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New LEED Certification for Development Found Wanting
As NAHB and the International Code Council near completion of the nation’s first consensus-based standard for residential development, home construction and remodeling, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council are preparing new neighborhood certification based on green building, new urbanism and smart growth principles.
Unfortunately, according to an analysis by NAHB Land Development, the rating system’s complex application process and its bias against suburban and exurban development will make it difficult for home builders to receive the certification.
Now available as a pilot program, “LEED for Neighborhood Development” (LEED-ND) will use a rating system similar to those used for other USGB green building certification.
LEED-ND emphasizes smart growth while still incorporating the most important green development practices as defined by USGBC. Its scope was guided by the Smart Growth Network's 10 principles of smart growth, including density, proximity to transit, mixed use, mixed housing type and pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design.
Certification criteria are categorized under Smart Location and Linkage, Neighborhood Pattern and Design, Green Construction and Technology, and Innovation and Design Process. Three of these groups are further broken down into nine prerequisites that a project must meet even to be considered for scoring, the NAHB study found.
Fifty-six credits are awarded in the four main groups through which the bulk of the projects are scored overall. For instance, the Smart Location and Linkage group includes six prerequisites applicants must meet and provides 11 possible credits, including credits for “Steep Slope Protection” and “Bicycle Network.”
Each of the 56 credit areas requires multiple submissions in three stages, an extremely elaborate submittal process that takes 168 steps to complete the application, not counting the dozen of steps needed to certify that the applicants meet the prerequisites.
“It is safe to say that most applicants in most instances would have to go through more than 200 steps to complete the certification application process,” said NAHB land use planner Edward Tombari.
A project that scores 50 points overall would receive a silver rating, 60 points would rate a gold and 80 would rate a platinum.
Based on NAHB’s experience with smart growth and new urbanism design principles, a majority of the projects being built by developers today that incorporate Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) principles might be able to achieve some lower-level LEED recognition, Tombari said.
However, while the number of communities using TND principles is rising, the vast majority do not because TND favors higher density and most new development occurs in suburban and exurban greenfield locations, he pointed out.
“While this excludes much new development from being eligible to meet the criteria being established by LEED-ND, NAHB believes new development affords many opportunities for implementing green development principles,” Tombari said.
Of the 56 credits in LEED-ND, criteria for 18 may not be realistic, he said, including penalties for cul-de-sacs and promoting an unproven connection between health and “walkability.”
Additionally, he said, requirements in several categories don’t have much relevance to environmentalism, smart growth or urban design — such as penalizing an applicant for developing a gated community. “Over all, LEED-ND appears to be making some sociological judgments, and it is questionable whether these belong in a rating system,” he said.
NAHB standards, by comparison, have been designed to be relatively simple, with one chapter covering site planning and a second dealing with individual lot development.
The NAHB standards will provide builders and developers the flexibility needed to ensure wide-scale implementation of green development measures in all kinds of communities: conventional, TND-based and more.
“With the consensus-based approach, these standards will also reflect the values and needs of a wide spectrum of industries and agencies invested with the responsibility of building and maintaining the built environment,” Tombari said.
For more information, e-mail Calli Schmidt at NAHB, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132.
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