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Setting the pace to create the greenest building ever
Carey Quan Gelernter, Seattle Times
With his "Living Building" competition, architect Jason McLennan of Seattle is challenging the world to create the ultimate in green structures. As the passionate CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, he's aiming to raise design standards to new levels.
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STRIPPED OF TREES, lakes deadly to fish, rocks stained black by gunk that spewed from the tallest smokestack in the world. That was the landscape Jason McLennan knew growing up in Sudbury, Ontario, a nickel-mining town that by 1970 was the largest single source of acid rain in North America. A place so moonscape-bleak that NASA deemed it ideal for astronaut training.

But by the time McLennan was in middle school, Sudbury had begun to turn things around in drastic ways.

... boom times came and spawned McMall sprawl; a hill he helped regreen with new trees was flattened "for a strip mall with stupid stores." Anger, and epiphany, followed: Why rescue the town only to see it trashed again — this time by cookie-cutter development that was tone deaf to Sudbury's unique place and culture?

What he experienced and came to understand in his hometown has everything to do, McLennan says now, with who he became and how he decided on his life's mission.

Determination to change things led him to Oregon to study architecture among a small core of professors devoted to building green. Then to Kansas City to work for the man who would be called the professor Dumbledore of the dawning green-building movement. And ultimately to Seattle, where he's launched a race among more than 60 teams from across North America to try to build the first "Living Building." One that — from where it is and what it's made of to how it serves the humans in it — is greener than anything ever built.

His goal is, first, to prove that it can be done.

But really, his plan is nothing short of radically transforming the way the world builds.

TWO WORDS explain why McLennan's movement, which might have appeared hopelessly naive only a few short years ago, has increasing buy-in from movers and shakers: Global warming.

"It's the architecture, stupid," explains Rob Peña, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Washington who's also an adviser on a proposed mixed-use Living Building on Capitol Hill for the Bullitt Foundation."It's easy to point fingers at Hummers, cars," Peña says, "but our buildings contribute half the carbon we put into the atmosphere, if you count the energy it takes to construct and operate them and the embodied energy in their materials."

... Taking as its metaphor the flower, a Living Building must address six "petals," including: generate its own energy with renewable resources; use only water falling on site; be free of "red list" toxic materials; be designed with an eye to beauty, suited to regional characteristics, and not on virgin land; maximize people's access to fresh air and daylight.
(31 May 2009)

Car-Driven Society Poses Health Risk for Americans
Matthew Bigg, Reuters
When Seema Shrikhande goes to work, she drives. When she takes her son to school, they drive. And when she goes shopping, to the bank or to visit friends, she gets into her car, buckles up and hits the road.

Driving is a way of life for Americans but researchers say the national habit of driving everywhere is bad for health.

The more you drive, the less you walk. Walking provides exercise without really trying.

Ideally, people should take 10,000 steps a day to maintain wellness, according to James Hill, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado.

But for those who only walk from their home to the car and from their car to an office and back again, that figure can sink to only 1,000 steps.

A car culture forces people to make time to exercise and driving long distances reduces the time available to work out.
(29 May 2009)
Also at Common Dreams.

Bryn Davidson on Peak Oil, Climate Change and Transportation at the 2009 Art Center Sustainable Mobility Summit
Bryn Davidson, Art Center College of Design / Dynamic Cities Project

[video ~20 minutes]
Bryn Davidson (Dynamic Cities Project) gives an overview of the nexus of peak oil, climate change, and transportation planning as part of the 2009 Art Center Mobility Summit in Pasadena, CA. The panel discussion, titled 'Energy Transition Strategies' was hosted by Clark Kellog, and also included green building expert Bill Browning, and John Howard - a social entrepreneur bringing renewable energy to developing countries.
(3 June 2009)