The Seattle 2030 District is an interdisciplinary public-private collaborative working to create a groundbreaking high-performance building district in downtown Seattle. With theArchitecture 2030 Challenge for Planning providing our performance goals, we seek to develop realistic, measurable, and innovative strategies to assist district property owners, managers, and tenants in meeting aggressive goals that reduce environmental impacts of facility construction and operations. 

These collective efforts will establish the District as an example of a financially viable, sustainability focused, private sector driven effort that maximizes profitability and prosperity for all involved. Through collaboration among diverse stakeholders, leverage of existing and development of new incentives and financing mechanisms, and development and communication of shared resources, the 2030 District seeks to prove the business case for sustainability. Property owners will not be required to achieve the goals of the District by legislative mandates, or as individuals.  Rather, this type of goal achievement requires sharing of resources and ongoing collaboration to make high-performance buildings the most profitable building type in Seattle.

Achieving the 2030 Challenge targets at a district scale, and focusing on existing medium to large buildings that are privately owned, will provide a working model that other cities and regions can use to reduce emissions and impacts. While individual buildings will have specific opportunities for energy reductions, a district approach will provide the opportunity for district-wide heat recovery, distributed generation, and other district energy efficiencies that can reduce the demand for resources. The 2030 District will provide members a roadmap to own, manage, and develop high performance buildings by leveraging existing market resources and by creating new tools and partnerships to overcome current market barriers. This type of collaborative action is a strategic undertaking to help the City of Seattle meet its goal of carbon neutrality by 2030 and represents a major investment in Seattle’s future.