The Green Building Series: Retrofits (NYC) Hits New York This May Bringing Industry Leaders and Pioneers From The Green Building Sector
Posted by GSMI on 2010-02-12 12:50:32 MST
February 12, 2010 San Diego, CA: Global Strategic Management Institute (GSMI) is pleased to announce the East Coast counterpart to its Sustainable Building Series: The Sustainable Building Series: Retrofits (NYC), scheduled for May 10-12 at the Embassy Suites in New York City as part of its Green Educational Forums.
After the remarkable success of its first installment in San Francisco in 2009, GSMI wasted no time in responding to requests from many attendees at that event for the next installment. The Sustainable Buildings Series East: Retrofits is a comprehensive program that incorporates the newest techniques, solutions and developments in this industry.
This years highlights include: a dedicated track specifically for the needs of municipalities on May 12th and the inclusion of the more intimate and informative Facilitated Breakfast Chats where owners, managers, and officials can share stories and learn how their industry colleagues are approaching retrofitting and renovations on a wide range of pre-set topics, each of which will be facilitated by an industry expert.
Program topics include: Substantially Lowering Energy Costs with Sustainable Retrofits, Sustainable Building Valuations, Capitalizing on the Economic Recovery Stimulus Package, Financing Sustainable Retrofits, Creating Value with Investment In Green Retrofits CAP EX programs, LEED Certification Update, Baseline Assessments Marketing Sustainable Buildings, Brokers’ Perspectives on Demand for Green Space, Green Insurance & Lending Programs, Venture Capital Perspectives
For more information or to register for the event, go to: http://www.sustainablebuildingsseries.com/
About Global Strategic Management Institute At GSMI we are more than a conference company. We go out of our way to create rich environments for learning, networking and ensuring our customers have great experiences. You will go back to the office with new ideas, insights, skills and contacts. We develop executive conferences, exhibitions, and leadership trainings for the world's leading business decision-makers. These dynamic and innovative services initiate and develop business relationships between director and C-level practitioners from the most influential organizations, for a stimulating environment to discuss key industry issues and mutually beneficial solutions. Our areas of focus include: For more information visit http://www.gsmiweb.com/.
U.S. Green Building Retrofit Market to Hit $15B by 2014
Posted by GSMI on 2009-11-18 14:38:38 MST
Just days after the White House outlined its strategy for bolstering the home energy retrofit market, a new report from research and publishing firm McGraw-Hill Construction predicts the market for nonresidential green building retrofits is set to soar and represents a better opportunity for designers and builders than new construction. The market for such retrofit projects, which include activities like installing energy-saving lighting, mechanical and electrical systems, will grow to $10.1 billion-$15.1 billion by 2014 from just $2.1 billion-$3.7 billion this year, according to the report. Put another way, green buildings will comprise a 20-30 percent share of the U.S. retrofit and renovation market in five years, up from its 5-9 percent stake today.
The rising interest in green retrofits represents a "tremendous market opportunity for green builders, owners and building product manufacturers," according to the report, which considered projects that would be over $1 million in total costs. The study concludes that the greatest opportunity for green design and construction activity lies not in constructing new green buildings, but in engaging in the retrofit and renovation of existing ones.
A project is considered "green" in this report if it employs multiple practices, products and processes covering a minimum of three out of five aspects of green building - energy, water or resource efficiency, improved indoor environmental quality and responsible site management. The sectors with the largest green retrofit opportunity are education and office, representing about 50 percent of all retrofit activity, with the biggest growth expected in retail.
So what exactly are building owners asking for in these green retrofits? As part of the study, researchers surveyed owners across the country who had completed retrofit projects. One hundred percent of the respondents said they installed energy-efficient lighting and/or made more use of natural daylight in their retrofits.
That activity was followed by: installing more energy-efficient mechanical and electrical systems (92 percent); improving occupancy comfort inside the building, such as with the use of smart ventilation systems or individual thermal comfort controls (79 percent); installing water-efficient plumbing like low-flush toilets (71 percent); adding more environmentally friendly finishes and furnishings (66 percent); and upgrading the building envelope, such as by installing high-performance windows and insulation (61 percent). About two-thirds of building owners said they expected the savings achieved from energy efficiency improvements to pay for the cost of the investment within 10 years (11 percent thought payback would take longer).
Financial benefits are the primary driver for encouraging owners and tenants to pursue green retrofits, the study found, but tenant satisfaction is close behind, especially in the current economic downturn. While energy efficiency improvements will remain most popular in green retrofits, other measures, such as improving indoor environmental quality, yield environmental and social paybacks that can be "as powerful as money." The report said this is especially true in education and health care buildings. To take advantage of this, industry players need to be able to "speak to the larger gains green offers."
But the green building retrofit industry does have its challenges. The biggest is the initial costs associated with going green, which is perceived as being high; the recent drop in energy prices has also dampened enthusiasm for efficiency gains. And tenants, in particular, say they are concerned about greenwashing since they rely on owners' claims about the spaces they lease.
