The virtues of environmental sustainability were extolled at a March 12 meeting highlighting progress in advancing Pacific Beach\u2019s evolving eco-district.
\nThe community meeting at Broken Yolk Cafe was sponsored by beautifulPB, a nonprofit comprised of PB residents, businesses and property owners. The nonprofit, along with partners PB Planning Group, Pacific Beach Town Council and others, are collaborating on numerous environmentally sustainable community-improvement projects.
\n“It was to introduce the eco-district certification process \u2014 and celebrate it,” said Kristen Victor, beautifulPB co-founder, about the purpose of the meeting.
\nEco-district is an urban planning term denoting the objective of attaining “sustainable development” while reducing the ecological footprint and impact of community projects.
\nLaunched in 2016, EcoDistricts Certification is a new, process-based urban development standard for neighborhood-scale projects. It promotes both environmental sustainability and climate protection.
\nVictor noted PB is taking the next notable steps in “growing” its eco-district, formed about three years ago, following consultation between community residents and environmental and community planners during public workshops.
\nEco-district certification involves four steps: committing to the process; formation of the eco-district; creating a “road map” guiding project development; and tracking and measuring eco-district performance over time.
\n“Where we are right now is preparing for submittal for eco-district certification: That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been working on the last three years,” said Victor.
\nA slideshow narrated by PB community planners outlined the principles \u2014 and projects \u2014 of the beach community\u2019s new eco-district.\u00a0
\n“Our goal is to create safer streets and improve the mobility elements \u2014 walkability, likability, ADA access,” said beautifulPB president Matt Winters.
\n“We\u2019re really de-emphasizing the automobile for travel corridors in and out of PB,” said former PB Planning Group president Brian Curry, who predicted the eco-district will reshape the community. “Right now you have old car dealerships, an old hospital and older residential,” he said. “We see that as evolving into higher-density residential and a new employment base, all geared around a transit stop (Balboa Avenue now under construction).”
\nDistrict 2 Councilmember Lorie Zapf said she was all-in on the PB eco-district effort.
\n“It is transformative,” Zapf said while praising PB for being “the little engine that could. Only a handful of people are actually making it happen. I support absolutely everything about it, and I\u2019m happy to keep it going.”
\nThe meeting concluded with guests visiting various stations setup discussing ongoing eco-district projects including a new beautifulPB community garden, a PB Parks Project improving coastal green space and a PB Pathways project to improve pedestrian-cycling routes throughout the community.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The virtues of environmental sustainability were extolled at a March 12 meeting highlighting progress in advancing Pacific Beach\u2019s evolving eco-district. The community meeting at Broken Yolk Cafe was sponsored by beautifulPB, a nonprofit comprised of PB residents, businesses and property owners. The nonprofit, along with partners PB Planning Group, Pacific Beach Town Council and others, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":269560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Pacific Beach working to implement eco-district ideals","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}