Using cross-sectoral collaboration to create long-lasting solutions: How Implementation of the Cascade and Olympic Agendas Seeks to Cross the Urban-Rural Divide

Since the launch of the Cascade and Olympic Agendas in 2005, Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy) has been working to cross the urban-rural divide to generate equitable, market-based strategies for Creating Great Communities & Conserving Great Lands. Based on the premise that the NW\u27s greatest opportunities for sustainability requires identification of synergies and constituencies across diverse sectors, Forterra has focused on a number of policy and project initiatives to test and prove up this premise. Examples include: the well-advanced Landscape Conservation and Local Infrastructure Program and an emerging collaboration to generate manufacturing of and building code authorizations for locally-sourced engineered and mass timber for use in multi-story buildings. Both of these examples align urban and rural market forces to create compact, carbon-reducing development, while sustaining resource economies, rural communities and the landscape - all of which are critical to the survival of the Salish Se