Green Building Retrofits Represent a Potential $400B Market
Posted by GSMI on 2009-08-18 06:04:28 MDT
Boosted in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will provide significant funding for renovations to federal building, the total potential market for major green renovations in the commercial building sector is approximately $400 billion, according to a new study by Pike Research. Although currently a relatively small market, the market researcher forecasts that comprehensive efficiency retrofits will more than triple in annual revenue to $6.6 billion by 2013.
The market researcher says the total U.S. commercial building market, with 70-billion square-feet of space, delivers one of the largest opportunities for energy savings, reduction of carbon emissions and increased property values.
While direct energy savings can be significant with green retrofits, the study, "Energy Efficiency Retrofits for Commercial and Public Buildings", indicates that most major projects will not be driven by cost savings, but instead will be initiated to meet broader policy and business objectives such as lower carbon footprints, higher employee productivity, and higher property values.
Backing these findings, a study released last year by The Global Facility Management Association, finds that ninety-two percent of survey respondents to the Green Practices Study say that they are working to make their facilities more sustainable. In addition, 67 percent say their customers are "forcing them" to make sustainable changes, while forty-six percent say the government is forcing the change.
Another recent study shows that commercial building owners can reap higher rental premiums for green buildings. The study, conducted by the Henley University of Reading in the U.K., shows that certified buildings provide a rental premium and that the more highly rated that buildings are, the higher the rent. Based on a sample of transaction prices for 292 Energy Star and 30 LEED-certified buildings, price premiums were 10 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
The Pike study examines market opportunities, drivers, barriers, and best practices within the commercial building sector. It also provides detailed quantitative analysis for green retrofits, along with forecasts for market growth over the next five years.
Still at the infancy stage, green building retrofit companies are creating new ways to show organizations how to save money, cut energy use and reduce carbon emissions through energy and lighting retrofits.
The Energy Retrofit Group (ERG), a subsidiary of Adache Group Architects, Inc., as an example, has launched its new energy conservation website, aimed at showing how large commercial buildings can maximize their energy efficiency through retrofits, reports Building Design & Construction.
The site provides links to government programs and tax incentives for energy retrofitting as well as links to government loan guarantee programs for energy retrofits and renewable energy grants for solar, wind and geothermal installations.
The dearth of good, cheap, undeveloped sites in suburban markets, the escalating number of vacant greyfield properties, and the expansion of mass transit systems into suburban areas are all factoring into a changed American suburban market.
The recession has brought the 50-year expansion of suburban development patterns to a halt. It also is accelerating the trend to retrofit, reinhabit, and "regreen" the rising numbers of dead malls, dying office parks, and other declining suburban properties. While no one likes to see businesses fail, redevelopment of these sites to respond to new suburban demographics, rising transportation costs, and infrastructure investments provides the opportunity to transform the most automobiledependent landscapes into more sustainable, more urban places. The big development project for the next 50 years likely will be retrofitting suburbia.
Some of the changes will be incremental-a change of use here, a new street or building there, much as one sees in the "incremental urbanism" that characterizes the perception of how the world's great cities evolved over time. However, American suburban development patterns are so highly specialized for single uses that their layouts are resistant to incremental adaptation. Consequently, the most effective redevelopments will be those that retrofit the streets, blocks, and lots to provide a compact, connected, walkable mix of uses and housing types. Unfortunately, projects at this scale often evoke criticism as "instant cities" or "faux urbanism." The challenge for all involved is to provide settings and buildings that transcend their "instant" status and inspire their communities.
The global urgency of reducing greenhouse gases provides the most time-sensitive imperative for reshaping sprawl development patterns, for converting areas that now foster the largest per-capita carbon footprints into more sustainable, less automobiledependent places. The transformation of aging and underperforming shopping centers, office parks, garden apartment complexes, and other prototypical large suburban properties into more urban places allows new population growth to be redirected from metropolitan greenfield edges into more central greyfield sites where vehicles-miles traveled (VMT) can be reduced. It also allows for consideration of how redeveloped suburban areas collectively add up to "incremental metropolitanism" at a scale far more capable of confronting the problems of sprawl than is incremental urbanism.
Many of the retrofits produced to date have in fact been incremental and indicative of both gradual demographic shifts and public efforts to induce change. For instance, the original Levittowns have added not only countless additions to individual houses, but also multiunit housing for seniors as inhabitants have aged. A decade after Boulder, Colorado, revised zoning and setback regulations along suburban arterials, new mixed-use buildings with sidewalk cafés appear cheek by jowl with older carpet-supply stores set behind large parking lots. Similarly, numerous older retail buildings have been adapted for community-serving purposes. More than a dozen Wal-Mart stores have been converted to churches. La Grande Orange in Phoenix is a reborn strip mall containing locally owned restaurants and shops that have become so popular that La Grande Orange has its own T-shirts and is regularly mentioned as a selling point in real estate ads for the neighborhood. An L-shaped mini-mall was made into the award-winning Camino Nuevo Charter Academy elementary school in Los Angeles. The addition of sidewalks and pervious public green space figured into the transformation of a grocery store into a public library in Denton, Texas, and conversion of a Super Kmart into a megachurch in Woodstock, Georgia. Many other vacant big-box stores, malls, and shopping centers have been converted to office space, health care facilities, and civic space-including the headquarters for Hormel Foods, which includes the Spam Museum in a former Kmart in Austin, Minnesota, and the revival of Crestwood Court Mall in St. Louis by artist, theater, and dance groups as ArtSpace. Sometimes, the best approach to a dead retail site is to return it to nature, as in the reconstructed wetland that replaced a failed strip shopping center in Phalen Village, Minnesota, or the proposed park on the site of the Columbus City Center mall in Columbus, Ohio. Countless additional examples of this kind of recycling exist, showing welcome improvements to the physical and social infrastructure.
