Green Buildings

While reading, I noticed a couple of housing policies that stood out as having a high potential for successful application in the United States. Throughout the course we have talked about the importance of changing mindsets. I believe the difficulty of achieving this can be overcome by building on the values and practices Americans currently hold dear. For instance, there is a strong tradition of competition in this country, one that would aid in the implementation of a program like the green house numbers mentioned in Beatly. The push for green living is starting to catch on in the states, and companies are beginning to boast about the sustainability of their products and fair practices. Why not take this to the next level and have businesses compete through their headquarters buildings? I could see the Baltimore Legg Mason building or the Wachovia headquarters revamping in order to obtain a green plaquard- especially if they would receive the type of media and governement attention that takes place in Europe. Government buildings leading this act would also be important. For example, the Ravens stadium is owned by the Maryland Stadium Authority. If stadium patrons and viewers at home were aware of the fact that the stadium is powered by solar panels, then chances are that would get them to be a little more consious about how they get their energy (and having an institution like a football team going green would help to dispell the myth that environmentalism is only advocated by liberals).

I really liked the idea of green mortgages and bonds as well. Rather than our government spending money directly to install green systems for commercial buildings or private homes, it is simply forgoing the tax revenue they normally receive on investment earnings (which is a strategy used in a number of different community revitalization programs- ie, tax credits for restoring a historical building). Plus, people love taking advantage of tax free oportunities- my dad legitimately gets excited about donating our old clothing and recreation equipment to Salvation Army because he gets to write them off when he does our taxes. If we can emphasize the long-term benefits of installing energy-saving devices combined with the opportunties to take advantage of tax breaks, we can be a lot more successful in marketing these tools to your run-of-the-mill suburban home owner.

Of course, while these policies have major implications for getting the upper middle class and business elite involved in sustainability, they can also be used to generate social justice as well. For instance, as a part of the green mortgages program, the government could stipulate that a certain percentage of funds must be reinvested into affordable housing projects, low-income neighborhoods, etc.

The Building Buzz

It is vital to think about sustainability from the beginning of a project. After a building is constructed, enacting energy saving measures only takes a small chunk out of the energy usage. When energy was cheap, builders and architects didn’t need to think about efficient ventilation and lighting strategies. Any poor design was more than met by hyped up ventilation and cooling setups. Now that energy prices have begun to climb and energy shortages have become a problem, designers and architects have started to change their strategy on building design.

It seems foolish to think that buildings are designed to only take advantage of a plot of land in terms of esthetic values and pay no particular attention to spatial orientation. As the sun moves through the day and through the seasons, it strikes different areas of a building and with differing intensities. Devices such as sun shelves are able to project this light a considerable distance into a building’s interior and by using highly insulated windows, do not bring with it the added heat. During the winter months, this light could be used to shine on dark surfaces such as a dark stone floor allowing heat to be stored in the floor and aid in heating the building. During the summer, this sun could be aimed at a certain part of the roof to create updrafts which pull warm air from inside the building and provide a means of naturally ventilating the building. These examples of passive solar are fairly easy to implement, but must be thought about at the onset of a home, and just by taking advantage of the sun, a building could potentially cut its energy usage in half.

Beatley brings up a slew of examples on how Europeans have begun to implement sustainable aspects into new building design. It seems a shame that Americans have not jumped on this same trend. European policy makers have seen the same trends in energy usage that have been realized in the US, but instead of addressing rising energy demand by increasing supply, they have fought the rising demand through efficiency. Highly subsidized and publicized programs promote the use of energy efficient homes that take advantage of passive solar as described above. To curtail car usage, many cities have enacted high-speed bus loops and tram service which greatly exceeds even the best public transportation systems in the US. Not only does this prevent traffic from excessive car usage, but the cities are seeing reduced road maintenance and fuel use as well.

Beatley sums it up very well saying, “There is simply not enough attention given in the United States to aggressively promoting ecological design and building.”(313) The United States is more interested in keeping everyone happy and blissfully ignorant as it pumps money into oil and auto subsidy programs make it seem as though there are no emerging energy problems. European countries have taken the energy issue head on and along with their powerful building programs are leading the way in sustainability. Though the United States has slowly begun to realize that it is getting left behind on this issue, the few projects that show this awareness are greatly outshined by the poor building practices of the past. Hopefully, the new architects and engineers will change this way of thinking and soon surpass the Europeans in sustainability, making the United States the hallmark of sustainable design.

