The numbers are down this year but spirits are high. USGBC president Rick Fedrizzi claims there are 25,000 here in Arizona but it doesn’t feel that busy.

Al Gore delivered a decent keynote last night with some witty humor and a fresh trim look. The message was nothing new but reinforced the Inconvenient truths and Our Choice to make a difference.

The exhibitor booths were in big numbers. Like previous years it was most of the large companies pitching their not so green products, although there were a few exceptions.

My personal favorite was LEEDuser.com a really cool, inexpensive tool designed to help de-mystify the myths about how to document all of the LEED V3 credits. In other words, a user guide with online experts and advice on how to fill in all the blanks that remain in the not-so-wonderful new LEED reference guide. It was developed and promoted by Environmental Building News the authors of Building Green and has some serious substance behind it. YRG consultants helped develop LEEDuser.com even though it’s ultimately aimed at taking the need for consultants away from the project (assuming project team members know the basics). The concept is brilliant, go sign up for a membership.

Trying to figure out all the ever changing details of the LEED AP continuing education program seemed to be the hottest topic. There was no shortage of confusion and frustration but GBCI had a booth of people that did a nice job helping people out. If you have questions of your own I would recommend asking to speak with Arnold or Margaret.

For those of you who couldn’t make it this year let us know why? And for those that did please share your highlights.

Yesterday I heard Eden Brukman present briefly on the updates to the Living Building Challenge - v2.0 - and was excited about the inclusion of Urban Agriculture, among other new features.

The Challenge now also includes ‘car free living’, ‘biophilia’, ‘human scale and humane places’, ‘democracy and social justice’ and ‘rights to nature’ - a few of these under the new ‘Petal of Equity.’

Not sure what a Petal is?

Urban agriculture, now a part of the Living Building Challenge

Petals are the category areas such as Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity and Beauty. Petals are subdivided into a total of twenty Imperatives, each of which are required to achieve Living Building Status. Imperatives are renamed (formerly Prerequisites), and rightly so!

Within one performance based rating system, the Challenge covers small and large scopes of buildings and communities.  Good going guys.

From partial building renos to entire new construction projects, individual landscape to infrastructure projects and whole communities, ’scale jumping’ within the system is permitted.  It’s the bookshelf concept that USGBC is only beginning fully realize.

The performance requirement of one year of continuous operation remains the same.

Go straight to the source here, and download the new rating system today!

If you want to follow Greenbuild from a couple of other perspectives, check out John Jennings posts on the Betterbricks site:

http://blog.betterbricks.com/design/

Penny Bonda’s perspective is always fresh and engaging:

http://www.interiordesign.net/blog/1860000586.html#940050494

And if you want the party line, visit:

http://www.greenbuildexpo.org/News/blog.aspx

Amidst the energy, networking and commotion of Greenbuild, last night’s keynote by Al Gore set the stage for the attendees ramping up their time here in Phoenix.  Gore was met with laughter as he told the same old

Sheryl Crow sang at Greenbuild this year

jokes and then launched into his insightful ‘rise up and speak out’ message of finding courage in challenging times.  Whether in politics, or in the realm of development, Gore’s message was age old - find your own voice, activate it, and reach out and activate others - as we currently have the technologies and tools at hand to solve our vast global crisis.

Rick Fedrizzi’s opening message lacked the inspiration and insight of past years. The power of the founderand CEO’s opening plenary came from the mass of voices from an international stage: leaders of the Green Building Councils of countries including Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Germany, Italy and others. These international voices magnified the incredible work of the USGBC to forge hope and alliances around the world.

Sheryl Crow topped off the night, bridging industries with her incredible celebrity, musical talent and lust for life to the stage.  At least I heard Sheryl ‘rocked,’ as I grabbed the opportunity to network outside the venue. The truth is, as Sheryl sings, ‘All I Want to Do Is Have Some Fun…’

How will the recession affect green buildings, codes and development?

It’s a timely question and one I’ve been wondering about for some time. It also happens to be the topic of a panel discussion I am moderating on Thursday evening for the Cascadia Region Green Building Council at

What to do?

Seattle University.

