Yesterday, “Circulate San Diego” announced our new name, “Circulate Planning & Policy.” You can just call us “Circulate.”
So, it’s a name change, but not really.
A number of people have asked me if we’re changing the name as part of an effort to expand our reach. Sort of. But it’s more that we expanded our reach some time ago, and we’re updating the name to reflect that reality.
Circulate as an organization works on two major types of activities. We have our research and advocacy arm, and we operate a value-oriented planning and public engagement team. They’re different but mutually supportive of our mission to create excellent mobility choices and vibrant, healthy neighborhoods.
Historically, our public policy efforts have been focused on policy change at the largest agencies in our region, including the City of San Diego, the San Diego Association of Governments, and the Metropolitan Transit System. We will always continue that work. Still, in the last half-decade, we have begun to regularly weigh in on legislation in Sacramento. We’ve sponsored a few bills ourselves. Many of our recent major reports were published with an eye toward impacting statewide public policy, from affordable housing, the Coastal Commission, and transit permitting.
On one level, it’s been good to have “San Diego” in our name. When coalition partners gather supporters from around the state, having Circulate on board shows that they have representation from our part of California. It’s also probably a bit of a hindrance. When we argue that Caltrans should adopt a statewide policy, it might be easy to dismiss us as a mere regional nonprofit.
Our planning team has grown in recent years. We have a team of five professionals who regularly teach school children about street safety and lead community walk audits. In addition to school-based programs, we have a special expertise in creative community engagement. Technical planning and engineering firms often want to partner with us to help translate community sentiment into actionable planning recommendations.
We have continued to expand our activities outside of the San Diego region. Most of our work has always been local, but in the last three years we’ve won more and more awards for projects in the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire. We’ve even done a bit of work in the Bay Area. We’ve been using a program brand of “Circulate Planning” for those efforts for quite some time. That’s been useful to avoid confusing residents in Riverside, who might wonder why a San Diego-specific organization was collecting public input on their bicycle master plan.
Longtime Circulate supporters know that we haven’t always had the same name. We began more than 25 years ago as Walk San Diego, an organization specifically focused on pedestrian concerns. Through its first decade, Walk San Diego developed an in-house planning team, contracting with local governments and school districts to work on Safe Routes to School programs and various active transportation plans.
13 years ago, Walk San Diego merged with Move San Diego, an organization primarily focused on public transit, to form Circulate San Diego. Move San Diego had only one full-time employee, but had a high profile and political heft. Move and Walk had partnered for years on many efforts, especially at the regional transportation agencies. They had very different organizational structures and strengths. But they also had many goals in common.
The merger was intended to create an organization that was greater than the sum of its parts. Move brought policy expertise, and Walk brought planning know-how and a more sustainable business model.
I got to know the organization while volunteering on the policy committee of Move San Diego. I was invited by Elyse Lowe, Move’s executive director, while I was then serving as the Director of Policy at the San Diego Housing Commission. They merged during my second year, and I got to know the team that came over from Walk. When Elyse left to join the Development Services Department at the City of San Diego (which she now leads), she recruited me to apply for her role at Circulate.
Iterations continued after the merger. It wasn’t until my second year as executive director that we really settled on what Circulate was all about. We undertook a new strategic plan and settled on our three core areas of public transit, safe streets, and sustainable growth. We didn’t really start weighing in on statewide issues for another few years. The changes have been organic and gradual.
Our name change today is in that same spirit. We intend to keep all the goodwill that comes from the “Circulate” brand, even though we’re changing what comes after that. Our website and social media handles will stay the same, just with new branding. Our new logo closely resembles our prior one, and the new organization will look much the same. If you blink, you might not even notice.
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NOTE: You can help celebrate our new name change by donating to support our work. And you can check-out our “Eras Store,” where we have merch featuring all of our past logos from Walk, Move, and Circulate San Diego!
