Updating our homes, businesses, and cities using new sustainable elements and features is certainly a step in the right direction. But as Witold Rybczynski points out, the real change that is needed is a lifestyle change. He points out that while the LEED certification process certainly ensures certain qualities of a building are “green,” it’s focusing on new features. It does not evaluate changes of old patterns that are unsustainable. He sets up the example of a suburban and city office building. Both may receive high LEED ratings, but the city building is inherently more sustainable as it requires less driving and needs less infrastructure expanse established. Rybczynski’s main point – if you want to be sustainable, move out of the suburbs.
Putting solar panels on the roofs doesn’t change the essential fact that by any sensible measure, spread-out, low-rise buildings, with more foundations, walls, and roofs, have a larger carbon footprint than a high-rise office tower—even when the high-rise has no green features at all.
Tags: city, environment, LEED, suburb