How to use LEED-ND to improve an older neighborhood | PROYECTO ESPACIOS |

An inner-city neighborhood in Boston is an example of how the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system can guide improvements to older communities. The system is helping community leaders identify the area’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for becoming stronger and greener.

LEED-ND, administered by the US Green Building Council, is primarily intended to reward environmentally superior new land development. Merging the values of smart growth, walkable neighborhoods, and green environmental management systems, the program established a detailed set of standards and measurements with numerical scoring to approximate how well a new development will perform environmentally.

The primary target audience for LEED-ND has been the world of private developers constructing new buildings at the neighborhood scale. A secondary target audience has been government, as the system establishes standards that can be adapted to update local, state or even federal measures and incentives for green development.

Many have found the system somewhat less suited, however, for guiding the evolution of older, distressed neighborhoods that are more likely to improve incrementally rather than in large chunks of new development. But, while it is true that obtaining formal certification for smaller, more scattered parcels throughout a community can be challenging, that does not mean the system cannot still be extremely useful...

Read the complete article for details on the communities and organizations that are incorporating and adapting LEED-ND principles to older neighborhoods in their revitalization and redevelopment efforts, and how technical teams have evaluated the system for such applications.

Via Lauren Moss