Building a City Worth Inheriting is a highly visual presentation about how the places we build shape daily life, civic trust, and our sense of responsibility to one another.

Using Boise’s streets, trails, public spaces, landmarks, and growth patterns as examples, the talk explores a simple question: what does it mean to build a city that serves human life well? It looks at the difference between roads and streets, why places like the Greenbelt feel coherent and welcoming, and how fragmented responsibility can leave important civic places without clear stewardship.

The presentation also introduces Boise Civic Trust, a new nonprofit working to turn overlooked civic conditions into clear, fundable, actionable projects. Table Rock serves as one concrete example of this work: a defining Boise landmark where public value is obvious, but long-term responsibility is fragmented.

More broadly, the talk asks how Boise can grow while strengthening the places, paths, and patterns of care that future generations will inherit.

Eric Morrison is the Executive Director of Boise Civic Trust and the founder of Boise Rising, a civic platform focused on the places, patterns, and public systems that shape life in Boise.

His work combines systems thinking, visual narrative, site photography, mapping, and civic predevelopment to identify overlooked conditions in the built environment and turn them into clear, actionable project pathways. He is especially interested in the gap between what residents notice, what agencies control, what professionals can solve, and what funders and civic partners need in order to act.

Before founding Boise Civic Trust and Boise Rising, Eric worked in brand strategy, content development, photography, and place-based storytelling. His current work focuses on helping Boise strengthen public places, civic landmarks, neighborhood environments, human-scale infrastructure, and the stewardship systems needed to carry them forward.