However, retrofitting's greater potential goes well beyond incremental adaptive use or renovation. Through urbanization of larger suburban properties with a denser, walkable, synergistic mix of uses and housing types, more significant reductions in carbon emissions, gains in social capital and public health, and changes to systemic growth patterns can be achieved.
Mixed-use new urbanist greyfield retrofits routinely achieve projections of 25 to 30 percent internal trip capture rates, and substantially higher performance has been measured in recent studies. Belmar, a dead mall retrofit in Lakewood, Colorado, tripled density on its 100-acre (40-ha) site but did not require a single new traffic signal on surrounding streets. Such capturing of internal trips is dependent on achieving the critical mass associated with instant cities, not with incremental changes to the suburban pattern.
The most dramatic and prevalent retrofits tend to be on dead mall sites-retrofits such as Belmar; Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Florida; and Santana Row in San Jose, California. Each replaced a typical low-rise shopping mall surrounded by parking lots with a more or less interconnected, walkable street grid, lushly planted public spaces, and ground-level retail space topped by two to eight stories of offices and residences. In Denver alone, eight of the region's 13 malls have undergone or announced plans for retrofitting. There are also, however, significant retrofits on the land adjacent to thriving malls. The retrofit of Downtown Kendall/Dadeland outside Miami incorporates a mall (the Dadeland Mall) and new 20-plus-story residential towers, as does Perimeter Place adjacent to Perimeter Center Mall in Atlanta. Both are examples of how 30-year-old edge cities, even bête noire Tysons Corner, in northern Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., are being repositioned by infilling and urbanizing.
Suburban office and industrial parks are also being retrofitted. The parking lots of an Edward Durell Stone-designed office park of ten-story buildings in Hyattsville, Maryland, have been infilled with a new main street and a mix of uses to become University Town Center. The owners of a low-rise industrial park in Westwood, Massachusetts, are taking advantage of its location on a commuter rail line to redevelop it as Westwood Station, a four- to five-story live/work/ shop transit-oriented development (TOD) and the largest suburban development project ever in Massachusetts. Golf courses, car dealerships, park-and-ride lots, garden apartment complexes, residential subdivisions, and entire commercial strip corridors are being retrofitted in ways that integrate rather than isolate uses and regenerate underperforming asphalt into urban neighborhoods.
What has been driving all this? Several factors: shrinking percentages of households with children and a growing market for multiunit housing in the suburbs, an aging population, continued suburban job growth, regional growth patterns that have given leapfrogged suburban areas a new centrality, higher gasoline prices that have made closer-in living more attractive, and local smart growth policies and transit investments that are limiting sprawl and redirecting growth to existing infrastructure. The dearth of good, cheap, undeveloped sites in suburban markets, the escalating number of vacant greyfield properties, and the expansion of mass transit systems into suburban areas are all factoring into a changed American suburban market.
Collectively, these market forces and policies are enabling implementation of the principal benefit of projects like these: the retrofitting of the underlying layout of the streets, blocks, and lots so as to change unhealthy suburban patterns and behaviors into more sustainable ones. Incremental infill within as-of-right zoning in most suburban municipalities is simply not a feasible path toward achieving diversification or densification.
The larger, denser, and more urban the redevelopment, the greater the ability of its designers to change the existing development pattern and do the following:
- reduce vehicle-miles traveled and improve public health by creating a transit-served or transit-ready mix of uses in a walkable street pattern connected to adjacent uses; - reduce land consumption and per-capita costs of public investment by absorbing growth that, without alternatives, would expand in sprawl and edgeless cities; - increase the feasibility and efficiency of transit; - increase local interconnectivity; - add permeable surfaces and green space; - add public and civic space; - increase choice in housing type and affordability; - increase diversification of the tax base; and - establish an urban node within a polycentric region.
The key design challenge in altering the suburban settlement structure is internal and external integration of the parts over time and over multiple parcels. Research has yet to uncover built examples of connected culs-de-sac-a longstanding holy grail of suburban reform-or other perfectly seamless transitions between properties. But designers are producing innovative adaptations to zoning and subdivision regulations to overcome suburban fragmentation.
For example, Michael Gamble and Jude LeBlanc, professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have proposed trading the right to build liner buildings within the front setback along arterials for giving up half the width of a new street on the side setback as a means to gradually establish a finer-grained street and pedestrian network on suburban superblocks. Similarly, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a partner in the Miamibased town planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., and Victor Dover and Joseph Kohl, partners in the urban design firm Dover Kohl & Partners in Coral Gables, Florida, have developed a strategy for linking open spaces within a walkable street grid through the superblocks of Downtown Kendall/Dadeland's 324 acres (131 ha). Working for Miami-Dade County on new zoning across numerous parcels, they devised a system of anchor points at the corners of property boundaries to which each owner's mandated 15 percent of open space had to connect. Their suggested, rather than mandated, shapes of public space have been substantially followed by property owners and are far more appropriately sized to the development as a whole than a series of uncoordinated 15 percent bits would have been.
