Happy 15th Birthday Sightline:

10 Big Ideas From The Last 15 Years

Fifteen years ago, a 28-year-old researcher named Alan Durning lugged a refurbished library table into the cramped bedroom closet of his Seattle home, drilled a phone line through the wall, and filed the legal papers to create a nonprofit research and communications center. The goals were ambitious: to become a regional think tank arming the Pacific Northwest’s change-makers with the ideas and tools they need to reshape Cascadia’s public agenda in favor of a healthy, lasting prosperity.

How are we doing on this journey together? In honor of our 15th anniversary, we’ve decided to answer that question by telling stories of ten key ideas we’ve seeded—where they started, where they journeyed, and what, eventually, they changed. The most important part: We did it with your help.

Putting Walkability on the Map: From our 1996 classic The Car and the City to the wildly popular web tool, Walk Score, Sightline’s mapping, analyses, and storytelling has inspired pedestrian- and transit-friendly planning across the region.

Fair Climate Policy for Cascadia: From our 1997 book Over our Heads to our 2008 primer on climate policy, Sightline researchers have helped shape the debate on everything from the climate impacts of transportation projects to how to develop a regional carbon cap-and-trade program that’s also fair.

Pollution in People: In 2004, Sightline worked with partners to publish a study spotlighting troubling news about a PCB-like toxic appearing at high levels in the breastmilk of Northwest mothers. Now, Oregon and Washington have both implemented phase-outs of these toxics.

That’s just the beginning. To read the full article—including five more change-making ideas seeded by Sightline—go here.

Donor Profile: A Catalyst for Community Building in Cascadia

A founding member of Sightline’s Cascadia Stewards Council, Judy Pigott is also a community builder, author, volunteer, mother, and philanthropist. Please take a minute to learn more about this outstanding Cascadian citizen, why she's one of Sightline's most longstanding supporters, and how her first encounter with Sightline was straight out of a Superman movie.