Carbon footprint per passenger mile

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,

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Being authentically green goes beyond ‘gizmo green’

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

before gizmo green is introduced.

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

Sustainable Places

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The next gen of Central Parks are on their way

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 -

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Creative lessons from a green greenfield village

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

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Finally, a one-stop-shop for green building materials

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

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‘The 50 Greenest Cities in the U.S.‘

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.

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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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‘Cool spots’ - Identifying low carbon neighborhoods

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.

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A model within a model of sustainability

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

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Green building 201: Water

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

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Small town green micro-village

“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

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Stockholm, Sweden’s eco-city

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

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Growing small businesses with the wind

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

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Portland OR proves green is profitable (and delicious)

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

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The first, and only, green mall

Maybe I should start an entire category of “it was just a matter of time before this happened”, because here’s yet another one…

The Green Exchange in Chicago will be the first silver LEED-certified

tenants. Schedule for a Fall 2007 opening, it should be no surprise the 250,000 s.f. concrete loft building to be renovated is in Chicago, already regarded as the most green-minded major city in the U.S.

Regarded as

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How green is your neighborhood?

A few months ago we wrote that neighborhoods can now be green certified, via the US Green Building Council’s LEED for Neighborhood Development program.

Now that green building is becoming more of an expectation for emerging populations, here’s their criteria for what a green neighborhood should have, with (R) representing requirements and others below it being assigned points for ratings:

Smart Location & Linkage
(R) Smart Location - Walkability, Proximity

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Going for the gold in green development

It’s not easy being

. Greenbridge, a 104,000 s.f. urban infill community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is planned to be the state’s first mixed-use development to be LEED Gold certified by the US Green Building Council, no small feat considering the first LEED certified multi-unit residential ever was announced less than a year ago.

The vision starts with the six families that make up the development team. They shared the cradle-to-cradle

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Development industry says, “Building green is here to stay”

Last week the leading real estate developers around the world gathered at the ULI’s Developing Green: Integrating Sustainability with Success conference to better understand the future of green building. Their
summation? Not only is green building here to stay (as this official conference summary is titled), but it’s fast becoming a standard, and that’s a good thing considering 40% of the carbon gas emissions released in the U.S.

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Finally, a monetary value is placed on city trees

People know a home with a large tree in front of it sells for more (nearly 1% more according to a 1988 study in Athens, GA), but what are the collective trees in a city worth and what’s their return on investment?

New York City knows, according to this NY Times article. Their trees provide an annual benefit of about $122 million, receiving a return on investment of $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on trees.

Dollar values are

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A truly triple bottom line third place

A lot of businesses like to call themselves triple bottom line (economic, environmental and social accounting), but one third place that’s 3BL without question is the White Dog Cafe in downtown Philadelphia.

The evidence starts with its extraordinary owner, Judy Wicks, who not only founded White Dog, but she is also the co-founder of the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and founder of the local Sustainable Business Network

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‘Best Green Cities in America’

Ever wondered what cities really were the most

? Country Home magazine ranked 379 metropolitan areas in their Best Green Cities in America report.

Here are their top 10 green cities, based on air and watershed quality, mass transit use, power use and number of organic producers and farmers’ markets:

1. Burlington, VT (pictured) - It definitely deserves the top nod. Among it’s winning attributes:
- A program collects food scraps from restaurants,

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Neighborhoods can now also receive green-certification

Buildings have long been third-party certifiable as green/sustainable via the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), but what about neighborhoods?

Given that more than a third of greenhouse gases are generated by buildings (primarily heating and cooling them) and another third is generated transporting people and goods to and from those buildings, the

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Truly ‘triple bottom line’ urban village coming to the Bronx

One of the most concrete ways of providing sustainable/green, affordable living in NYC is to develop such a benchmark community for others to be inspired by.  That’s certainly the case with the New Housing NY Legacy Project Competition that sought triple bottom line development team to build such a place on a 40,000 s.f. site in the South Bronx.

The sustainable, affordable development competition is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s New

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Springwise’s Top 10 Eco Business Ideas 2006

So you want to think global and act local? Check out Springwise’s Top 10 Eco Business Ideas in 2006. Springwise’s list may be UK-based, but the implementation doesn’t have to be. Here’s their list - visit via the link above to see full profiles of each one.

1. Hailing a hybrid: greentomatocars’s taxi fleet consists only of hybrids.
2. Consumer generated power: Buy a wind generator for your building or neighborhood.
3. Household recycling plant:

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The first multi-unit LEED-certified residential building in the U.S.!

Hard to believe, but according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and its evaluation arm, Conservation Services Group (CSG), 53 Standish Street in Cambridge, MA is the first multi-unit residential building to be LEED-certified, which is the criteria for green development.

Constructed by AEDI Development, 53 Standish scores high with the following green building features:

- Within walking distance of public

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