under Skid Road was substantially regraded, by as much as 85 feet in some places, to allow for infrastructure development. This regrade displaced many of the people who had built their lives along the road. It also filled in the tidal flats of the bay, a fatal blow to the way of life for the remainder of the Duwamish who were subsisting on this land.

The regrading of Seattle destabilized and displaced people while dramatically altering the land as well. Newly regraded land slid, resulting in decreased land values immediately above and below the slides while land values increased in the flatter areas with newly installed municipal infrastructure. One such area that lost market value due to these slides was later developed as Washington State’s first public housing development, known as Yesler Terrace. Since its inception, Yesler Terrace has been a place where low-income and working-class people from a variety of backgrounds could find affordable housing. Different resident groups have moved in and out of the Yesler Terrace  community over the years, but it remains diverse and vibrant to this day.

PRESENT-DAY GROWTH

Development pressures again threaten to displace people who have called the area home. Builders and developers are buying property in the First Hill neighborhood at an alarming rate, replacing housing long filled by people of color and people with low incomes with new, prohibitively expensive development. Yesler Terrace itself is in the midst of a major redesign, which is intended to transform the site into a mixed-use and mixed-income neighborhood while expanding the number of affordable units on site.

In previous eras of development in the community, people without political power and voice were repeatedly displaced as the city grew and changed. As the neighborhood again faces what appears to be another significant period of redevelopment, it is crucially important to avoid the pitfalls of injustice, displacement, and ecological destruction that have been the pattern thus far.

A VISION FOR VALUE-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT

The Living Community Challenge offers ideas to break this pattern. In Seattle, we have worked alongside community leaders to apply this framework to achieve regenerative, resilient communities. Below are the highlights of these ideas presented according to the structure of the Challenge. A full selection of the equity implications of this Living Community vision can be found in the recently released report Toward a Living Community: A Vision for Seattle’s First Hill and Central District (Nov 2015).

FOOD

The vision calls for significant food production in the right-of-way, parks, institutional campuses, private lots, and rooftops to produce an estimated 2.7 million pounds of food, enough to feed more than 1,800 people per year.

THE FACTS:

• Access to fresh, healthy food is often worst in areas of low-income residents.
• There is only one grocery store that sells fresh food within the community boundaries.
• Wild and cultivated edible plants provide essential beauty and greenery while giving people a means to provide for themselves and their families.
• This vision creates job opportunities for cultivation, harvest, preparation, storage, and distribution of locally grown produce.
• Opportunities abound to distribute food that is harvested in the community and provide greater food security for the benefit of the entire City.

ACCESS + MOBILITY

The vision calls for a radical repurposing of the right-of-way to include more space for people, food production, water collection and infiltration, energy generation, green space, and habitat, and less land for large, single occupancy vehicle circulation and storage.

THE FACTS:

• Traffic fatalities disproportionately impact pedestrians and cyclists, especially vulnerable users and minorities.
• Streets are paid for by all of society but produce disproportionate benefits for vehicle owners and operators.
• On-street parking subsidizes vehicular ownership by reducing or eliminating the cost to store a vehicle.
• Streets are the largest portion of publicly owned land in the city and should be designed to meet the needs of all people, not just car owners/users.

WATER

The vision calls for a net positive water management approach that prioritizes equitable and resilient water provision and treatment. These systems help the City prepare for emergency events. Net positive water systems can also provide basic sanitary and potable water to those most in need; new community rainwater collection and filtration kiosks could provide clean drinking water to anyone who needs access to a safe water source at that moment. As the number of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle continues to increase, it is essential that our community infrastructure is designed for all.

THE FACTS:

• The State of Washington experienced a statewide drought emergency in 2015, and preparations are now underway for a second year of drought as record low snowpack is forecast in 2016.
• Recent events in California and Detroit demonstrate that climate change and failing municipal infrastructure disproportionately impact minorities and people with low incomes.
• An interconnected web of decentralized systems supports community resiliency since they cannot be shut off or taken down by a single event, such as extreme weather or natural disaster.
• Decentralized water infrastructure can act as a neighborhood amenity, providing open space to areas with little access.
• A net positive water model allows individuals and communities to freely access those resources that come naturally to their site. As technology develops, costs for potable filtration and black water processing continue to decrease.
• Since they do not require construction and maintenance of extensive pipe networks, which are essential components of larger centralized systems, net positive water services can be extended more easily to various housing options.

ENERGY

The vision calls for a net positive energy model implemented over the next decade through building code updates, collective purchase agreements, and renewable energy generation on most rooftops. Net positive and net zero energy buildings provide significant opportunities to reduce or eliminate energy bills, which can aid in affordability for low-income residents. They also serve the greater good by acting as a network of safe locations for people to shelter in times of service disruption and emergency.

THE FACTS:

• A net positive energy model reduces the negative impacts and externalities such as heavy transmission lines and distribution stations, which tend to be located in low-income neighborhoods.
• Renewably generated energy does not need to be tied to the grid. This provides an opportunity to extend energy service to populations in need without heavy infrastructure investment.
• A distributed energy system is more resilient, which most benefits those who cannot leave the neighborhood in an emergency event.

BIOPHILIC NEIGHBORHOODS

The vision calls for more equitable distribution of nature and natual systems throughout the community. Simply by converting excess street width to habitat corridors we can provide more access to open spaces and natural systems.

THE FACTS:

• The least wealthy are often the least mobile. Many within this area (and the surrounding city) lack the means to leave their neighborhood and thus to enjoy the benefits of nature. Bringing nature to the city and this community helps to restore this balance.
• The natural world is beautiful. Distributing nature throughout the neighborhood makes the city more beautiful for all people.
• Nature provides the benefits of quiet and clean air, which are often critically needed in low-income communities.

The broken development model of maximizing economic profit at the expense creating real value is  not inevitable. In communities around the globe, the Living Community Challenge offers a framework for achieving value-driven development. The work in First Hill demonstrates that it is possible to leverage development to provide for people and the land rather than to merely displace and degrade.

In Seattle, the Institute will continue our work to expand our vision and methodology into surrounding neighborhoods and develop replicable models for Living Communities. Wherever we call home, we can all support a new era of development that encourages holistic growth and resiliency. The lessons learned in Seattle can be tailored to many development contexts in order to build highly valued, thriving places for all.

“The broken development model of maximizing economic profit at the expense creating real value is not inevitable.”

Yesler Terrace Rendering by Adam Amrhein