The Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods Initiative (SUNI) works with local communities and city government to build understanding about neighborhood concerns and strengths, collect data on neighborhood health (both assets and deficits) and promote actions to improve Seattle neighborhoods.  We do this in several ways:

Bringing People Together:  We collaborate with community members, the University of Washington, the City of Seattle, and other non-profits to understand and communicate neighborhood priorities. We hold community gatherings (brown bags & dialogues), coordinate community events and participate on community & sustainability committees.  We also meet regularly with City staff to gain a better understanding of city processes and initiatives in order to effectively convey these workings to community members.

Researching Conditions & Collecting Data:  We work with neighborhood groups to collect indicators of community health.  We conduct street-level surveys to document positive and negative neighborhood conditions; we administer various community surveys to better understand neighborhood health and community perceptions; and we offer an interactive mapping tool to analyze demographic trends and open space accessibility at a neighborhood scale.

Supporting Action & Change:  We work with communities to understand what the indicators are telling us in order to promote positive actions on the ground.   These projects can be physical improvements such as graffiti removal during Clean Seattle events or volunteers planting trees in a neighborhood business district, such as the Free the Trees project.  Or they can involve helping citizens effectively communicate community priorities, such as a presentation made by youth in the Chinatown-International District to the Seattle City Council.

The Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods Initiative is supported by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  In addition, the SUNI program is supported by The Seattle Foundation's Better Tomorrow initiative, as well as several local community grants from Seattle's Office of Economic Development, Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods, and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Neighborhood Partners

For the initial two years of the project, Sustainable Seattle focused on four Seattle neighborhoods – Capitol Hill, Greenwood-Phinney Ridge, Chinatown-International District, and North Beacon Hill.  In 2005, we expanded the program to include six new neighborhoods: Admiral, Columbia City, East Ballard, Lake City, Wallingford, and Uptown.

Final Reports

To learn more about what we have been doing for the first three years of the SUNI program, please download the final reports. 

Year One Final Report (2004) _{^{pdf file (293 kb)}}

Year Two Final Report (2005) ^{_{pdf file (2.2 mb)}}

Year Three Final Report (2006) _{^{pdf file (1.9 mb)}}