The event features a number of great panelists: Michael Weinstein of the Urban Innovations Group, Bruce Herbert of Newground Social Investment, Jayson Antonoff of the City of Seattle Green Building Program, Ric Cochrane of King County Green Tools Program and Aaron Fairchild of G2B Ventures. Come eat, drink and discuss with us! The discussion costs $10. To register, go here.

However, our event is not the only good thing happening on Thursday evening. If you’re not at Greenbuild, here are a number of local things to keep you interested:

On Wednesday and Thursday, Alex Steffen of Worldchanging.com will host a two-day lecture to flesh out a pathway to a great sustainable future. On Wednesday, the lecture is called “A new Global Future,” and on Thursday it is called “Seattle’s Bright Green Moment.” Each lecture costs $5.

On Thursday, Tacoma will host a talk on its Center for Urban Waters. The center, an environmental research space, is seeking LEED platinum certification. The talk costs $10 at the door or $7.50 in advance. More info here.

On Friday and Saturday, the Northwest Energy Coalition is hosting its fall conference on energy efficiency. The conference features a keynote talk by Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist for Microsoft, and multiple panel discussions. More info here.

Unfortunately dear readers, I will not be at Greenbuild in Phoenix this year. However, I have recruited two Seattle attendees to keep us updated with news! If anyone else is attending the gigantic annual USGBC conference and would like to contribute, please send an e-mail explaining who you are and what kind of info you would want to share at katiez@djc.com!

If you (like me) are busy thinking about Greenbuild, the Cascadia Chapter of the USGBC is way ahead of you: they’re thinking of next May’s Living Future Conference and they want your presentation submissions. Now.

For those of you that have never been, Living Future is an “unconference,” meaning that it is presented in a

Photo Credit : A. Zucca / Roger-Viollet as seen on Fashion Nation

Living Future is a lot like these ladies. A little odd but very chic.

unique, somewhat non-traditional way (while still being a conference by definition of course). Living Future is a bit like your eclectic cousin - the one that wears vintage shirts from the 1960s, pants from the 1980s, fancy modern shoes and weird jewelry from who knows when. They might look a little odd but they always say interesting things. In comparison, Greenbuild is the buttoned up family patriarch.

Anyway, if you have something to share that’s innovative, creative or a bit off center, Living Future is looking for conference submissions. Entries are due by Oct. 30 and priority will be given to localized, community level efforts to solve “the problems we face.” Examples may be urban food production, decentralized water and energy production, eco-districts and local economies.

This year’s conference will be held in Seattle (the conference alternates every three years from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., to Portland) and I’m excited for it to be back in my home town. It runs from May 5-7. This year’s theme is “Building Hope, Revaluing Community.”

To learn more, click here.  If you want to speak with a person about this opportunity, contact Jon Gordon at JGordon@brn-engineering.com.

Speaking of Living Future, I have attended all three so far. If you have been to multiple Living Future Conferences, which one was your favorite?

Yesterday, the New York Times published an opinion piece by David Brooks called “I Dream of Denver.” The piece, based on the late January news on what cities Americans want to live in, calls into question what Americans want from their cities, from density and from their lifestyle.

Reading the piece, I kept thinking about how the descriptions of how people want to

Illustration courtesy of Doug Boehm

live are quintessentially Seattle culture. One thing Americans want, the article says, is a stuffed garage “filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor life.” If that’s not Seattle, I don’t know what is. Then again, Seattle was named third on the list of cities Americans would most want to live in.

This sentiment, of people from other cities knowing Seattle and identifying with it, never struck me harder than at the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2008 Greenbuild conference in Boston when faced with a trio of reporters from the Eastern half of North America. When I said I was from Seattle, all three of them (two from New York City and one from Toronto, I believe) all sighed and said, “I want to live in Seattle!”

One of the New Yorkers went so far as to say, “Everyone wants to live in Seattle.”  Which stuck me as funny because from my experience, everyone wants to live in New York. And when going to college in Boston, nobody I spoke with had really ever heard of Seattle.

The reporter went on to say that once people realize they can have an urban lifestyle … and not live in an apartment, they fall in love.

