Why the neighborhood focus?  Neighborhoods are the building blocks of a city. Neighborhoods are the right scale for this work since people who live in a neighborhood share a similar quality of life and local identity.  Since most citizens tend to mobilize around issues that are closer to home, Sustainable Seattle strongly believes that informed and engaged local communities are critical to achieving a more sustainable city.  Citizens tend to connect more closely to information about their own community.  Therefore, empowering citizens with social, economic, and environmental information about their communities will help mobilize greater sustainable action at a local level.

SUNI Neighborhoods: Yellow= Original Partners, Red= New Partners. Click on Map for Larger View

Neighborhood Partner Selection

In the first two years of the Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods Initiative, Sustainable Seattle began working with community groups in four Seattle neighborhoods.  These initial neighborhoods were selected through conversations with city staff and expressed interest by community leaders in each of the four neighborhoods. 

Year three of the SUNI project added six additional neighborhood partners through an extensive application process.  Community building organizations throughout Seattle were invited to apply, with six finalists selected by a committee of community members, City Staff, and Sustainable Seattle staff.  The criteria for the selection was urban village designation, diversity of the neighborhood, whether the City designated the neighborhood as a priority (according to initiatives like the Southeast Seattle Action Agenda), and the actual application with a clear demonstration of interest in the SUNI project by the neighborhood group.  The newest neighborhoods are Admiral, East Ballard, Columbia City, Lake City, Uptown, and Wallingford.

Click below for information on activities happening with our neighborhood partners:

Admiral	Capitol Hill	Chinatown- International District	Columbia City	East Ballard

Greenwood- Phinney Ridge	Lake City	North Beacon Hill	Uptown	Wallingford