Our Mission

Livable Berkeley is a non-profit organization promoting more livable, vibrant, and environmentally responsible City of Berkeley. We are a coalition of citizens, environmental leaders, social equity advocates, design professionals, and progressive builders. We work together to support and promote policies, projects, and actions that will improve the quality of life of Berkeley’s residents while reducing the City’s global warming impact, conserving energy, promoting equity, and enhancing transportation, housing, and employment choices in Berkeley and the greater Bay Area.

We love our City and the progressive ideals it is known for across the nation and the world. We believe strongly that we must achieve further progressive changes in our City, building upon our time-honored commitment to environmental stewardship, economic justice and social responsibility to make Berkeley an even better place in which to live, work, learn, and raise our families.

We support clean and efficient transportation systems that provide realistic alternatives to the private automobile and reduce our City’s energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gases and pollution. We support sustainable new development that locates housing and jobs close to transit, promotes economic and social diversity, and provides more neighborhood amenities for current residents. We support great public spaces and vibrant cultural life throughout the City for all residents to enjoy.

We believe Berkeley residents must embrace sustainability in all aspects of our lives – from how we heat and cool our homes, to how we get from place to place, what we consume, and where and how we accommodate new housing and jobs. We live in a growing region, and by working to shape how growth occurs within our City we can maintain and even enhance all that is important to us about our neighborhoods, our diversity, and the greater Bay Area.

Livable Berkeley strives to break through the single-issue-dominated local politics that too often obscures the views of the majority and degrades political discourse. We evaluate proposed projects and policies based on how they align with Berkeley’s larger sustainability and livability goals mandated by the 87% passage of the greenhouse gas initiative Measure G in 2006 and the 80% rejection of Measure P in 2002 that would have stopped most new housing on our transit corridors.

We serve the community as an honest broker of information, providing analysis and assessments of how proposed actions will impact Berkeley’s short- and long-term livability and sustainability.