A perfect match

Around the same period, the eco-architecture movement, huge in Europe, was beginning to gain traction in the United States. In the late 1990s, the U.S. Green Building Council introduced the LEED standard for environmental design – a rating system for individual buildings. LEEDcertified projects may include features such as recycled construction materials, energy-efficient heating and cooling, solar panels and systems for trapping and reusing rainwater runoff. While some architects have criticized the LEED accreditation system for being excessively restrictive, other critics have observed a failing similar to the one that bedeviled the New Urbanist movement. Eco-sensitive architecture is terrific, but if the building itself is located at the far end of a long drive, not much has been gained.

Five years ago, Benfield and Shelley Poticha, an old friend who was executive director of the Congress for the New Urbanism, found themselves talking about ways to reward both smart growth and good design. They turned to an NRDC colleague who had been intimately involved with devising the initial LEED standard for the U.S. Green Building Council. The three organizations decided to join forces, scrounged up funding for staff support and then set to work hammering out the fine details of the LEED ND standard (see sidebar).

One of Benfield’s primary objectives is to break the vicious cycle of leapfrog development and knee-jerk NIMBYism. “For 50 years, [people] have witnessed more and more ugliness and traffic congestion in their neighbourhoods, along with air and water pollution and global warming, and they’re saying, ‘Enough is enough. No more, at least not here.’ Who can blame them? Because they have learned the hard way not to trust development, they tend to be suspicious of all of it, with the result that even good development that would improve rather than harm communities is strongly opposed.” Faced with such roadblocks, developers buy up land that is farther and farther afield.

The dynamic is such that any sort of intensification can be met with hostility. Benfield, who lives in a leafy Washington, D.C., enclave with easy access to two subway stations, cites local cases in which his neighbours have vehemently opposed even modestly sized apartment projects located close to transit stops. “If we don’t build them, we will have even more sprawl and more of the things people hate.”

His hope is that the LEED ND rating will begin to help consumers and residents distinguish between good and bad development. Says Benfield, “I’d love to see neighbours begin to negotiate with developers and insist that they earn community support by achieving high levels of certification.”
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John Lorinc is a Toronto journalist who specializes in urban issues. He is the author of The New City (Penguin Canada, 2006) and a regular contributor to Toronto Life, Report on Business, and The Globe and Mail.

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