Vision, Mission, Values
Vision
These are the characteristics of the world we envision:
- Growth: Dense urban growth with strong public services to benefit our metropolitan region, our country, and our planet
- Public Transit and Active Transportation: A reliable, efficient, accessible, interconnected regional transportation network that prioritizes the needs of underserved users and makes it safe and easy to travel without a car
- Affordable Housing: An abundant supply of quality and attainable housing for all income levels
- Environmental Justice: Responsible management of land and resources to rectify historic racial injustices in environmental decision-making, benefit long-term public health, mitigate pollution, and adapt to climate change
- Racial & Social Justice: An intersectional approach to urban planning and local governance that centers fairness and inclusion – eliminating racial, ethnic, gender, age, economic, and disability injustices
- Transparent & Accountable Government: Local governance that is transparent, open, accessible, collaborative, and reflective of the interconnectedness of our region
- Communal Responsibility: Public processes, plans, and policymaking that embrace our responsibility to care for people we don’t know personally, and the need for cities to be shared among people who are here and people who will come, including future generations
Mission
The mission of Greater Greater Washington is to inform, engage, and influence the public and policy makers to advance racial, economic, and environmental justice in land use, transportation, and housing throughout Greater Washington.
Values
As a team, these are the core values that we bring to our work.
- Inclusivity: We aim to break down barriers to access of information and participation in public life, and to build a better region with, not for, marginalized groups. We challenge systems, internal and external, that uphold systemic racism, recognizing its outsized role in shaping the physical landscape of our region, access to opportunity, patterns of wealth inequality, and societal expectations that shape workplace norms.
- Civic-Mindedness: We value the work of equipping people with the tools they need to participate productively in public life, and prioritize working for and with individuals and groups who are most commonly marginalized in decision-making power structures.
- Questioning Prevailing Orthodoxy: We approach work with curiosity and a recognition that the work we do is iterative; it takes shape over time. We listen, participate, question, and recognize who is and is not “at the table” to ensure we’re understanding situations at hand and challenging approaches that reinforce inequities.
- Stewardship: We work to ensure that this is a good, stable place to work, with carefully managed financial resources and an organizational culture that supports the professional development, wellbeing, and work-life balance of its staff.
- Mutual Respect: We engage with each other from a place of mutual respect and in good faith. We recognize and value different communication styles and seek to counteract dynamics that allow some voices to dominate while others are marginalized.
- High Quality Work: We produce good work that is intentional, detail-oriented, incisive, sound, and considerate.
- Integrity: We prioritize high ethical standards and honesty, internally and externally, in our decision-making, finances, motivations, stances, actions, and ethics.