Smart Development: Building Sustainable, Green Communities

Development can support economic and environmental goals--it just takes a little planning.  That is a resounding take away from a series of lectures by Jonathan Rose of Jonathan Rose Companies (JRC).

The story of JRC’s success as a private development firm with a principled mission offers inspiration and insight for individuals, businesses, and communities seeking to align aspirations of both economic growth and environmental sustainability.

JRC is implementing innovative, low-tech, long-term efficiency projects across the United States, and generously shares these replicable models of green urban community building.

Here are some highlights:

• Plan for the future. In a world full of uncertainty, dynamic planning that supports the pursuit of short term tasks within a long term strategic context can help individuals and communities ensure they are working towards sustainable lifestyle choices.  Articulating common goals encourages achieving shared visions of community development.  It is important to identify planning objectives and quantitative metrics such as “community health indicators” to assess progress.  By convening stakeholders, identifying shared values and developing community health indicators, municipalities can create long term plans that reflect the values and needs of their citizens. Flexible, iterative, dynamic planning will facilitate a development model that can respond to and achieve community goals.

• Be efficient. JRC’s projects demonstrate that green building can also be affordable building.  Cost effective, low-tech building design innovations, such as open space offices with personal temperature regulation capabilities, or gardens that double as stormwater retention ponds, offer a host of environmental, economic, and at times aesthetic benefits.  Furthermore, because “substantial quantities of electricity are lost in the transmission and distribution of power from generation sources to end-users,” Mr. Rose suggests that one BTU of demand side energy savings from building efficiency improvements may translate to 10 BTU of energy production savings at the energy production source.  Efficiency savings can be significant, since “residential and commercial buildings account for roughly 40% of U.S. energy consumption.” Development choices that promote efficiency can offer significant reductions in energy demand and associated emissions from the land use, buildings and transportation sectors.

JRC’s development projects range from individual buildings to block-wide retrofits and master plans for citywide sustainability efforts.  Projects aim to support “green,” mixed income, mixed-use, transit oriented development—elements of what JRC calls “green urban solutions” that encourage diverse healthy communities.

With JRC projects spreading across the country, one doesn’t have to go far to experience this paradigm shift in progress.  In fact, The Vance Building, where Climate Solutions’ Seattle office is located, was JRC’s first retrofit acquisition.  JRC’s development model makes it clear that green buildings can be affordable buildings and that efficient development is an emergent best development practice.

While steps can be taken by local, state, and national policy makers to support integrated solutions and long-term planning, as energy prices continue to grow, the free market will also incentivize green urban investments.  Proactive planning and green design implementation can reduce environmental impacts of development, yield economic benefits and help ensure vibrant and healthy communities.

Additional Resources:

The JRC website includes articles of interest, recommended websites, newsletters, news links and additional resources, including “e2 Design: Affordable Green Housing,” a PBS broadcast featuring JRC’s affordable housing projects in New York and discussing social, political, environmental and economic elements of sustainable development.

Georgia State University’s Energy Unit Comparison offers a useful conversion tool for energy units such as BTU, joules, kWh, gallons of gasoline, cubic feet of natural gas, barrels of oil, and tons of coal.

For details regarding on how local governments can increase efficiency and mitigate climate change, as well as how state and federal policies can support efficient local planning, see John Nolon’s The Land Use Stabilization Wedge Strategy: Shifting Ground to Mitigate Climate Change.