1. Katherine Crane ’16 graduated from the Hotchkiss School in
Lakeville, CT. She was on the honor roll all four years as well as
on the board of Students for Environmental Awareness and
Kucetekela Foundation. She was chosen to be a delegate for her
school in the 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 a club hockey player.
She has interned for Light For Children, a nonprofit working on
community development in Ghana, as well as VeloCityNYC, an
organization that teaches underprivileged children about urban
planning. She is working with the Neukom Institute’s DALI Lab to
start an organization called ArtxChange Marketplace, a
marketplace for art and 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 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 big-picture plans for city growth in
future decades. I was working for Citywide Planning in the Sustainable Development subgroup. This was
a group of planners who worked on making San Francisco more
sustainable, including environmental sustainability, with
biodiversity plans, urban forest plans, bike transportation, and
economic and social sustainability. I felt very lucky to be 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 focused 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 by the levels of development in the neighborhood. I
worked on Type 3 Eco-Districts - neighborhoods that are already
“I felt very lucky to be a
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. developed, largely residential, and don’t have much room for growth. This included most of the
neighborhoods in the city, many of which are especially challenging for sustainability projects since their
infrastructure and lifestyles are already well established. The Type 3 program works bottom-up, letting
the community members work together to decide their sustainability action plan.
My responsibilities expanded as I became acquainted with the program and realized that we
needed to solidify our goals and mission in addition to making a public outreach plan. After I realized
that we hadn’t actually consulted with community members about what they wanted this program to
be, I decided to do interviews with neighborhood leaders and sustainability activists. I wanted to see
what work they were already doing and ask them how to make this program relevant to them. I also
pushed to change the language and messaging when communicating the program to communities, for
example, avoiding the use of meaningless buzzwords. My final report was based on my research and
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 possible sustainability projects and resources organized around the city’s Sustainable
Systems Framework - a type of menu of project options for communities to choose from.
I have learned an incredible amount about the planning world during this internship, which
would not have been possible without the support of the Rockefeller Center and the McSpadden Public
Affairs Fund. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity. I also would not have been as comfortable or
prepared for my work without the experience of going through Rocky’s Management and Leadership
Development Program, which gave me many useful workplace skills that are not taught in classes.
Catherine on the first day of her internship at the San Francisco Planning Department in Spring 2014.
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