Next big thing: green neighborhoods

LEED program expands from single buildings to big developments

By Steve Law

Pamplin Media Group, Mar 11, 2010

L.E. BASKOW / Pamplin Media Group

The Helensview subdivision near Northeast 64th Avenue and Killingsworth Street is one of five Portland projects serving as guinea pigs for national green development standards. Known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development, or LEED-ND, the program is expanding the green building movement to encompass bigger multi-block projects.

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Green buildings are so 2000s.

The next big thing for the 2010s? Green neighborhoods.

After five years in the hopper, the group that ushered in popular “LEED” standards to certify and foster environmentally friendly buildings is expanding, along with two partner organizations, to promote green subdivisions and mixed-use projects.

They call it LEED-ND, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development.

“The environmental gains are much larger when you capture them at a point when a neighborhood is planned and designed,” says Portland planner Eliot Allen, a principal at Criterion Planners who was instrumental in crafting the new rating system. “Instead of a single building at a time, you’re capturing hundreds of buildings at once.”

“I think it’s certainly going to help make greener developments,” says Eric Ridenour, an architect and urban designer with SERA Architects in Portland.

Buildings are one of the single-largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. LEED design standards can dramatically improve energy efficiency and other building performance measures, cutting carbon emissions that cause global warming.

Created by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED provides a voluntary system that encourages developers to shoot for higher standards. Developers who put more features into a building can gain a standard, silver, gold or platinum rating. Providing an independent certification of a building’s green features means tenants, lenders and others don’t have to rely on the claims of a developer.

The system has been so successful that the city of Portland and other jurisdictions now require LEED standards for new public buildings. Private developers seek out LEED certification because it lends a cachet to their project, helping them fill their buildings faster and charge higher rents.

From buildings to neighborhoods

After seeing the success of LEED for single buildings, the U.S. Green Building Council set out in 2004 to expand the concept to whole neighborhoods, working with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Congress for New Urbanism. Their goal is to foster neighborhoods that have a gentler impact on the environment, that reduce carbon emissions and that meet broader social and quality-of-life goals, such as housing affordability and locating jobs near homes.

“The best ideas from across the country have been distilled into a single system,” Allen says.

Instead of just a geeky review of a building, he says, LEED-ND addresses families and their back yards. Developers can score higher in the new ratings system by preserving wetlands, enabling community gardens and farmers markets, and meeting other goals.

The three organizations, along with consultants like Allen, have been fine-tuning the new rating system, and are field-testing it by evaluating several dozen pilot projects using the new certification standards.

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