1. Katherine Crane ‘16 graduated from the Hotchkiss School in
Lakeville, CT. She was on Honor Role all four years as well as on
the board of Students for Environmental Awareness and
Kutchetekela Foundation. She was chosen to be a delegate for
her school in an international Round Square conference on
service in Thailand. At Dartmouth, Katherine is majoring in
Geography and Environmental Studies. She is teacher for
Growing Change, an interviewer for Friday Night Rock, and she
plays on club hockey. She has interned for Light For Children, a
nonprofit working on community development in Ghana, as well
as VeloCityNYC, a startup organization that teaches
underprivileged children about urban planning. She is working
with the Neukom DALI Lab to start an organization called
ArtxChange Marketplace, a marketplace for art and a platform for fundraising. She hopes to pursue a
career in sustainable urban planning.
Katherine was funded by the Rockefeller Center for a Spring 2014 internship, with generous
support from the McSpadden Public Affairs Internship Fund.
Executive Summary from Katherine’s final report:
My internship this spring was at the San Francisco Planning Department, which works on
developing the city’s General Plan, creating neighborhood plans, improving urban design, and
shaping the overall future of the city. There are two main
sections of the Department: Current Planning, which works
with zoning and permits, and Long Term Citywide Planning,
which works on bigger pictures plans for the whole city in
future decades. I was working in Citywide planning,
specifically in the Sustainable Development subgroup. This
was a group of planners who worked or took interest in
making San Francisco more sustainable, including
environmental sustainability, with biodiversity plans, urban
forest plans, and bike transportation, but it also concerning
economic and social sustainability. I felt very lucky to be a
“I felt very lucky to be a
temporary part of a group
that was so dedicated to
urban sustainability, which
allowed me to see how they
approach issues from many
different angles.”
[MCSPADDEN PUBLIC AFFAIRS FUND INTERN PROFILE]

2. temporary part of a group that was so dedicated to urban sustainability, which allowed me to
see how they approach issues from many different angles.
I was focusing on the Eco-Districts program, which aims to advance the city’s
sustainability goals by approaching them from the neighborhood scale. There are four types of
Eco-Districts that differ based off the levels of development in the neighborhood. I was focusing
on Type 3 Eco-Districts, neighborhoods that are already developed, largely residential, and
don’t have much room for growth. These consisted of most of the neighborhoods in the city,
and these pre-existing neighborhoods are especially challenging places for sustainability
projects since their infrastructure and lifestyles are set. The Type 3 program aims to do bottom-
up work in which the community works together to decide their sustainability action plan.
My scope of work expanded slightly once I became acquainted with the program and
realized that we needed to do some general program development to solidify our goals and
mission in addition to making a public outreach plan. After I realized that we hadn’t actually
consulted with many community members about what they wanted this program to be, I
decided I’d do interviews with neighborhood leaders and sustainability activists. I wanted to see
what work neighborhoods were already doing, as well as ask them how to make this program
relevant to them. I also decided we needed to change the language and messaging when we
communicate the program to communities, for example avoiding the use of meaningless
buzzwords. My final report was based on research and these interviews, and it made
recommendations about the goals, development and public outreach strategy for the Type 3
program. In addition to this report, I worked on researching and designing a booklet containing
many possible sustainability projects and resources organized around the city’s Sustainable
Systems Framework, similar to a menu of options for communities to choose what they want to
work on. I also did several writing tasks for Ms. McGee when she needed help.
Catherine at the entrance of her internship at the San Francisco Planning Department in Spring 2014.
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