Presenters:

Brodie Bain, Principal, Mithun

Nicole Isle, LEED AP BD+C, BaDT, Sustainability Advisor
Brightworks

Vivek Shandas, PhD
Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning
Portland State University 

Moderator:

Naomi Cole, Program Manager
Portland Sustainability Institute

Identifying the right project priorities for a sustainable neighborhood requires an integrated assessment of community characteristics, interests, and performance. As part of Portland’s EcoDistricts Initiative, the Portland Sustainability Institute convened leaders from Portland State University, Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and Mithun, to develop a rigorous framework for assessing sustainability performance and evaluating project opportunities in a neighborhood. The framework is part process and part database. Called, “EcoDistricts Assessment Methods,” this decision tool is being tested and refined in Portland’s five pilot EcoDistricts and has broadly applicable resources and processes of relevance to other cities and neighborhoods.

Presenter Bios

Brodie Bain
Brodie Bain is a registered architect and certified planner, with over 20 years experience in architecture and planning. Brodie has focused almost exclusively on higher education for the past 15 years and has a passion for the front end of the design process. Helping clients match goals and strategies with an institution’s mission is at the core of Brodie’s work in campus planning, programming and predesign. Much of her work has included consensus building with stakeholders and public process. Recently, Brodie has led the development of Mithun’s innovative approach to sustainable campus master planning. These have served as effective tools for establishing benchmarks and helping institutions set campus-wide sustainable goals.

Nicole Isle
At Brightworks, Nicole leads all master planning and infrastructure-scale work from higher education and federal campuses to neighborhood developments both locally and internationally. Drawing on her expertise in watershed ecology, urban planning and sustainability tools and metrics, Nicole helps project teams realize a more comprehensive level of sustainability by focusing on ecological and social systems integration and team creativity, innovation and collaboration. She was a member of the AIA Sustainable Design Assessment Team in Community Planning 2009 and currently serves as a Portland Sustainability Institute EcoDistricts Initiative TAC member. Nicole regularly facilitates workshops and engages in speaking events nationwide.

Vivek Shandas
Vivek Shandas is an Associate Professor in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, and a Research Associate in the Center for Urban Studies at Portland State University. He is the founder of the newly established Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab, where his team focuses on three substantive areas of investigation: (1) examining feedbacks between environmental change and human behavior; (2) developing community-based indicators for measuring the social and environmental conditions of urban ecosystems; and (3) characterizing the relationship between urban development patterns and environmental quality. Vivek has an undergraduate degree in biology (BS), graduate degrees in economics (MS) and environmental policy (MS), and completed his doctorate in Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. He publishes widely in social and natural science journals, serves as a reviewer and technical advisor on several local, state, and national organizations

Naomi Cole
Naomi is a Program Manager for the Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI) and leads the EcoDistricts Initiative. In her role at PoSI, Naomi is responsible for EcoDistricts concept development, management of the 80-person Technical Advisory Committee, creation of the EcoDistricts Toolkit, and overseeing implementation in five pilot districts. Naomi has worked in the private sector as consultant for Konstrukt and as a Sustainability Coordinatorat Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects. With Konstrukt, she worked with a range of non-profit, municipality, and design clients as a researcher, writer and technical consultant. As Sustainability Coordinator at ZGF Architects, she helped grow their national Sustainable Design Team providing project design support, resource development and education, and work on numerous LEED projects around the world. She has an interdisciplinary degree in architecture, environmental science, and urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania.