The Burlington Legacy Project: Partnering for Our Sustainable Future
Use the Burlington Legacy Planning exercise as a model and catalyst to assist other Vermont and New England communities develop their own sustainability plans.
About You
Section 1: You
First Name
Jennifer
Last Name
Green
Website URL
Organization
Burlington Legacy Project/Community and Economic Development Office
Country
United States, VT
Section 2: Your Organization
Organization Name
Burlington Legacy Project/Community and Economic Development Office
Organization Website
Organization Phone
802-865-7532
Organization Address
149 Church Street, City Hall, Burlington, VT 05401
Is your organization a
Government
Organization Country
United States, VT
Your idea
Name Your Project
The Burlington Legacy Project: Partnering for Our Sustainable Future
Country and state your work focuses on
United States, VT
Describe Your Idea
Use the Burlington Legacy Planning exercise as a model and catalyst to assist other Vermont and New England communities develop their own sustainability plans.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
While many communities use the word “sustainability” when designing and developing projects, many fewer actually have sustainability roadmaps or visions to systematically guide long-term planning efforts in a comprehensive, strategic and integrated fashion. And yet, we know that this type of long-term sustainability visioning is critical for tackling some of the biggest challenges we face including sprawl and climate change.
When municipalities do develop sustainability plans, they’re often done by “experts” and fail to include extensive community input. This type of process does not lend itself to community buy-in and the final product rarely endures beyond governmental leadership change.
Furthermore, the “how to” guides available through municipal networks, often overlook the importance of community participation. Even fewer define sustainability as the nexus of the four Es (education, equity, economics, and environment). Instead, these guides take a top down approach and tend to limit sustainability to “environmental sustainability”.
Therefore, this idea involves taking the Burlington model of participatory sustainability planning and sharing these approaches with other interested communities to help them develop their own unique, “locally grown” sustainability roadmaps, more likely to endure beyond changes in leadership. Rather than serving as a top down approach to planning and development, this idea embraces true community participation by sharing Burlington’s sustainability planning lessons so that others can benefit from our successes and shortcomings.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
No
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
The role of the Burlington Legacy Project is to help, guide and monitor community stakeholders (including key institutions, community members, and local government) in their quest to make the 2030 Legacy Plan a reality.
As part of this effort, the Legacy Project hosts an annual town meeting. These town meetings are used to share information and data on how Burlington is doing in addressing the actions listed in the Plan. It is also an opportunity to share the year’s successes and challenges. During the 2005 Town Meeting, community members voiced concern over the quality of food in the school cafeterias, reinforcing Burlington’s interest in and support for local farms and food. As a result of this event, several community stakeholders, including parents, school officials and others, joined forces to create the Burlington School Food Project (BSFP). This unique initiative now serves as a national model on how to integrate local food into school cafeterias. Last year, thanks to the BSFP, the Burlington School District served over 50,000 pounds of local produce in the district’s cafeterias and hired a Farm-to-School coordinator, charged with networking, outreach and contract negation with local farmers. Today, the BSFP is overseen by a steering committee composed of the BSD, Shelburne Farms, VT FEED, City Market and others.
Problem
While many communities use the word “sustainability” when designing and developing projects, many fewer actually have sustainability roadmaps or visions to systematically guide long-term planning efforts in a comprehensive, strategic and integrated fashion. And yet, we know that this type of sustainability visioning or long-term planning is critical to tackling some of the biggest challenges we face and are necessary to ultimately create sustainable communities.
Therefore, sharing lessons learned from Burlington’s Legacy Planning process with other interested communities will not only allow for integrated and systematic sustainability planning – beyond the environment and including the other Es of sustainability -- but will promote community buy-in for the finished plan, likely to endure beyond changes in governmental leadership.
Actions
At present, I am taking two steps to help make the innovation a success. First, as Legacy Project Coordinator, I am building and growing the Legacy website, including information on our planning process and data to illustrate the progress we’ve made to address the Plan’s goals.
Second, I am connecting with other municipalities to share information on our process, including sharing news and information with the nascent Vermont Municipal Sustainability Network. (Inspired by a similar California network called Green Cities, I helped form this network last winter). I will also continue to be an active ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability member (including serving as an advisor for ICLEI’s annual September meeting in Washington, DC) and the Urban Sustainability Director’s network, a group of municipal staff working on environmental issues around the country.
Results
Expected results include a cadre of sustainability plans, written with input and insight from community members with the potential to serve as long-lasting and enduing visions for the future. Alone, they will serve as important community visions – taken in tandem, they have the potential to link communities across the region with a common sustainability language, ultimately creating a momentum of sustainability efforts with the power to impact region-wide change.
Sharing Burlington’s planning insight, including lessons learned – both positive and negative – will not only assist other communities, and potentially the region at large, but Burlington too. For example, this newfound appreciation for Burlington’s process will serve as a sense of community pride and remind Burlingtonians of the power and strength of their own 2030 vision.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
This project will require several important steps. During the first year, the Legacy coordinator will enhance the Legacy website, including a separate page on the planning process. As this work progresses, the coordinator will continue to outreach through existing networks, including ICLEI and the Urban Sustainability Director’s Network, and perhaps most importantly, the new Vermont Municipal Sustainability Network.
The second year involves developing an electronic newsletter on progress towards reaching the Plan’s goals, including a separate link to the site re: the planning process specifically. This will be shared with community members and other interested municipal groups.
The third year will build on the activities of year two, and involve taking the “show on the road”. This involves meeting other officials, as well as informal leaders and decision makers across Vermont who expresses an interest in the Legacy Plan. Outreach will include visiting with planning commissions, city and town managers and councilors, and town energy committee members across the state and involve attending various energy committee meetings, conferences, and other events. Year three will also include possible outreach to communities outside of Vermont. Year three will also involve evaluating the success of these outreach efforts, tweaking the strategy where necessary, and considering other outreach tools including social network sites.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Three key elements can prevent this idea from becoming successful, notably staff time, money, and the technical expertise needed to best utilize the variety of possible electronic outreach methods. At present, the Legacy coordinator works 30 hours/week, just enough to tackle her current workload. Using student interns and community volunteers – particularly those interested in data collection and monitoring who can track Legacy Plan progress – may free up time for staff to move forward on this project idea.
Limited financial resources can also stand in the way of making this idea a reality. Indeed, although not overly costly, hosting websites and using electronic services such as Constant Contact require additional project funds. Attending conferences and outreach events also have upfront and hidden financial costs.
Lastly – connected to time and money – is the current level of Coordinator know-how regarding the plethora of existing – and unfolding – electronic outreach methods and marketing techniques. To effectively outreach, time must be invested to learn about and best utilize these tools.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Don't know
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
In what country?
United States, VT
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Community and Economic Development Office, City of Burlington
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Brining the Legacy vision to life is the work of many sectors and players – from business, to government, to citizens, to non-profit entities. It is for this reason that the Legacy Project is overseen by a steering committee composed of representatives from the City’s key institutions, including City government, Fletcher Allen Health Care, the University of Vermont, Champlain College, United Way, the Burlington Business Association and Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce. This steering committee meets regularly to share information re: institutional work on the plan, to prepare town meeting, and to collaborate on projects and initiatives whenever possible.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
Three important actions are required to grow the Legacy Project – and to ultimately share the planning process with other communities. The first is continued commitment to the Legacy Plan, including commitment by all of Burlington’s private and public stakeholders. This is in part done through the annual town meeting, but must also include the media and public events to continually keep the 2030 vision in the public eye. The second action is on-going work to ensure continued buy-in and support from the highest level of city government, most notably the Mayor and City Council. Since the Plan’s creation and City Council ratification, Burlington leadership has show unwavering support and commitment to the vision. However, because changes in leadership inevitably occur, Legacy stakeholders must insist that policy makers and other leaders continue to show financial and political support.
The third most important action to grow the Legacy Project is continued work to monitor and update the variables that help monitor our success and challenges in addressing the Plan. This must be coupled with an on-going search and analysis of new variables that illuminate work towards the vision.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
The Burlington Legacy Plan was drafted by the people of Burlington and later ratified by the City Council in 2000. My idea -- to spread news and information on the Legacy Planning process -- came to me in 2004 but was born from prior work experience with the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. As a “policy specialist” working with African governments on national environmental planning exercises, I encouraged “participatory planning” to ensure that local level realities were integrated into national planning exercises. This work was never easy. National leaders, often distrustful of local players, and unwilling to give up power for the sake of local input, paid lip service to local level concerns and interests.
It wasn’t until I moved to Burlington that I saw participatory planning first hand! However, I didn’t know how truly unique it was until I attended my first local governance conference in 2004. About this time, the idea of sustainability planning was taking hold nationally. However, while attending several presentations by municipal colleagues from large cities, I learned that experts wrote their plans and “sustainability” was generally limited to environmental issues. It was at this time that I was struck by the uniqueness – both nationally and internationally -- of the Legacy Plan. The idea of using the Legacy Planning Process as a model took hold.
That said, my idea to share the Legacy Process with others does not mean that I want to superimpose the Legacy Plan on other communities – instead, my innovation entails sharing the planning process framework so that ultimately communities can be inspired and empowered to create their own action plans, based on their own local concerns and realities.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Former Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle is the innovator behind the Burlington Legacy Plan. As Mayor, Peter shared the community’s concern over the mounting challenges from sprawl, including the potential harm it would have on the economic and social vitality of our city, and the environmental and social health of the region. He realized the importance of carefully planned growth, of high-quality jobs, affordable housing opportunities, and public and private infrastructure that would assure Burlington’s continued preeminence as the economic and cultural hub of northern Vermont. He also understood that these and other issues could not be addressed without public engagement, and more specifically, without the creation of a publicly created vision and sustainability plan.
To that end, in mid-1999, Mayor Peter Clavelle announced the appointment of a
steering committee composed of leaders from the business, low-income, academic, youth, and social service communities. The committee’s purpose was to oversee the public involvement campaign and, through the input of all stakeholders, prepare the action plan. Today the Legacy Plan serves as our community’s sustainability action plan.
Progress toward the Burlington Legacy Project’s goal of a sustainable city continues to require broad-based collaboration among a diverse range of government entities, businesses, organizations, educational institutions, health care providers, neighborhood groups, and individual citizens. Each must take responsibility for portions of this plan, providing the direction, commitment, and resources it will take to make this vision a reality.
Watch a video here: http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/burlington-legacy-project-annual-t...
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Personal contact at Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | 154 weeks ago Alexis Ditkowsky said: Hi Jennifer, I really appreciate the scope of the Burlington Legacy Project's work and how you are creating a model for sustainability ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 160 weeks ago Jennifer Green submitted this idea. |