(Not sure if they also fell in love with this city’s must-have-a-car mentality or the lack of a subway but that’s a different story.)

Cabin

A remote log cabin

The mix of home-life and city-life has always been my favorite thing about Seattle. But the NYT opinion piece points out that urban-living is still an ideal of the young, and I am in that demographic. Even here in Seattle, there seems to be a large amount of baby boomer residents who just want more space, whether it be in another state, on one of the islands or in a more spacious city neighborhood. My mother, for example, recalls the excitement of living in urban Chicago in her youth but now wants nothing more than a remote log cabin in Montana.

Is the desire to live in an urban environment a sentiment of youth? Will we, like our parents prefer to retire in a more remote space? … or is it generational? Will today’s younger generations (meaning Xers, Yers….etc.) still idealize open space and isolation or will we choose density?

What do you think? Comment below or answer my poll at right.

P.S. If you read the NYT article, also check out the comments. They’re pretty interesting.

Greenbuild, the USGBC’s massive 30,000-person-plus conference, is done for yet another year. But before shouting out a rallying cry of “Greebuild Phoenix 2009!…” here are some last minute thoughts:

• This was my second Greenbuild, and after speaking with different Greenbuild veterans, many were surprised I had returned after the (shall we say) insane conference of the year before. But I did and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of lines, lack of claustrophobia and large press room. Also, there were no green “commercials” or conference sponsors announcements this year before the keynote speaker, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spoke.
  

  This is only half of the expo room

• Last year, I searched in vain for a place to dispose of uneaten food. This year, the waste collectors were particularly vigilant, snapping to attention to grab my used coffee cup before I accidentally threw it into the wrong container. I had never seen such attention to waste at a conference… or almost anywhere.
• I heard a number of grumblings that the conference attendance wouldn’t hit as high a mark as it had the previous year, due in part to companies making last minute travel freezes. The last time I checked the “official” conference attendance, (Thursday afternoon) it was at 26,000, so even if people did not show up, a large amount turned up to take their place.
• In the sessions I attended, there seemed to be a vast discrepancy between those who believed that leadership in “going green” should come from the top or bottom. Leith Sharp, former director of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, described how leadership was really only successful after getting out a strong grassroots effort. While a session I attended on CB Richard Ellis’s green commitments said the top down leadership was the only way to go. Most people I spoke with said about the topic said, “duh?! It has to be both!”
• And man, can green people party! I had no idea that there were so many dancers among them. Feel left out? There’s always next year - in Phoenix!

If you want more information on Greenbuild, there were a number of intrepid bloggers there (whose blogging ability was not curtailed by a rogue water leak into their server area). For more, check out Konstrucr, CoStar, or go to the Seattle LEED User’s Group December meeting on Dec. 11. More info on that here.

If you work with LEED at all, you know that this time of year is ground zero, in effect, for announcements regarding different versions of the system. Why? Because it’s Greenbuild of course, so it’s a perfect time to make those long awaited announcements and changes.

To keep you updated, here are some of the more recent developments:

LEED 2009: Perhaps most importantly, the USGBC announced this week that the newest version of LEED has passed member ballot and will be introduced in 2009. The new version of LEED incorporates regional credits, so projects can address the most pressing issues at their location. The system also underwent a scientifically grounded re-weighting of credits, changing allocation of points to reflect climate change and energy efficiency as priorities. The USGBC also says the new version creates a more “predictable development cycle.”

The updates apply to LEED for: new construction, existing buildings operations and maintenance, commercial interiors, schools and core and shell. It does not apply to LEED for neighborhood development and LEED for homes. Retail and healthcare will be aligned with LEED at a later point.

Like anything, the terminology can get confusing. LEED 2009 is part of LEED Version 3, which is also known as LEED v3. LEED 2009 is the actual rating system. Version 3 on the other hand is the “multi-faceted” initiative.

For more information on the LEED AP exam, click the tab ‘LEED’ below and read the Jan. 16 post ‘What’s the deal with my LEED AP designation?’

Comments: The USGBC is accepting comments on LEED for neighborhood development and LEED for retail. Speak now or forever (or at least for a couple years)  hold your peace.