Presenter:

Timothy Smith, AIA, AICP, Principal, Director of Urban Design & Planning, SERA Architects, Portland, OR

 Many communities and institutions have begun to realize that attaining sustainability requires planning, constructing, and managing a comprehensive framework of community systems. Energy flows, local food production systems, local-global economic webs, social capital, governance, and resource sharing networks are some of the system flows that, when synergized in a specific place, constitute a complex human ecosystem or “Civic Ecology.” Nurturing this web of relationships and flows affords communities opportunities to enhance their local wealth (environmental, economic, and social), resilience, and competitiveness, helping them take control of designing and managing their future. The Civic Ecology (or “community software”) whole systems approach provides a tool to facilitate the emergence of living communities and a context for the emergence of a living community’s future “hardware”: living buildings, sites, and infrastructure.

This session will explain the Civic Ecology framework and planning approach that: focuses on meeting human needs; draws upon community capacity to leverage change; integrates systems flows across all community sectors (i.e. economic, social, ecological and governance); and facilitates the development of robust social capital to design, construct, and manage living community systems over time.

Learning Objectives - by the end of this presentation attendees will understand:

• The concept of Civic Ecology and its application through theory and examples.
• The benefits of integrating community systems across sectors (i.e. economic, governance, social, and ecological). 
• The five step CIVIC planning process
• How to create living community systems, demonstrated through a hands-on exercise.

Presenter Bio

Timothy W. Smith

Timothy W. Smith, AIA, AICP, is an architect, city planner, urban designer, and principal with SERA Architects in Portland, Oregon. He has served as Vice President of the Portland Planning Commission, on the Portland Mayor’s Central City Roundtable, and the Portland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Urban Design Committee. Mr. Smith has lectured extensively on the concept of Civic Ecology and is currently working on a book about this topic.