Worldwide Locations
Worldwide Locations
Pacific Cities Sustainability Initiative (PCSI)
"Road Map"
The PCSI has identified five core areas of focus: Water, Transportation, Clean Energy, Green Buildings and Green Infrastructure. Each year, PCSI will focus on one of these areas through public forums with experts, compiling existing research and pilot studies, and then holding a culminating, full-day conference. The proceedings from each year will be developed into chapters of a guidebook to municipal sustainability for cities of the Pacific Rim. At the end of the five years, all five chapters will be updated, integrated, and assembled to create a manual for municipal decision makers.
Along the way, data and information with be compiled on the PCSI website and available to the public. Between forums and conferences, PCSI will develop new ways to continue the dialogue between geographically disparate experts and practitioners.
Next Steps
- Hold a summer meeting on city sustainability metrics (August 23, 2010). This working group, scheduled for late July/early August, will inventory city-level sustainability data already available and discuss their viability. Then the group of sustainability data experts from around the globe will discuss where PCSI can make the greatest contribution to the existing datasets and the viability of competition based on cross-boundary metrics.
- Plan and host water-energy nexus conference in LA in the Fall (tentatively December 2010) It will convene experts from around the Pacific Rim to discuss and share best practices for reducing water and energy consumption and to showcase promising projects.
Northern California Project Proposals
* Annual Conferences/Forums—provide opportunities around the Pacific Rim for municipal sustainability professionals and experts to share information and develop relationships that facilitate and enrich on-going cross-regional exchanges of experience and expertise. Each conference will analyze in depth, one aspect of sustainability.
* White papers/Sustainability Manual for Cities—Edit and compile presentations and dialogue from conferences to create a booklet to help local leaders take information from the PCSI meetings to continue the conversations in their home cities. Each conference becomes a topical chapter.
* City Metrics/ Rankings—seek to empower and incentivize municipal authorities to institute change through instituting a series of awards for sustainability improvements in key sustainability metrics. PCSI will describe and track a set of sustainability trends for each participating city, rather than combine these trends into a single sustainability index score for each city. Perhaps PCSI could present awards to cities based on their progress on each sustainability trend, e.g., air pollution, water pollution, traffic congestion, etc.
* Organize mayoral training programs
Southern California Project Proposals
* Website/Ongoing Dialogue—Interactive data-hub. Create a number of tools that facilitate and encourage municipalities to continue to share their experiences and offer a list of resources. Improve inter-disciplinary communications within cities, such as architects, urban planners, policy makers, professors, and students.
* "Learning journeys"
* Create and cement relationships between people within the PCSI and those across the Pacific Rim through physical and virtual contact
* Student Competitions—Interdisciplinary and international student projects and competitions aimed at making cities more sustainable, initially based in PCSI partner universities, USC and UCLA and perhaps UCSD. PCSI partner, the Association of Pacific Rim Universities World Institute—the research arm of a consortium of 42 leading research universities in the Pacific Rim—could be a key connecting vehicle for PCSI to attract leading Pacific Rim universities to participate in PCSI activities.
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China's Water Problems, and Ours
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