“We need as many people working on this as possible,” says Kathryn Wright, Program Director for Building Energy for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN). In this role, Kathryn supports people working in 250 US and Canadian cities and counties on decarbonization, climate justice, and resilience.

The USDN recently released an Equity and Buildings framework to help practitioners approach the built environment in a more holistic and people-centered way. “We are all striving for a just transition and to combat climate change,” Kathryn says. “And if we look at the history of the built environment in North America, it is built on unjust principles. We have to work together, as a network of professionals and practitioners, to keep that history from repeating itself as we are about to drive investment into built environment in order to get to the greenhouse gas mitigation goals that we want.”