Building Green Neighborhoods With Kaid Benfield

Author of “Once There Were Greenfields” (NRDC 1999), “Solving Sprawl” (Island Press 2001), “Smart Growth In a Changing World” (APA Planners Press 2007), and “Green Community” (APA Planners Press 2009); Kaid Benfield is also co-founder of the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system, director of the Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-founder of Smart Growth America.

In 2009, he was voted one of the “Top urban thinkers” on Planetizen.com, and named one of “the most influential people in sustainable planning and development” in 2010 by Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

You can check out his blog at NRDC’s Switchboard.

Recently he wrote about an exhibit on building green neighborhoods:

The Chicago Architecture Foundation, Farr Associates and the U.S. Green Building Council produced an exhibit about how to build green neighborhoods. It opened last year in Chicago and now is on display at the American Institute of Architects headquarters in Washington.

The world of architecture has played the part of both villain and hero. Hero because many of the first leaders of sustainability and smart growth in the built environment have been architects.

As far as architecture is concerned, LEED for Neighborhood Development has revolutionized the game. Invented by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the U.S. Green Building Council and the Congress for the New Urbanism, LEED-ND evaluates the internal environmental performance of developments.

However, LEED-ND, its 47-page “certification policy manual” and 400-page “reference guide,” its 56 technical credits and prerequisites, are not for those short on patience and time for hyper-precise measurement, or for planning and construction trivia.

Read more at Natural Buy