If there’s one thing I’m glad to see, it’s not just nonprofits or membership groups working with for-profits to execute their vision, but green organizations working with developers to build attainably-priced green housing.

It started with Live Green, a green-oriented membership organization based on providing green business discounts to its members, and Taurus Development Group, a woman-run real estate development firm with a twenty-year ecological track record. Both of these entities,

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There’s no question what the first green business incubator is - it’s the Environmental Business Cluster in San Jose in 1994, christened by then Vice President Al Gore and still going strong. However, as you can see by its website (and the fact it started in a suburban office park with cubicles, though now located downtown), it’s not a coworking site. Btw, check out its graduate list of companies - I helped found the firm called Global Opportunity Villages in that incubator - a bit too

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First of all, what’s cradle to cradle? It essentially means all waste is recycled, as opposed to cradle to grave, where waste is disposed into landfills. It’s referred to as waste = food, and going full cradle to cradle is a near impossibility at this point, but the 90,000 person city of Venlo in The Netherlands is going for it.

Fortunately, the country’s culture itself already provides some of the best precedents - notice the number of cars in the photo above, which is not an uncommon scene

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Following the announcement of a green home crowdsourcing program in July 2008, Taurus Enterprise Group, led by president Gail Montplaisir, has agreed to see if the building pictured above can be redeveloped and crowdsourced into green condos that creatives can truly afford. We’re not talking about ‘affordability’ in quotations, we’re talking about what first-time home buyers, those with average salaries or even recent graduates can literally afford to pay a month in order to buy their own

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Buying an attainably-priced green home is a no brainer for most creatives given the option, however finding one is comparable to a needle in a haystack. So, in the District of Columbia the GreenHomes DC program is launching an opportunity for prospective home buyers (and renters) to crowdsource their own affordable green place to live.

In partnership with a sponsoring developer per specific project, GreenHomes DC is a joint venture between Green DC Realty and CoolTown Beta Communities. 

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In response to a time when commuters are looking at alternatives to spending hundreds more each month in gas, Forbes presents their America’s Most Fuel-Efficient Neighborhoods list.

Owning a home in a walkable neighborhood saves residents $300 to $400 a month, according to research by the Congress for the New Urbanism, compared to exurban neighborhoods where costs top out at $1000/month. The list below, with costs ranging from $600-$800/month assumes you still have an auto-oriented commute of

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On an island near Shanghai, China formed by the accumulation of, silt shared with a protected bird habitat, will rise a city that is free of greenhouse gas emissions and gas-powered vehicles with an emphasis on energy-efficient design, waste reduction strategies, and renewable energy.

Dongtan, a 21,250-acre eco city, is being developed by Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation as a leading example of green development in China.

Transportation
- All vehicles within the city will be

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There’s a ton of buzz on green communities sprouting up everywhere, and while the US Green Building Council provides LEED standards for neighborhoods, it’s not nearly the benchmark that the BioRegional Development Group provides. Their ten One Planet Living Communities principles start at zero net carbon and go from there:

Zero Carbon - Zero net CO2 commissions via on-site renewable energy, supplemented by off-site renewable energy if needed.
Zero Waste - Eliminate need for landfill or

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Being that a zero-energy community means 100% renewable energy, that’s no small claim to make. However, the renowned zero-energy development firm in the UK, Bioregional Development Group (profiled in the previous entry), is working with U.S. firm Codding Enterprises to build just that in Northern California, the first ever in Northern America.

The hypocrisy with these eco-villages are that they’re built on greenfields - either farm land or wilderness, so in essence it’s more urban sprawl.

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There’s a lot of talk of zero-energy (100% renewable energy) urban communities, but not a lot of built examples.  The Beddington Zero Energy Development, or BedZED as it’s better known, is a rare exception, developed by the BioRegional Development Group, probably the world’s leading sustainable development firm.

OK, so it may resemble a chicken farm on the surface, but it’s a monumental achievement in sustainability.  Completed in Wallington, South London in 2002, BedZED consists of 100

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Rock Port, Missouri may only have a population of 1300, but it claims a title that no other community in the U.S. can - all of its energy is generated by a renewable resource. In fact, its four $90 million 1.25 MW wind turbines producing 16 million kilowatt hours annually leaves 3 million kilowatt hours in excess.

How was it financed?

That can best be explained via this CNN Money example involving five windmills, five farmers, and a total project cost of $10 million:

A creditor, like John

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For those of you wondering what the carbon impact is between walking, riding and driving, the folks at the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit sustainability research center, provides an answer with clarity.

Some insights from the graph:

- You can’t get much greener than a walkable community.
- It’s easy to see why SUVs get such a bad rap, though a solo hybrid is no better than a 3-person SUV carpool.
- It’s easy to see why hybrids get such good press, though that’s only when it’s compared to

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As urban designer Steve Mouzon states, there’s a lot of press on ‘gizmo green‘; the technology-oriented inventions from hybrids to bamboo floors. However, his website reminds us of The Original Green before technology as we know it today, consisting of the fundamental elements of what’s needed to truly go green

before gizmo green is introduced.