Internal integration of parts is indeed far easier to control on single-parcel sites-especially sites of 30 acres (12 ha) or more. Projects as small as 15 acres (6 ha), such as San Diego's Uptown District on the site of a former Sears store, can transform the character of suburban areas and generate local input concerning further changes. But larger parcels can more easily justify the inclusion of public space, decked parking, and a fine-grained street network on suburban superblocks. Large sites are also more likely than small ones to be able and/or required to include housing for a mix of incomes.
This has not been universally achieved-witness the exclusively high-end residences at Santana Row or exclusively lower-end apartments at CityCenter Englewood in Englewood, Colorado-but projects like Mizner Park, Belmar, and Addison Circle in Addison, Texas, provide a range of housing types, tenures, and costs. While they do not contain the social and physical diversity of incremental cities, the degree of internal integration, diversification, and densification of these instant cities deserves commendation.
Large, single-parcel projects also foster integration external to the property. By forcing municipalities to address rezoning and use tax-increment financing to provide infrastructure upgrades for the new density, larger projects are gradually reforming the regulations and financing practices that otherwise continue to favor sprawl. Large projects in particular increase a municipality's experience with mixed uses, mixed incomes, shared parking, form-based codes, contextsensitive street standards, transfers of development rights, and other regulations that encourage urban development patterns. As a result, one successful retrofit tends to breed another.
At the same time, the financing community is gaining experience with evaluating mixed-use public/ private deals. Gradually, the financial performances of large projects are providing the predictable metrics that lenders require to offer the most competitive rates not only to conventional suburban development, but also to urbanizing redevelopment, increasing the feasibility of including affordable housing. Evidence of the magnitude of change in the rules of the game is that big players have now stepped onto the field. Mall owner General Growth Properties added high-end housing to its mall in Natick, Massachusetts, and was retrofitting the Cottonwood Mall outside Salt Lake City to serve as a town center before problems with commercial mortgage-backed securities loans forced it into bankruptcy.
By 2005, recognition of the changed market led many of the country's high-production single-family-home residential builders to start "urban" divisions offering lofts, yoga studios, and billiards lounges. Not surprisingly, these divisions have been the best performers while the rest of the housing market has tanked.
On the one hand, the urban divisions of K. Hovnanian Homes, KB Homes, and Toll Brothers, along with compact urban retail formats by Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot, are a promising indication that even the big guns are recognizing both the market for and the benefits of urbanism. The impact could be enormous if the new divisions perform well enough to shift these companies' focus away from spreading unwalkable, single-use suburban formats across the country. Combining affordability with urbanism in new construction, whether in new developments or redevelopments, has been difficult, and the expertise of these companies in providing affordable products should be welcomed. On the other hand, their highly repetitive and uninspiring "instant architecture"-a problem they are not alone in creating-is less welcome.
One way to enhance the character and diversity of retrofits is to take advantage of the unique opportunities for adaptive use in redevelopment. Although most aging low-rise suburban buildings lack the systems or construction quality to merit restoration, the most distinctive retrofits tend to creatively retain at least some buildings. Surrey Central City outside Vancouver, British Columbia, revived a mall by grafting a new five-story galleria of university classrooms on top. The multistory department store buildings of several dead mall retrofits have been converted to housing, offices, and city halls.
As counters to "instant architecture," these legacies contribute a sense of history, diversity, affordability, and a reduction of waste. The resulting quirks contribute enormously to the creativity and quality of the place making. They can also insert a cool factor to suburban places. Upper Rock in Rockville, Maryland, and Cloud 9 Sky Flats in Minnetonka, Minnesota, incorporate modern loft conversions of suburban office buildings.
Bit by bit, beneath the static image of uniform tract houses, many suburbs are undergoing significant physical, social, and cultural change-not all of it positive. For the first time in history, suburban municipalities now house more people living in poverty than central cities do. Maps showing recent mortgage foreclosures concentrated in the newer outermost suburbs indicate the likelihood of further decentralization of poverty and an ever-shifting terrain.
On the physical side, several aging garden apartment complexes have been retrofitted and entire post-World War II subdivisions in suburban Washington, D.C., and Atlanta have been bought up house by house. One subdivision in Atlanta even self-organized and put itself up for sale for redevelopment. New transit systems, infrastructure improvements, programs to fund planning studies, regulations allowing accessory dwelling units, and new overlay zoning district designations are providing further incentives for suburban urbanization.
But all this has not been happening everywhere. It has been happening at specific nodes and along specific corridors, generally where the transportation infrastructure-usually with some improvements-can support it. The outer rings of new exurban expansion continue to be low density overall, but the densified retrofits and countless revitalized small-town main streets are joining the edge cities as increasingly significant suburban activity centers. Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Utah estimates that 2.8 million acres (1.1 million ha) of greyfields will become available in the next 15 years. If only one quarter is redeveloped into mixed-use centers, it has the potential to supply half the housing required by 2030. As a result, the regional pattern emerging and likely to become more prominent is increasingly polycentric.
