The City of St. Louis is proud to be one of nine cities selected to define how the STAR Community Index, a sustainability rating system and performance management tool, will help local governments measure and improve their sustainability performance. The City of St. Louis will play a primary role in defining how the STAR Community Index will transform and accelerate the local government sustainability movement by offering cities and counties a roadmap for advancing climate protection, economic recovery and equal opportunities for all residents within a community.
"We hope that the STAR Community Index will do for cities what the LEED rating system did for green building practices," said Catherine Werner, City of St. Louis Sustainability Director. "The simple fact that St. Louis was chosen as one of nine cities to participate in this first-of-its-kind program shows that our sustainability efforts are on the right path."
As a Beta Community, the City of St. Louis will collaborate with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) to design cutting-edge performance management software that will allow cities and counties to more effectively manage their sustainability efforts, gather and evaluate data, and report progress toward sustainability goals and measures. Together, ICLEI and the Beta Communities will road test STAR to ensure that it can be adopted by local governments around the country, ranging from small towns to major cities.
"This program will help us better communicate our green initiatives' success with residents of the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County, said Mayor Slay. "It's vital for the City of St. Louis to have a means to measure our progress in becoming a more sustainable city. This program will help streamline and guide our sustainability initiative to be as effective and efficient as possible to make St. Louis the best possible place to live, work, or play."
"These nine early-adopter cities, along with many other communities across the nation, are already taking the lead on energy efficiency and sustainable development in their own right, and as such, they are the perfect candidates to advance the goals and mission of STAR, which is to build healthier, inclusive and more livable communities," said Martin Chávez, Executive Director, ICLEI USA and three-term mayor of Albuquerque, NM.
The City of St. Louis will receive technical support and resources to position it to become an early adopter of STAR and accelerate its various sustainability efforts.
The selection of the nine Beta Communities follows the recent release of the STAR Sustainability Goals and Guiding Principles to assist local governments and communities with a much-needed vocabulary to more effectively strategize and focus their sustainability planning efforts. The 81 goals and 10 guiding principles released collectively define community-scale sustainability and serve as the foundation of STAR.
The STAR Community Index is being developed by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA (ICLEI USA) in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), National League of Cities (NLC), and Center for American Progress (CAP), and in collaboration with over 150 sustainability experts and organizations from a diverse group of cities and counties, federal agencies, national associations, non-profit organizations and private entities.
How the STAR Online Platform Will Work
The STAR online platform will provide users with a variety of features to enable quick uptake of the STAR Community Index. The platform will include features to enable local governments to analyze, map, and manage all their sustainability data in one place, and to present that information to internal managers, executives, and the public using a sustainability dashboard that interfaces with a city's or county's website. The tool will also facilitate data sharing with ICLEI for the verification and certification of a community under the forthcoming STAR rating system. More information on the STAR Beta Communities and STAR online platform can be found at:
http://www.icleiusa.org/star
About the STAR Community Index
STAR will change the way local governments and communities approach sustainability goals – and how they manage and measure their long-term progress. This performance-based sustainability management system breaks ground by uniquely combining the following elements: a framework for sustainability -- based on the pillars of environment, economy, and social equity; an online data-management platform that gathers, organizes, analyzes, and presents information required to meet community and government sustainability goals through effective management; and a management model and rating system that drive continuous improvement in community health, vitality and prosperity for all residents. More information on STAR can be found at: http://www.icleiusa.org/star
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