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No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’
Elisabeth Rosenthal
DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

... In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.
(26 December 2008)

With fewer kids, homeowners flee the suburbs
Antoinette Martin, New York Times
(Original head: Housing Inventories on the Rise)
... Mr. Otteau [of the Otteau Valuation Group] foresees a “structural shift” in housing demand that will come into sharper focus in the region when the overall market improves.

“Right now we are all focusing on how bad it is,” he said, “but what we are also seeing is a historic reversal of home-buying demand away from suburban and rural areas to cities and inner-ring suburbs that are more walkable than driveable.”

Mr. Otteau says the shift was partly because of higher energy prices. But the dominant reason is that the number of households with children living at home is on a persistent decline.

“In 1985,” he said, “50 percent of households had children at home. In 2000, that was down to 33 percent. Today it is 29 percent, headed to 25 percent.

“That means that 75 percent of home buyers over the next 15 years will have childless households — and within that group are empty-nester baby-boomers, or couples or singles buying a first house. And that means that three out of four home buyers will have no interest in a house in the suburbs with a good school system, which is pretty much what we’ve created over the last 50 years.”

Mr. Otteau cited a new study from Virginia Tech projecting that a nationwide surplus of 22 million suburban homes on lots larger than a sixth of an acre will be languishing on the market by 2025.
(26 December 2008)
The most interesting part of this news story was buried at the very end. -BA

Elgin is seeing green in its future
Steven Ross Johnson, The CourierNews
Despite financial challenges from the troubled economy, "green" of a different kind got the attention of city leaders recently.

City council members were presented with measures for both the short-term and long-term that could help limit the area's level of greenhouse gas emissions and lower energy usage.

Douglas Farr, president of Chicago-based architectural and urban design firm Farr Associates, said current slowdowns in residential and commercial development mean this is an ideal time to make projects more environmentally friendly for when the market improves.
(29 December 2008)