The Village Green

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Architects are now looking beyond their four walls at how a building works in the neighbourhood. “We’ve spent the last 10 years developing green buildings,” Busby says. “Instead of worrying about solar shading or the size of taps, architects... are looking at local energy systems. Can we create biomass cogens [cogeneration system] that provides all the heat and some of the electricity that we need? What can we do with our sewage grey water to reuse it?” Continuing this litany of scenarios, it’s clear that Busby is the design community’s Al Gore, preaching a gospel of green construction.

Thanks to more affordable technology and mainstream concern about global warming, eco-neighbourhoods will eventually become the norm. Currently, most green communities are demonstration projects: Viikki, with 6,000 residents, is city sponsored. Chicago, in its pursuit to become the world’s greenest city, hired eco-starchitect William McDonough – who designed enviro-friendly offices for Nike and Gap – to draft The Chicago Standard, a kind of eco-constitution. By 2009, Ottawa will have transformed a Canadian Forces base into Rockcliffe Eco-town. In England, London is planning a 1,000-home project by mega-developer Arup. McDonough’s firm is also working in China, where the need for smart urban planning is greatest. “China is like a supernova,” says McDonough. “It’s simultaneously imploding and exploding.” (In a few decades, it’s expected that up to half of the country’s rural residents – about 400 million – will move to cities and that China will become the chief producer of carbon dioxide.)

The inconvenient truth is that as populations increase exponentially in cities like Shanghai, sustainable development is becoming a prime concern for urban planners. But today’s green neighbourhoods are founded more on pragmatic urban development than country-bound idealism, though commune-type neighbourliness is a big part of the appeal – and success – of a sustainable community. “[The buildings] look almost conventional, but it’s the performance that counts,” says Thomas Mueller, president of the Canada Green Building Council. As Mueller puts it, there’s not a geodesic dome in sight. This year, the Canada Green Building Council and its sister organization in the U.S. are launching a pilot study for cities under the LEED certification program – already the gold standard in green building. Today, it takes between 35 and 100 years to pay off solar power. Give it another five years, and you’ll be able to count on one hand the years the investment will pay you back, Busby predicts.

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