Spokane University District Ecological Assets and Performance Standards Study

Conceptual cross-section of the riparian ecosystem. Image: Cascara Land Design

Ecological performance standards to guide a growing urban district

What if every act of design and construction made the world a better place? That question guided our work in Spokane's University District.

The University District is Spokane's center for research, life sciences, and energy innovation, and it's growing faster than the surrounding city. The University District Public Development Authority (UDPDA) wanted to ensure that growth sustains, improves, and restores the District's baseline ecological assets. It retained Greene Economics to develop ecological performance standards for the 770-acre site and guide future design and construction.

We assembled a team of economists, ecologists, biologists, urban planners, and landscape architects. To identify the ecosystems that once defined the site, we reviewed scientific studies, planning documents, and regional ecological mapping. The team interviewed key stakeholders from across the District and community, including Warren Seyler of the Spokane Tribe Natural Resource Department, who shared the Tribe's knowledge of the land and river as a gathering place and winter camp.

From this foundation, we characterized the four historical ecosystems: ponderosa pine savanna, shrub-steppe grassland, riparian corridor, and river floodplain. We identified twelve ecosystem services they once provided, from air filtration and carbon sequestration to stormwater management and pollination. Before development, the site's vegetation and soils filtered water and recharged the Spokane Valley–Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, a sole-source aquifer that still supplies drinking water to more than 500,000 people across the region.

Drawing on biomimicry and regenerative design, we set each performance target to what the site once delivered. This moves beyond net zero to a net-positive standard. Targets limit water withdrawals to historical aquifer recharge rates, cut impervious surface to restore pre-development infiltration, and rebuild native vegetation in ratios that mirror the original ponderosa pine savanna.

From ecological assets to performance standards

Today, 64 percent of the District is impervious surface, only 2.8 percent of trees are native, and soils are largely degraded or buried.

We translated the targets—aligned with community priorities—into design standards for three realms: the riparian corridor, the public realm and the built environment. Conceptual cross-sections developed with Cascara Land Design show how those standards guide design in each realm. The framework’s metrics will let the District track progress toward each target over time.

Together, this work gives the University District a shared ecological framework to guide its growth as a living lab for research and innovation.