While development has indeed been decentralizing away from central cities, it also has been recentralizing around new and existing suburban centers-and becoming more sustainable in the process. More bottom up than top down, these new instant cities are demonstrations of an incremental metropolitanism. While it is fair to fault instant cities when their replication of incremental urbanism is unsatisfying, the more relevant issue today is how well each contributes to retrofitting the larger systems of sprawl. One of the first steps is to recognize the inefficiencies of sprawl development. Most lower-priced houses are at the outer edges, but come with higher transportation costs that increasingly wipe out the savings gained. Jobs and retail space are located along arterials, but typically with little transit access. Thoroughfares designed for high-speed travel between centers have become so lined with uses that they do not work well for either access or mobility. Everything is designed in isolated pods. Even larger retrofits run the risk of becoming stand-alone fragments unless their urban structure integrates them into both local networks and larger sustainable systems. Only as nodes of a polycentric metropolis can they contribute to regional efficiencies distances, lower housing and transportation costs, a jobs/ housing balance, and specialized labor agglomeration.
The inclusion of increasingly significant amounts of office space within mixed-use retrofits is particularly important for balancing polycentric growth and reducing VMT. Twinbrook Station in Rockville, Maryland, and Lindbergh City Center in Atlanta are integrating 12- and 14-story corporate office buildings onto the sites of former park-and-ride lots. SkySong in Phoenix and Surrey Central City are building incubator office space for Arizona State University and Simon Fraser University, respectively, on the site of a dead shopping center and a mall's parking lot.
Transit is especially critical in the effort to network nodes into a metropolitan area-wide economy and system. Unfortunately, most potential retrofit sites are not on transit lines. While retrofitting them can still enhance local conditions and reduce automobile dependency, the larger challenge is connecting retrofits to each other to achieve the benefits of a more sustainable metropolis.
There are two principal strategies for "connecting the dots." The first is to extend transit to improve suburban access, encourage even greater differentiation between nodes, and reduce VMT. The planned extension of Metrorail through Tysons Corner is an example of this strategy and reveals the high cost and design difficulties of inserting stations and TODs into an edge city not planned for them. (See "Edge- City Evolution," May, page 46.)
The hope is that densification of enough retrofitted sites will make suburban transit feasible. However, the track record so far indicates that more often transit in the suburbs is what makes densification feasible. In fact, examination of over 80 retrofits reveals that the arrival of a rail system is one of the strongest triggers for large-scale suburban redevelopment. In addition to Washington, D.C., the availability (or construction) of rail transit in Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, and Phoenix has stimulated suburban retrofitting at existing and proposed rail stations.
The second strategy for connecting the dots is to retrofit corridors themselves. The general argument is that if commercial strip corridors are made more attractive to and safer for pedestrians, they can better attract redevelopment. Cathedral City, California, converted four blocks of what had become a commercial strip corridor back into its downtown by retrofitting it into a multiway boulevard. Palm-lined medians separate the high-speed traffic from slower local traffic and wide sidewalks. Now serving as the town's main street, the retrofitted corridor has attracted upscale hotels, shops, and housing to join the new city hall on a site that would not previously have been considered attractive.
A more incremental approach for retrofitting corridors is being pursued on Columbia Pike by Arlington County, Virginia. A form-based code with fast permitting and the promise of a streetcar are the incentives for its ongoing redevelopment of low-rise supermarkets and strip malls into six- to ten-story mixed-use buildings.
One of the newest strategies for retrofitting corridors is to expand the network efficiency of the local streets surrounding arterial roads. Virginia's new state law requiring connectivity between subdivisions is intended to allow local roads to handle many more local trips so that the arterials can function more efficiently as the links between metropolitan nodes.
So how well do instant cities and suburban retrofits live up to their sustainable aspirations? Each case is unique and merits consideration of at least the following questions:
- At metropolitan and regional scales, does the project make it easier for people to have access to jobs, affordable housing, and affordable transportation while simultaneously reducing VMT and carbon footprints? Or is it gentrifying an important remnant of an affordable landscape and/or draining an existing downtown?
- Are there tangible means, such as transfer of development rights, to link densification at targeted nodes with equally targeted land conservation elsewhere? Or are developers getting a free ride as local communities get overburdened with traffic and displacement, and the region as a whole benefits little?
- At the local scale, does the settlement have an urban structure that supports interconnectivity, density, transit, and walkability? Has it triggered further redevelopment?
- Will its design and mix of uses improve with age and endure, or will it remain a fragment of drive-to walkable "product" with a life span driven by its retail and limited to the fashionability of its scenography?
- At the building scale, does it offer a variety of housing choices to accommodate a diverse population with varied needs and ideas about public and private space, or are the choices too similar and the expectations of behavior too conformist?