Oops, seems like I might have gone a different way than most. I read Edens Lost and Found, the chapter on Philadelphia (my hometown). Many points were brought up which lead back to previous topics, as well as bringing up many new ones as well. For me it was interesting to read about the events, places, people, and organizations I grew up around knowing, and understanding them deeper.The chapter discusses the decline of Philadelphia as well as it's possibilities and positive actions being taken all over the city.

The chapter begins by displaying the Philadelphia flower show and its side project Philadelphia green. The Philadelphia flower show is an event which occurs once a year and creates massive displays of both flowers in artistic arangements (see above) and flower gardens. This is an interesting program because it covers multiple tactics. Most importantly the flower show does not work completely to educate, but mostly to amaze. And what better way for people to see the benefits of green in the city? Green Philadelphia continues this program by taking proceeds from the show and using them to create green spaces in the community. However they do not create spaces unless at least 85% of the neighborhood or block wants it. They they have everyone contribute (about $1). This functions as a commitment of the community to keep this space, it makes it theirs. It seems important to consider when doing any type of planning for a city to become part of the city instead of reaching to educate, or to recreate as Register would desire. Another interesting point the chapter brought up was how Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods, and the work is often done neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block. Once again we see the importance of bottom up activity, as well as starting small instead of attempting large scale restructuring which displaces people and communities, while putting in large risks which often fail. We also see how the work can be a slow process, but that doesn't mean it is not moving. Philadelphia is an example of cities that is working to solve it's problems through the benefits of of nature, not solve it's problems of nature. The West Philadelphia initiative is working to add green space and trees to the city, which in turn creates increased aesthetic value, causing more people to see the city as a viable place to live and therefore increasing density.What was most interesting to me was the use of art in sustainability. In a culture that is plagued by sprawl, privatization, and loss of communications, art has the power to unite and recreate community. Philadelphia has many mural programs which range from those created by artists, to children, to prisoners, all in different neighborhoods of the city. The murals often reflect some aspect of the community, creating community pride and an increase in people staying. These murals can also beautify the community without leading to gentrification.

One of the things I was struck by and disappointed with was how the book glossed over some nice little details of the past. For instance it mentions the West Philadelphia Initiative, a part of the University of Pennsylvania as being a revitalizing force of West Philly. While this is true and the organization does work to create a better community, it completely ignores the fact that Penn completely destroyed a neighborhood (not exactly unintentionally either) in order to create university city, a transient area (think collegetown). In my opinion the organization does not do nearly enough to account for the damage it caused, or to account for the incredible seperation between the two parts or types of West Philadelphia, the poorer neighborhood, and that of students and professors. There is a double edged sward to this revitilization as we see prices increase. So once again (I know everyone is getting sick of it) I bring up my point of the real effect that green cities have on it's lower class residents?

The Healthy House: Sustainable Housing in North America

As I was reading Beatley's chapter 10: Designing Buildings and Neighborhoods with Nature in Mind, I was surprised and excited to learn about the Healthy House in Toronto. This house was built to demonstrate sustainable home building principles for Northern climates. Even though I most recently lived in Toronto, I had never even heard of the Healthy House before, but it sounded like a great example of sustainable building principles being put into practice. I felt proud that one of the few true examples of sustainble housing that Beatley could point out in North America was in my home town, but I was ashamed that I didn't know about it before this. I have often wondered how practical it would be to have a self-sufficient building in a Northern climate, but The Healthy House has shown that it can be done well.

The Healthy House was designed by architect Martin Liefhebber for a sustainable housing design competition sponsored by the CMHC (The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation). The house, which was built in 1996, is actually two 3-bedroom, four-story dwelling units of 1,700 square feet that require no municipal power or water inputs, nor outside sewage treatment. The annual operating costs for the house total less than $300. The Healthy House is equipped with an impressive array of on-site water filtration, solar power generation and energy-efficient design that allows the house to operate independent of the municipal grid while feeding the excess power it generates back into the municipal power supply. (healthyhousesystem.com/toronto.html)

Of course, the house was built using as many local and sustainable products as possible on a vacant lot in a Toronto neighborhood that is close to public transit. The landscape features low-input gardens with edible plants, and all the home's appliances were chosen for their energy-efficiency. The heating and cooling system for the Healthy House uses passive and active solar systems, radiant solar floors, cogeneration, photovoltaic panels, super-efficient windows, air-tight super insulation, geothermal water circulation for cooling, and trellises of deciduous plants to provide summer shade and winter sun exposure.

