Green A City

Boston: All +50,000 Sq. Foot Buildings to Be Green

Before the holidays, one more very significant 2006 development in city greening and local economic development.

Boston announced this week that it will be the first major U.S. city to incorporate the US Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Environment and Energy) standards into zoning, with all buildings over 50,000 square feet required to achieve LEED standards. All municipal buildings will also be

"High performance buildings are the future," Mayor Thomas Menino told a gathering Tuesday at the Boston Redevelopment Agency, according to a statement issued by his office. The same statement cited SustainLane's US City Rankings study.

Boston ranked #7 overall out of the nation's largest 50 cities in the SustainLane US City Rankings, with the city also finishing 7th in LEED buildings per capita. In Spring 2007, New Society Press will publish How Green Is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings, which details how Boston and 49 other US cities performed in green buildings per capita and other green indicator, management and economic categories.

Mayor Menino announced the program Tuesday along with Jim Hunt, Director of the Boston Office of Environmental and Energy Services.

The new requirements stipulates that as part of the city's development design review process all buildings over 50,000 square feet will need to meet the basic LEED certified level. LEED also awards silver, gold and platinum standards for commercial and government buildings. A LEED residential program is being launched, as is a LEED zoning development called LEED-ND, for "Neighborhood Development," a joint project of the US GBC, The Congress for New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Stay tuned here next week for the Top Ten stories in state and local government sustainability policy, programs and events!

New York City's New Sustainability Plan

The Economist last week had a piece lauding New York City's effort to make itself into a "Sustainable City".
As reported here in October, Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed a new director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, a move auguring well for Gotham's org chart in terms of inculcating sustainability across budgets, functions and 15 city agencies.  Now Bloomberg is turning it up a notch.

"New Yorkers needed a long-term plan for sustainability," Bloomberg told an audience last week at the Queens Art Museum. "...doing nothing has its costs, too – economic and environmental, costs that will only escalate with the passing years."

Mayor Bloomberg has begun casting a city-wide sustainability plan with multiple actors, guided on policy by a Sustainability Advisory Board. On point, besides Sustainability Director Rohit Aggarwala, is Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, leading community-based land-use planning.  The board's ten program goals Aggarwala and Doctoroff will shepard include:

• Turning Fresh Kills Landfill (yes, that of the famous 1988 Mobro 4000 "Garbage Barge" incident) into the largest city park developed in more than a century.
• An expanded Number 7 subway line to complement the nation's already highest rate of public transit use (more than 50 percent of New Yawkers ride public transit). Forecasts have been made on all the cities subway lines through 2030 to determine congestion based on demographic and ridership trends.
• Launching a public outreach effort to get citizen and community input on developing plans and projects, or what Bloomberg calls "a citywide conversation."
• Having an inventory of more than 1,300 neighborhood playgrounds to see where more are needed.
• Developing power plant efficiency forecasts for next 25 years.
• Creating and preserving affordable housing for 500,000 residents by 2013
• Phasing out pollution-causing heavy-diesel fuel using trucks in the city fleet
• Lowering global warming carbon emissions by 30% by 2030.
• Developing a new tunnel and filtration plant for water delivery to city from its protected Upstate sources.

It's encouraging to see the largest North American city outside of Mexico develop a detailed sustainability plan, something its country cousins in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco have had for up to ten years.

Bloomberg and the city will need to do much more to develop renewable energy, as it accounts for none of the City's current mix of energy. Some California cities, including Los Angeles, get more than 10 percent of their energy from renewables--partially because of California utility purchasing mandates. But cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Oakland have renewable energy generation and purchasing requirements.

Takeaway: New York is on its way to having a significant sustainability plan with key public-private players involved, which will make sustainability so much more real for city departments, citizens and the regional economy.

How Green Is My City? The New Book

We just learned that we'll have a book out this spring: How Green Is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings.

New Society Press will be getting the book out in time for the spring season. It will include a foreword from one of the leading sustainability visionaries, as well as updated material on the US city sustainability rankings, which are a report card on the nation's largest 50 cities.

New Society is one of the continent's most inspired publishers on the topic of applied sustainability.

We think the book will be a big hit. Besides the high-level endorsements, more people want to know how cities are managing programs and projects that will impact future quality of life, including the regional economy. Whether it's green building, advanced public transportation or clean technology, sustainability is happening at the city level more than anywhere else. We studied more than 2,000 data and information points on the cities that make these and overall policy innovations measurable.

We'll be providing more details on how to get a copy of How Green Is My City? and how to arrange for us to present and facilitate a discussion about the topic in your city, whether it scored at the top or the bottom of the list.

In January, watch for more on the upcoming book on The Weather Channel's "Climate Code" show with Dr. Heidi Cullen, which will feature a segment on the SustainLane US City Sustainability Ranking.