Seattle has long been recognized as a leader in the fields of medicine and global health. Now, the city — and, in particular, South Lake Union — of which the UW maintains a significant presence, is garnering attention from the Obama administration for that leadership and its impact on the community and the region.

Since July, officials from the White House Office of Urban Affairs and the Domestic Policy Council have toured the country, stopping in cities to meet with local officials and discuss the state of their communities and how to make them more green, namely, focusing on sustainability, energy efficiency, and spaces that are clean and healthy to live in.

On Friday, several such representatives toured South Lake Union as part of the National Conversation on the Future of America’s Cities and Metropolitan Areas.

On their tour, representatives from the Obama administration saw how many environmentally friendly improvements have come to life in South Lake Union. During the past several years, buildings have been constructed or renovated to be eco-friendly, the Seattle Streetcar and the Link Light Rail are within walking distance, and jobs are being created in abundance. The exact nature of those jobs was explained in a brief presentation at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.

During the presentation, representatives of biomedical companies and organizations explained why and how their companies have flocked to South Lake Union since the late 1980s, explaining that the neighborhood turned out to be an ideal location for their businesses to grow.

One organization, the Washington Global Health Alliance, ties them all together. Its members include the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington State University School for Global Animal Health, PATH, Public Health — Seattle & King County, and the University of Washington Department of Global Health, among others.

“Most of these remarkable organizations are in South Lake Union, and if they’re not, they’re thinking about moving here,” said Lisa Cohen, director of the Washington Global Health Alliance. In fact, UW Medicine opened its South Lake Union complex in 2008, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has been expanding its complex since 1988. These institutes not only contribute to knowledge of science and medicine on a global scale, they also contribute directly to the communities they exist in.

Paul Ramsey, chief executive officer of UW Medicine and dean of the School of Medicine at the UW, said: “We are at a stage in biomedical research where we can take advantage of what’s been built over the last several decades — and doing that in an interdisciplinary setting — working with transportation, housing, and with friends and neighbors, is the way to do this.”

Which, as Adolfo Carrion, director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, said, is “the orientation of the Obama administration — that the city has changed, it’s no longer the old industrial city, it’s a region, and we need to strengthen it.”

As job growth increases in the South Lake Union area, housing and transportation services grow concomitantly. The trend the Obama administration recognizes is that those services tend to be green.

“Seattle has been a leader in applying smart transportation solutions … creating a user-friendly city,” Carrion said. “But this kind of effort to reduce the carbon footprint and damage to the environment … that’s smart development, and I think Seattle represents that to cities and mayors all over the country.”

Reach reporter Natalie Johnson at news@dailyuw.com.