These questions will be at the heart of local and metropolitan politics as people move beyond debates of sprawl versus smart growth and tackle the thorny specifics of implementing real change. In many respects, the even more difficult assessment is determining how well instant cities and suburban retrofits live up to their urban aspirations. It is easy to compare them to "real" cities and find them lacking the culture, excitement, diversity, conflict, grit, and suffering that coexist in core cities. But this misses the point. Instant cities and suburban retrofits are not core cities. They are urban nodes within a new polycentric metropolis that simultaneously complement the core city's downtown and serve a predominantly suburban population. They are hybrids and reflect aspects of both centeredness and decentralization.
This hybrid nature is revealed in many ways, including the following: - suburban parking ratios and urban streetscapes; - ambiguous "public" spaces developed in public/ private partnerships and privately owned or leased; - populations that are more diverse than stereotypical suburbs but less diverse than stereotypical cities; - new, single-ownership parcels deliberately masked to look old and multiparceled; - urban qualities delivered at suburban costs; - transit orientation and automobile dependency; and - the appearance of local town centers and reliance on larger networks of users, tenants, funders, and designers.
Hybrid network nodes are neither suburban nor urban. As a result, they are prone to critique from the advocates of both better-understood categories. But are cities and suburbs really so different in the polycentric metropolis? The old dichotomy of suburb versus city as the separation of home and work was always oversimplified. Today, it is further complicated by continued metropolitan decentralization, new forces of recentralization, the replication of national retailers throughout, and the extended networks afforded by global communications.
More than 60 percent of U.S. metropolitan office space is now in the suburbs, but many of the same metropolitan regions seeing the most retrofitting in suburban contexts are also seeing population growth in their central cities. Post-World War II suburbs originally built at the edges of the metropolis have been so surpassed by new growth, often losing property value in the process, that they now enjoy relatively central locations. New instant cities exploit those centralities and activate them as metropolitan nodes in a network increasingly reinforced by mass transit.
The networked urbanity of metropolitanism reinterprets the Aristotelian ideal of the city-living together well-at the larger scale. This bodes well for confronting the challenges of economic and environmental sustainability but is less promising for dealing with entrenched social inequity.
Retrofitting ushers in networked urbanity in which living, working, shopping, and playing are no longer separated-but neither are they entirely conjoined.
Although instant cities and suburban retrofits are neither as sustainable nor as urban as older established cities, they are more sustainable and more urban than the conditions they have replaced. As such, they have great potential to reshape the metropolis-while encouraging the planting of trees on former parking lots rather than chopping them down at the metropolitan fringes.
Retrofits also face many challenges, including addressing gentrification, producing architecture that lives up to cultural aspirations, and constructing the infrastructure to support the changes. Communities interested in retrofitting should revise their zoning codes and regulations to support mixed uses and higher densities while seeking means to invest in transit boulevards and public parking garages to stimulate private redevelopment. Similarly, those not familiar with the complexities of mixed-use redevelopment need to expand their skill sets-and their imaginations.
As the country looks ahead to recovery from this recession, it is clear that public/private partnerships at a multitude of scales-national, state, and local-will be needed more than ever to collectively take on the challenges and opportunities to retrofit suburbia. UL
Ellen Dunham-Jones is director of the Architecture Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology and June Williamson is associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York/CUNY. (This article has been updated and adapted, with permission, from Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2009.)
Building a Better Future: Moving Towards Zero Pollution With Highly Efficient Homes and Businesses
Posted by GSMI on 2009-07-11 07:56:45 MDT
America is the largest consumer of energy in the world. The majority of this energy is derived from dirty, polluting sources such as coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. Our consumption of these fuels exacerbates global warming, keeps us dependent upon oil and other fossil fuels, and undermines our economy.
40 percent of America's energy-ten percent of all the energy used in the world-goes towards powering our buildings. Much of this energy is simply wasted through poor insulation, leaky windows, inefficient lighting, heating or cooling systems, and poor construction techniques.
If we stay on our current unsustainable path, the energy we use in buildings will:
Grow by 6.61 quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTUs) between 2010 and 2030-a 16 percent increase, or as much energy as is used to power 86 million homes for 2 years;
Account for 43 percent of total U.S. energy consumption by 2030, making us even more dependent on imported and polluting fossil fuels; and
Have increased emissions of carbon dioxide by 323.95 million metric tons, roughly equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 80 coal-fired power plants.
For us to make meaningful progress in reducing our energy consumption and our nation's global warming emissions, we must use far less energy in our buildings.
With approximately 75 percent of our buildings scheduled to be new or renovated by the year 2040, we have a huge opportunity to save energy. By taking bold action to improve the energy efficiency of our nation's buildings, we can put America on track to meet our energy challenges and reduce our global warming emissions. President Obama has announced an ambitious but achievable goal of making all new buildings zero-net energy, or "zero energy", by 2030. The economic recovery bill recently passed by Congress has provided some much-needed momentum, by providing more than $25 billion for weatherization, and energy efficiency upgrades for commercial and government buildings.
Through ongoing investments in making our existing buildings more efficient and by committing to higher performing new buildings-which cut energy use in half within ten years and which should generate as much energy as they use by 2030-we can make major progress toward achieving energy independence, reducing global warming emissions and improving our economy.