One of the most impressive feats of the Healthy House in Toronto is its ability to treat and recycle waste water on-site. All the water used in the house is collected from natural precipitation and stored in a limestone cistern. Thanks to a basement composter and water filtration unit, household water is recycled as much as five times before it is slowly released back into the soil in the garden. (www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/popup/hhtoronto/htg.htm) Even toilet waste is effectively composted in the basement and grey water purified through a mix of microoganism digestion (including worms), oxygenation, ultraviolent radiation and charcoal filtration - anyone looking for more information on how this system works should check out healthyhousesystem.com/theory.html. According to the Healthy House website, the system "can reduce water consumption by up to 90% while allowing users to maintain modern consumption patterns." The house's composting and water systems attempt to mimic natural composting and water filtration systems. This is yet another example of how, by paying closer attention to natural ecological systems, we can increase the efficiency of our urban built ecosystems. Not only do the natural systems work well, they also require little to no power inputs in order to function.

How much would a house like this cost in the real world? According to the designers and builders, any home could be built to function like The Healthy House at a cost of around $120/square foot. This figure is apparently equal to the low end price for a custom-built home in Toronto.(www.eyeweekly.com/eye/issue/issue_03.06.03/city/houses.php) The Healthy House isn't that expensive to build, it can start to pay you back right away in surplus power and energy-efficiency, and it can serve the inhabitants in the same way as a regular home, but why aren't more of these types of homes being built? Some of the other blogs discuss what many European countries are doing to encourage this type of building, but Canada and the U.S. still have a lot of catching up to do.

Energy Retrofits:

When I was a senior in high school, I was able to visit an architectural firm. This was no regular firm; they specialized in sustainable architecture and worked out of a retrofitted post office. The building had been salvaged after a minor fire and the post office had moved onto another building. The architects redesigned the building to satisfy the highest level of LEED certification.

There were solar panels, grey water treatment, rain water catchments and a green roofs featured on top of their building that was is the process of being built when I got to visit. Inside, the floors were made out of fast-growing bamboo. The walls and office dividers were made out of those compressed hay panels that Beatley talked about in his chapter. The architect’s desks were recycled doors from the original post office. All of the appliances were EnergyStar and the bathrooms featured low flow toilets and sinks. The paints used were all ecologically friendly and as I remember their furniture was made out of recycled materials.

With so many recycled products in the office, it would seem like a pretty shabby place. However, that was not the case at all. If the architects hadn’t explained the energy efficient assets in their office I would have thought that everything was brand new. What’s more is that they used their office as an example for their clients—so that they could see that sustainable building practices were attractive and cutting edge. They also encouraged their clients to choose local or recycled building materials in the designs for new buildings. In this way, they were not only able to put their principles into practice, but also influence other major community stakeholders to incorporate sustainable practices into their business.

Affordable Housing and Sustainable Building

As the chapter in Towards Sustainable Communities states, “improving livability and fostering community is imperative for the survival of humanity.” Indeed, if we are to avoid potentially disastrous consequences of our negative impacts on the planet, we will need to learn how to be more effective as communities that synergize rather than separate. The chapter on housing and community development shows many examples of and tools for affordable housing and community development. In Ithaca, a city surrounded by many communities, can benefit from the intensification of development in existing areas. With urban sprawl on the rise, this must include imposing barriers (such as higher taxes) to new developments in undeveloped areas and providing tax breaks for new developments in the city.

In order to meet housing needs for lower-income people, Ithaca can fund the development of new affordable housing units near the city center. Making such developments accessible to the city center is important in ensuring a good quality of life for city members. In addition to tax breaks, Ithaca can further encourage affordable housing development by providing low-interest loans, assistance in forming housing associations, and resources to develop community land trusts. Ithaca can also work with volunteer organizations and examples like Eco-Village to promote replication of such housing units. Finally, to promote community, cooperative housing, urban cooperative blocks, and programs that bring residents together can be enticed.

