Unique Chapter Event: Social Equity in the Built Environment

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

On April 4th, we will be holding a special event focusing on the connections between green building, sustainability, and social equity.

Social Equity is typically conceptualized as the third–and least significant– component of the triple bottom line. While LEED has equilibrated environmental concerns with economic ones, we are just at the beginning of developing tools that allow us to measure and examine social equity results in a similar fashion.

New programs from the International Living Future Institute like the Living Building Challenge, and JUST Organizations label, as well as new Social Equity Pilot credits in LEED v4 are beginning to raise the discourse around social equity to allow us to examine the social equity impacts of our organizations, our work, and our communities.

We will have presentations from three panelists- Francis Janes, director of the JUST Organizations labeling program for ILFI, Shawn Hesse, co-author of the new LEED Social Equity Pilot Credits, and Tony Ransom, Chair of the the Boston chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (BosNOMA). These distinguished guests will be discussing the importance of a focus on social equity in design, construction, and operations of our buildings, communities, and our organizations.