By adopting and implementing the following policies we can promote the construction of high performance, energy-efficient buildings:
Improving and enforcing building energy codes. National model code standards should require 30 percent greater efficiency by 2010 and 50 percent greater efficiency by 2016, and state and local codes should match or exceed the model codes. This would ensure that the 2012 and 2018 code releases would meet these targets;
Adopting the President's target of all new buildings being zero energy by 2030; and
Retrofitting all existing commercial and residential buildings before the year 2030.
By 2030, America will see the following benefits from adopting these policies:
Saving 144 quadrillion BTUs, or enough energy to power all of America's homes, businesses, cars and power plants for a year and a half;
Preventing a total 11.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted, equivalent to nearly the annual carbon dioxide emissions of the U.S. and China combined;
Paying back upfront costs in eleven years and netting more than $542 billion in energy savings by 2031; and
• By 2050 we will have cut U.S. carbon emissions by 34 percent from projected levels-securing a major portion of the reductions necessary to meet the nation's target of 80 percent cuts in global warming emissions below 2005 levels by 2050.
Gov. Rendell, State & Local Leaders Pushing Policies to Promote Green Buildings in PA
Green Buildings Could Save $500 Billion by 2030, Cut Global Warming Pollution 30% by 2050
Posted by GSMI on 2009-07-10 19:02:26 MDT
Philadelphia, PA - A comprehensive plan to make our nation's buildings more efficient could save enough energy by 2030 to power all of the nation's cars, homes and businesses for a year and a half, while saving Americans more than $500 billion, according to a new report by PennEnvironment. These findings offer a preview of what Pennsylvania could achieve by adopting green building policies, such as the statewide green building code proposed by Governor Rendell in February, and the many policies being pushed by state and local officials who joined PennEnvironment in releasing the report.
"Green buildings are a triple win for Pennsylvania, saving us money on energy bills, cutting global warming pollution, and helping to secure our energy future," said Nathan Willcox, Energy & Clean Air Advocate for PennEnvironment. "We have the technologies to realize these benefits, and now we need the policies to put these solutions to work."
Nearly half of America's energy-and 10 percent of the energy used in the world-goes towards powering our buildings, and much of that energy is wasted. And buildings account for 40 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, a major contributor to global warming. But PennEnvironment's new report, Building a Better Future: Moving Toward Zero Pollution With Highly Efficient Homes and Businesses, found that by renovating old buildings, and ensuring new buildings use 50 percent less energy within ten years and are "zero energy" by 2030, we can cut U.S. global warming emissions at least 34 percent by 2050. The report also outlines policy steps that local, state and federal officials can take to promote green buildings and make these benefits a reality.
PennEnvironment was joined in releasing the report by state legislators Rep. Matt Smith (Allegheny County), Rep. Kate Harper (Montgomery County), Sen. John Rafferty (Berks, Chester & Montgomery counties) and Sen. Daylin Leach (Delaware & Montgomery counties), all of whom have introduced state-level legislation to help promote green buildings in Pennsylvania.
"Changing the future of Pennsylvania must start by building momentum," Rep. Matt Smith (D-Allegheny) said. "Last year, we got the ball rolling by enacting my proposal to provide grants that encourage green construction and renovation. Next, I'm proposing that we require state dollars only be spent on green construction or renovation projects. I trust that PennEnvironment's ongoing advocacy and expertise - like this new report - will help build the momentum among my fellow lawmakers needed to not only build more green buildings, but to develop a comprehensive green building strategy that benefits Pennsylvania's future."
"There is no better way to protect the environment and save on our energy bills than by investing in green building technologies. To encourage that investment, I have proposed a tax credit for the construction or renovation of buildings using green standards," said state Rep. Kate Harper (R-Montgomery). "As the cost of energy rises and the green building technology gets better, the payback is about five to seven years, so building green makes a lot of sense for the environment, energy independence and the pocketbook."
"My green buildings legislation is a win-win for the environment and reduces business energy costs," added Republican state Senator John Rafferty who represents Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties.
"My bill SB399 will make it possible to circumvent the penny-wise and pound-foolish thinking that prevents real solutions to our environmental crisis. The savings of a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) compliant building over the 30-40 year life span of a school will supersede the initial cost by significant amounts," said state Sen. Daylin Leach (D-Delaware, Montgomery counties). "By amending Act 34 my legislation would give schools the incentive to build cleaner, greener schools. Not thinking about the future is what got us into this mess in the first place."
Also joining PennEnvironment in releasing the report were Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, the Delaware Valley Green Building Council, the Philadelphia Friends Center, Green Building Alliance and CJL Engineering.
"Southwestern Pennsylvania is a national leader in sustainable development and environmental stewardship, and my administration is continually working to keep us ahead of the curve," said Allegheny County Executive Onorato. "Just yesterday, I announced that we would build the first publicly owned green roof in Allegheny County. We're already home to the first LEED Gold Certified convention center in the U.S., and soon we'll boast the first LEED Gold Certified arena in the NHL. As a community, we've taken steps to clean our air, water and land and to promote smart growth and green development - but we can and must do more. Green infrastructure is good for the environment and good for taxpayers."