He defines The Original Green in two phases, with four foundations each:

Sustainable Places
Feedable - Starting with the basic needs, is a

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Not only are urban dwellers in select cities across the country about to enjoy their own Central Park, but ones that are even larger than New York’s 843-acre treasure, as reported in USA Today:

Staten Island, New York (pictured) - 2200 acres on what is currently the Fresh Kills landfill. You can’t ask for a better transformation than that, though let’s hope they don’t call it Fresh Kills Park. However, think of all the jokes…

Memphis, TN - Shelby Farms Park is being planned on a 4500-acre

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Readers of this website know we don’t normally cover greenfield developments, that is, new communities built in the middle of wilderness or farm land. Some may see even eco-village versions of such communities on par with ads like this.

However, just as Starbucks helped spawn the next generation of local indie coffeehouse third places as we know and love today - and perhaps even coworking sites, sometimes there are valuable lessons in creativity, innovation and community to be learned from

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If you wanted a resource for green building materials you had more resources than ethnic restaurants in Manhattan.  At long last, there’s Ecolect, whose mission is “to be the largest, freely accessible sustainable materials library in the world.“

In 2005, RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) graduates Joe Gebbia and Matt Grigsby felt the same way so many of us do about finding sustainable materials - it’s confusing, uninspiring and sometimes all but impossible. However, being the creatives

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Sure, it’s yet another green city list, but we try to cover ones that have something to add. The last one we covered, Best Green Cities in America, provided a top ten ranking of smaller cities that seemed to best measure green consciousness per capita.

This list, Popular Science’s (U.S.) America’s 50 Greenest Cities covers cities with populations over 100,000 using the following green criteria:

Electricity from renewable energy - 10 points.
Transportation regarding mass transit or carpool;

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Zero carbon, zero car city in Abu Dhabi

The list is impressive for Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s grand experiment (ground breaking was last week) in building a truly sustainable city with:

Zero cars
Zero carbon emissions
Zero waste (converted to energy)
100% renewable energy
70% reduction in energy demand
80% water recycled
water production reduced by 75%

It’s the ultimate living laboratory, as the country is investing $15 billion in new energy technologies. Keep in mind this is not some 10-acre

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A picture is worth a thousand words, which is why the folks at the GIS savvy planning firm Criterion created a tool to not just analyze  where to best invest in low-carbon development, but to illustrate it.

The concept is referred to as Cool Spots, and is described as “places where land use, transportation and energy data converge to create the best places for low-carbon development.“

The process, as described in more detail here:

1. Analyze the region’s energy usage, from CO2 building

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Sweden’s Bo01 development, aka City of Tomorrow, is designed to be a model urban village of sustainability for 1000 residents.** The 27-unit Tango (pictured) was designed to set a standard for the rest of the development.

The centerpiece of Tango is a courtyard (see oval) surrounded by a series of transparent buildings. At night, the buildings resemble a collection of colorful internally lit lanterns, providing a warm, inviting atmosphere and a welcoming sense of security.

The 33,000 s.f.

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Green buildings to the people reading this website is like buildings with four walls and a ceiling to the general population. So, it’s time to take a look at more advanced specifics of green building, especially with what is becoming less and less of a commodity: water. For instance, flying over Vegas last week for the ULI conference, one can easily see that that its main water supply, Lake Mead is down 100 feet and now only at half capacity. Coincidentally, the ULI is the source for this

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“I never leave the courtyard,“ says one of the tenants of the Bison Courtyard in the heart of the small town of Banff, Alberta, Canada (immediately surrounded by one of the most beautiful landscapes anywhere in the world, almost like a storybook).

The Bison Courtyard is just a modest $10 million building complex in scope, but it’s a shining example of what happens when progressive minds work collaboratively toward a shared vision that inspires them on a daily basis, enough so that I guess

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There’s endless talk about building eco cities that don’t seem to meet reality, so it’s nice to see one that’s actually built. Developed on a 500-acre former industrial and harbor brownfield site, Hammarby Sjostad is a contemporary green, carbon-neutral-oriented neighborhood. Hammarby provides homes almost 10,000 residents with an additional 9000 homes and 10,000 jobs coming by 2015.

One key characteristic that is all too often ignored amid talk about eco cities (which are ironically planned

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When one thinks of wind energy, especially via those massive wind farms, small businesses don’t necessarily come to mind. That’s changing very quickly in more ways than one.

First, a clean energy broker/aggregator, Clean Currents is making it easy for small businesses to switch to wind and other renewable energies (solar, geothermal) by linking them to the best ‘green power’ prices, often lower than standard rates! Clean Current locates the electricity provider offering the best deal. They

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It’s the age old debate - the environment vs the economy. CEOs for Cities’ recent report, Portland’s Green Dividend provides evidence that the two are synonymous.

The key statistic* in the report is the following:
20.3 miles/day - average Portland commute
24.3 miles/day - average commute in the 33 most populous metro areas
What does 4 miles/day add up to? Figuring in a conservative $.40 mile, that translates to $1.1 billion. Then add in $15/hour for the 100 million hours saved, and that’s

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