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 the first (and so far only) green

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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 to Public Transportation

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It’s not easy being green

. 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 approach to sustainability that ensures that

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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. comes from commercial buildings.

Why the green transition? The

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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 assigned based on:
- How much carbon the trees absorb that

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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 of Greater Philadelphia (SBN). You can

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Ever wondered what cities really were the most green

? 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, supermarkets and food manufacturers and

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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 USGBC is collaborating with the Congress for the New Urbanism

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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 Housing Marketplace plan to build/preserve 165,000 units of

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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: Save time with an indoor recycling plant - ,

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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 transportation and shops.
- Designated as an Energy Star-labeled home by CSG

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It seems the hybrid car phenomenon is spreading to green building - though while auto manufacturers are finding the market for hybrids is finite, not so for buildings, as it’s quickly becoming a standard demand by the next generation of home buyers.

Here’s just a few of the recent stories this month alone:

- Brad Pitt is advocating for 500,000 new green building homes in New Orleans that would save $38 to $56 million/year, $1200 per home. Not surprisingly though, the homes look a little more

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If you want a model example of how to blend a new building in with a landmark house (1907) in a historic (and very fun) neighborhood (Capitol Hill, Seattle), be affordable, transit-oriented and a green building as well, then the Pantages Apartments are a good place to start.  It’s featured in the American Institute for Architects’ new Affordable Housing Design Advisor website.

49 dwellings (45 in the new building, 4 in the historic home) are available as studio, one, two or three bedrooms,

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Yes, this is affordable housing!  It’s one development that visually stood out from the Smart Growth Illustrated set of case studies highlighted yesterday.

In Aspen, Colorado, the wealthy bid up the prices of homes in the city (average home price of $1.7 million - that’s not a typo!), resulting in traffic jams and air pollution from the commuting employees who couldn’t afford to live there.  It’s so bad that it’s nationally known as the Aspen effect.

The developer, Curtis/Affordable Housing

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There’s no shortage of rhetoric on building urban eco-villages, but not much gets pass that stage.  The proposal for New Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, California is one of the few that has.

Sonoma Marin Area Rapid Transit, a quasi-government agency formed in 1999 to establish a 75-mile commuter corridor (Cloverdale to San Francisco), took the lead with a 5.4-acre site they own at a Santa Rosa train station.  The sent out an RFP (request for proposal) and awarded it to a development team that

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Really?  So documents this Newsweek article (part of a series presented in the last entry), Wildlife: Cities Are the New Jungles...

“You can take any big city and find more species, more diverse habitats than in just about any national park or nature reserve,“ biologist Josef Reichholf, Munich Germany’s Technical University.

It’s actually the lack of bio-diversity found in extensive mono-culture, chemically treated, single-crop farms that in turn support fewer species.  Cities meanwhile

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In looking at the top sustainable US cities as reviewed yesterday, how did those cities get to the top of the rankings and how can others move up?

There are many factors, but the only category that weighted more heavily than others in the rankings is city commuting, based on use of transit and walking or biking to work. It’s no surprise, given that it affects a city’s public health (fitness), local economy (less car and oil dependence) and quality of life (walkable neighborhoods and

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What are the most sustainable cities in the US?  One organization, SustainLane keeps track, via their annual US City Rankings.  It’s not a measure of how green a city is, it’s a measure of how sustainable its public health, local economy and quality of life is.  The criteria:

Public health - air and drinking water quality, walkability;
Keeping money in the local economy - renewable energy and alternative fuels, transit, walkability, green building and local food production;
Quality of life -

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You’ve heard of green buildings, but green cities?  Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley’s wants to evolve his hometown into the greenest city in America, according to the NY Times, and his environment commissioner, Sadhu Johnston says it best, “It’s not so much about saving the world. It’s more about using green technology to save $4 million here, or earn $10 million there, and make the city better by doing that.“

The Daley administration has put policy and $ where their mouth is:
- planted 500,000

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Creatives and entrepreneurs (this website’s target audience) solicit ideas and inspiration from around the world, and since many of them are actually moving overseas, it’s economically beneficial to learn which countries are tapping into their deepest values.  One of those values lies in green building and environmentalism - Fortune calls it the Next Big Thing and the market has been growing by a third each year ($7 billion in 2005.)

So it may be a good idea to understand how Sweden has

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What if one extraordinary woman wanted to help revitalize an economically-ravaged urban neighborhood, provide truly attractive housing for its residents, and provide a model for environmental stewardship and health?  Then that would be Nancy Biberman, president of WHEDCo (Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation), a nonprofit dedicated to bringing economic well-being to places where there is little.

Featured in the NY Times, Nancy’s group is developing Urban Horizons II and The

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While the Belmar development profiled yesterday is a great example of mixed-use development (albeit not one for the creative class), it also deserves kudos for its green building, as covered in this month’s New Urban News.

Pedestrian and Transit Orientation
The amount of sprawl avoided by such mixed-use compact development is the most under-appreciated, but by far creates the most significant environmental impact. 

Building Design
- Many of the buildings are designed using LEED green

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New York City, according to SustainLane, a nonprofit website for healthy and sustainable living via their Ten U.S. Cities Best Prepared for an Oil Crisis report.  It’s no small honor, as NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s acknowledgment attests, “That New York City has been recognized by SustainLane as the best prepared city to face a nation-wide oil crisis is testament to the resiliency and strength of our infrastructure.“

The rest of the list, which in some ways could be seen as the ten most walkable or

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It’s a brand new building.  It’s in the heart of San Francisco.  It’s incredibly affordable.  It’s a certified green building.  It has a roof deck with great views.  But it’s probably not for you.

Eleven of the newly constructed Plaza Apartments units will have rents at 13% of area median income (AMI), sixteen at 35%, and the remaining 79 at 42%.  Yes, there are government subsidies involved, but there are two main factors that allow such high-quality housing to be rented at such low cost:

-

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In keeping up with yesterday’s new urbanism green building theme, the greenest example of that is in Santa Monica.  In fact, the building is so green, that it’s LEED “platinum”-rated; the highest green building standard out there, and bestowed to just a handful of buildings, ever.

Designed by the acclaimed new urbanist firm, Moule & Polyzoides (who we recognized earlier for Del Mar Station), the Robert Redford Building (yes, that Robert Redford) is nestled in a walkable, urban, mixed-use

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