"Delaware Valley is well-positioned to implement green building strategies quickly. We have leadership, expertise and commitment to make Philadelphia the best it can be," said Jill Kowalski, Executive Director of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council. "Philadelphia is home to several green building firsts. Green buildings are key to managing future risk, strengthening our local economy and communities, and showcasing our leadership and expertise."
"We at the Friends Center realized that the medium- and long-term benefits of building green were well worth the upfront costs," said Erick Emerick with the Philadelphia Friends Center, whose building is being renovated to include a number of green building technologies and use no energy from fossil fuels. "From the building's geothermal heating and cooling system to the solar panels and green roof, our green building will be reaping tremendous economic and environmental benefits for years to come."
"Given the mission of the Green Building Alliance to drive the green building movement throughout Western Pennsylvania, we are very appreciative of the work that PennEnvironment has done in preparing this report," commented Holly Childs, Executive Director of the Green Building Alliance. "The facts speak for themselves-it is imperative, particularly given our current economy, that we enact policies based on investment in green building strategies toward long-term energy savings for both businesses and consumers. We look forward to working with PennEnvironment and our state and local policymakers to advance legislation and recommendations that support green construction and energy efficiency."
PennEnvironment's report calls for a comprehensive plan to make buildings more efficient, including:
Upgrading and enforcing building energy codes to require 30 percent greater efficiency by 2012 and 50 percent greater efficiency by 2018, and have all new buildings and renovated buildings meet these codes;
Setting codes to have all new buildings be "zero energy" by 2030, whereby energy efficiency advancements enable on-site renewable energy to meet all of the building's energy needs; and
Stimulating investments in energy efficiency retrofits in all existing commercial and residential buildings before 2030.
The report then calculated the potential nationwide economic, energy and environmental benefits that could be achieved by adopting these measures, including:
Saving 144 quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTUs) of energy, or enough energy to power all of America's homes, businesses, cars, and power plants for a year and a half;
Preventing 11.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, nearly equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of the U.S. and China combined; and
Paying back upfront costs and netting more than $542 billion in energy savings from renovating existing buildings by 2031.
The recently passed American Reinvestment and Recovery Act represented a first and important step at the federal level towards increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings. This legislation provided $25 billion for weatherization and energy-efficient upgrades for commercial and government buildings.
At the state level, Gov. Rendell called for a statewide green building code in February, the legislators joining PennEnvironment to release the report have all introduced legislation which would promote green buildings in the public and private sectors. PennEnvironment seconded Gov. Rendell's call for a statewide green building code (which would set energy efficiency standards for new construction in Pennsylvania), and urged passage these other green building bills being promoted by the state legislators.
At the local level, Philadelphia Mayor Nutter's recently-announced "Greenworks Philadelphia" project aims to make Philadelphia America's Greenest City, and includes several goals that will require a focus on building green. These include a target of reducing citywide building energy consumption by 10 percent, as well as retrofitting 15 percent of housing stock with insulation, air-sealing and cool roofs. And as mentioned previously, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato announced yesterday that the county would be installing a green roof on the top of the County Office Building in downtown Pittsburgh.
At the federal level, Congress is considering the American Clean Energy and Security Act, currently being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill contains provisions to promote efficiency in new and existing building, and limits global warming emissions to science-based levels.
"Our environmental and economic future depends on taking bold action today to promote high performance, energy-efficient buildings," concluded Willcox. "We're calling on local, state and federal leaders to pass the policies that will help make green buildings the norm instead of the exception."
Industry Leaders and Pioneers From the Green Building Sector to Present at the Sustainable Building Series: Retrofits
Posted by GSMI on 2009-07-10 16:36:07 MDT
June 24, 2009, San Diego, CA - Real estate development and construction is grinding to a halt. A growing number of companies are shifting their building facilities and portfolio focus to sustainable retrofits as the most viable cost saving and revenue enhancing option. To indentify tactical ways to capitalize on this evolving market, industry executives must implement a new real estate strategy surrounding sustainability that clarifies how to assess and value the residential and commercial buildings sectors.
The Sustainable Buildings Series: Retrofits, hosted by the Global Strategic Management Institute (GSMI), scheduled for October 20-22, 2009 in San Francisco will provide a blueprint for navigating this sector and implementing sustainable building retrofits strategies.
Program topics include: Retro Commissioning; Financing & Investment in Sustainable Retrofits; LEED Certification Update; Lowering Energy Costs; Marketing Sustainable Buildings; Green Insurance, Lending and Leasing; Redevelopment & Urban Planning.
Confirmed participating companies include: BuildingWise, Cushman & Wakfield, Enovity, Evolution Partners, FX Fowle, New Resource Bank, P G & E and many more.
Four separately bookable workshops: Intelligent & Net Zero Buildings; Green REITs, Advanced Energy Efficient Retrofits, Venture Capital Investment in Sustainable Retrofits
The Global Strategic Management Institute (GSMI) http://www.gsmiweb.com/ is one of today's premier executive level conference companies. The firm develops forums, exhibitions and leadership trainings for the world's leading business decision-makers in many areas including corporate social responsibility, compliance, marketing/branding, performance, quality and risk management, sustainable strategies, buildings a real estate development
