Regenerative
Communities
Creating healthy, resilient, just, and inclusive places is no easy feat—it takes intention, care, and some essential considerations.
Collaboration between building professionals and community stakeholders makes it possible to center community priorities and empower individuals. Making an effort to understand the culture and ecology of a development’s location can result in unexpected opportunities to revitalize both natural systems and human communities. Considering both short- and long-term impacts can ensure that communities are adaptable to changing circumstances years and decades into the future. With these ideas in mind, the building and modernization of housing will result in so much more than new homes; housing development will become a way to address the full range of local and global challenges we face today.
Regenerative Neighborhoods
These projects demonstrate this intentional, holistic approach to shaping the places where we live. It’s not just about project results, whether they be solar-generated power and green spaces or local jobs and permanently affordable housing. It’s about the processes, collaboration, community leadership, and care that go into achieving those results. Through these highlights, we hope to show that we can all aspire to something beyond ‘sustainable and affordable’. Collectively we can envision developments that revitalize communities, restore ecosystems, and give places the ability to evolve and adapt to whatever changes the future holds.
Community Changemakers
Build It Green is talking to people who are tackling climate change, addressing social inequity, and revitalizing communities through their work in the residential building sector. These innovators demonstrate what outcomes are possible when you think beyond a single problem and consider more multifaceted solutions. In highlighting these leaders and their work, we aim to spark ideas, drive discussions, and inspire others to engage and take action.
Opportunities to Take Action
If you are inspired by these people and stories, but don’t know where to start. We got you. California has several paths you can pursue that provide both a framework and financing to make your neighborhood one that you feel safe in, supported by, and proud to call home for generations to come.
Transformative Climate Communities
California's Strategic Growth Council empowers communities most impacted by pollution to choose their own goals, strategies, and projects to enact transformational change.
Smart Growth
The Environmental Protection Agency has a guide of resources addressing various aspects of smart growth.
Centering Equity
The NAACP Centering Equity in the Sustainable Building Sector Initiative has released guidelines for equitable community involvement in development projects.
