Resilient Merced

Merced, CA | 2019

Cascadia Partners worked with the Nature Conservancy to answer an existential question for Merced County and the State of California: can we curb climate change and conserve land while meeting affordable housing and economic goals?

This question is central to the conversation playing out in California and across the nation today regarding the perceived conflicts between climate change, housing policy and economic development. Cascadia Partners sought to answer this question using a data-driven narrative that was intended to show the synergies that can exist between conservation and other planning goals.

For this project, Cascadia used Urban Footprint to map and quantify a baseline existing-year GHG inventory as well as a range of alternative scenarios. Each scenario quantified emissions associated with building energy consumption, transportation, and the embodied carbon below and above ground in natural and working lands. These scenarios tested a range of planning strategies and showed that putting conservation of natural and working lands at the center of an integrated planning strategy can provide benefits across a broad range of goals including housing affordability, travel demand, economic development, and GhG emissions reductions.