April is our favorite month because it's time to celebrate Earth Day and host our annual Sustain Charlotte Awards honoring local excellence in sustainability! Our staff and about 70 of our friends kicked the month off on Tuesday at the Green Drinks Charlotte + Sustain Charlotte Monthly Mixer at Wooden Robot.

Dylan McKnight spoke about the transformative work that Stantec, a Silver Partner of Sustain Charlotte, is doing to create vibrant, people-oriented communities near Charlotte and across the country. Stantec employs over 15,000 people in more than 250 locations to provide professional consulting in planning, engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics.

Dylan McKnight explained how Stantec designs sustainable neighborhoods and projects.

We're proud to partner with Stantec because they support development of communities that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable! According to Stantec, "successful communities are created where design and life intersect." Their Urban Places group helps clients realize the full range of benefits that flow from fully urban, walkable downtowns, neighborhoods, and suburban centers.

Stantec takes community input seriously. Just one example is the week-long design charettte they hosted in Summerville, South Carolina that brought together hundreds of residents and business owners. The resulting broad public support for this project allowed the town to move forward quickly with the plan and attract significant private investment.

Dylan inspired the audience to consider taking on some tactical urbanism projects of their own. Tactical urbanism is a grassroots strategy of implementing simple, usually low-cost temporary improvements or demonstration projects to show how a public space could be transformed. A few examples include hanging wayfinding signs to help people travel without a car, making a public space more inviting by adding seating, or turning an on-street parking space into a tiny park.

Examples of sustainable development and tactical urbanism projects!

We'd love for you to join us at our next monthly mixer on Tuesday, May 3 from 6:00 to 7:30 at Wooden Robot! But we have our biggest event of the year coming up even before then and we want to see YOU and your friends there! The 5th Annual Sustain Charlotte Awards + Earth Day Celebration on the evening of Thursday, April 21 will honor over 70 local sustainability leaders. This event has SOLD OUT every year and we expect it to this year as well. Click here to learn more about the event and incredible nominees, and to buy your tickets today!