The chapter on building designs in Green Urbanism looks at the great examples that exist in Europe of sustainable building. In northern European countries, building complexes are designed to reduce energy use, increase density, and maximize resource use and availability. From Ecolonia to Morra Park, examples of ecological building abound in Europe. Most of them make very wide use of solar energy for both electricity, lighting, and hot water. In the Netherlands, especially, the government itself sets national targets for achieving bold reductions in energy use and sharp improvements in resource efficiencies and high density. The government funds several programs that involve the public and private sectors, encouraging collaboration and incentivizing higher sustainable building standards. While there are many examples in the United States, few are as impressive as the examples in Europe, where high density and full utility of solar energy, energy efficiency, and open space are very common. The challenge for the United States is to build the capacity for radically different building standards and to create policies that will discourage energy and resource waste in buildings and encourage density, green design, and efficiency.

10/28 assignment: Writing about LEED-ND

As I was reading Beatley and the New Energy for Cities booklet, I was reminded of the U.S. Green Building Council’s various LEED programs, and especially their Neighborhood Development pilot program, which is being tested now and will probably be adopted in 2009. LEED-ND, as it’s called, was informed by green buildings practices in general and the past successes of the LEED programs for individual buildings, but was also guided by the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Quoting from the program overview: “Unlike other LEED products that focus primarily on green building practices, with relatively few credits regarding site selection and design, LEED for Neighborhood Development places emphasis on the design and construction elements that bring buildings together into a neighborhood, and relate the neighborhood to its larger region and landscape.” Like other LEED programs, LEED-ND has some baseline prerequisites for certification, but then offers a menu of other options that can be incorporated for extra points, earning the building a silver, gold, or platinum rating. Rather than reflect on a program which few people may know about, I’ll summarize the program below.

The categories for which credits are awarded are:

Smart Location & Linkages
Wetland and water conservation (required)
Ag land conservation (required)
Brownfield redevelopment
Reduced automobile dependence
Bicycle network
Housing and jobs proximity
Restoration of habitat

Neighborhood Pattern and Design
Compact Development (required)
Affordable rental and for-sale housing
Reduced parking footprint
Access to public facilities, transit, and open (recreational) space
Community outreach
Walkable streets
Local food production

Green Construction & Technology
Construction activity pollution prevention (required)
LEED certified buildings
Reuse of historic buildings
Energy efficiency
Reduced water use
Minimal site disturbance
Solar orientation
On-site renewable energy sources and energy generation
Wastewater and stormwater management

Innovation and Design Process
Innovation and exemplary performance
LEED accredited professional

Projects get no points for the required criteria, but can earn up to 106 points for meeting combinations of the optional criteria. To be certified, a project must garner at least 40 points; projects earning more can qualify for silver, gold, or platinum certification. The standards themselves are fairly objective, for instance, many of the transit-related criteria rely on Vehicular Miles Traveled calculations. Brownfield redevelopment, ecological and wetland conservation, and ag land conservation all hinge on existing government standards and classifications.

The LEED-ND Core Committee commissioned a study last year about the public health implications of the program. While not an appraisal of LEED-ND per se, the committee used the findings of the report to shape the ND criteria to reap the greatest public health impact. The report had a strong EJ component to it, addressing the impacts of neighborhood location on special populations such as women, the elderly, children, and low-income households and also discussing how social capital is accrued and leveraged within a community. For reasons to support smart growth, this report is excellent, giving substantive reasons for reduced vehicular travel ranging from fewer incidences of asthma and car-related injuries, to improved physical fitness and mental health.

In one way or another, almost every aspect of green cities that we have discussed in this course is encompassed by the rating system. It would be interesting to rate some of the projects described by Beatley in Chapter 10 and see how they fare with the LEED-ND certification process. Perhaps they could serve as benchmarks for some of the projects that are currently part of the pilot program in the US and Canada. 120 projects were admitted into the pilot program, but there are currently more than 220 projects across North America that will be seeking certification when complete. I had the chance to meet the developer of one of the projects this past week at the Urban Land Institute fall meeting in Las Vegas. Dockside Green, located in Victoria, British Columbia, is aiming for Platinum certification. The website touts the project’s sustainability as follows: “A model for holistic, closed-loop design, Dockside Green will function as a total environmental system in which form, structure, materials, mechanical and electrical systems will be interrelated and interdependent - a largely self-sufficient, sustainable community where waste from one area will provide fuel for another. Here you will find a dynamic environment where residents, employees, neighbouring businesses and the broader community will interact in a healthy and safe environment, reclaimed from disuse and contamination."

Resources:
USGBC LEED-ND (find the program document, scoring rubric, and public health report here.)
Dockside Green