For anyone who looks to Denmark as a beacon of shining light in green and efficient design, tomorrow is there an event for you!

The University of Washington is hosting a free talk on sustainable design in the Pacific Northwest and in Denmark. Speakers are Louise Grassov of Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, Jim Huffman of Busby Perkings + Will, and Roger Geller of the city of Portland’s Office of Transportation. Peter Steinbrueck of Urban Strategies will moderate. The talk is called “Urban Design for Walkable, Bikable Cities.”

This lecture series, called Global Green, is presented by the Green Futures Research and Design Lab. I’ve been to two of them so far and I highly recommend them. For more information, visit http://greenfutures.washington.edu/events.php.

I’ve been on vacation the last week in Chicago/Michigan/Indiana so here’s some news items you might have missed:

Seattle is a walkable city!  According to Walk Score’s listing of the 138 most walkable neighborhoods in the country, Pioneer Square hits number 18, Downtown Seattle (wherever that is) is 33, First Hill is 46, Belltown is 61, Roosevelt is 64, the International District is 83, South Lake Union is 85, University District is 86, Lower Queen Anne is 97 and Wallingford is 133. And overall, Seattle is the 6th most walkable city, following San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. I don’t know that I agree with the ranking, do you? For more opinion on whether Seattle reeeeallly outranks Portland, check out the Seattle Weekly here. For more on urban development visit Seattle MetBlogs here, and  Sightline’s has more here with some pertinent reader comments!

The first meeting of the Green Building Task Force is tomorrow from  3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the downtown library. The goal of the force over the next six months is to figure out how to actually make Seattle the “green building capital,” and help achieve Nickel’s February goal of improving energy efficiency in commercial and residential by at least 20 percent. I wrote about that in the DJC here. They’ll be looking at policy options, financing programs, efficiency incentives and regulatory mandates.

There will be two teams: one will work on existing building stock, the other will work on new. That’s an important point, as many energy efficiency programs or government mandates only look at new projects, and not existing, even though there is by far much more to fix in existing buildings.

I love sources that provide a virtual who’s who of green people and this task force does just that. Members include reps from AIA, AGC, BOMA, Master Builders, Mithun, NBBJ, Touchstone, Seattle Steam… you get the idea. To see the actual list, go here.

In other news, I learned on my trip that US Weekly has a spread in its current edition about green celebrity tips. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but if you (or your kids) want to know what Cameron Diaz does to go green, check it out. I must admit the part comparing carbon emissions from celebrity perks (like personal jets and yachts) to everyday life (coach seating, a little sailboat) was a tad - shall I say - enlightening (or depressing, take your pick). Treehugger covers it here.

Seattle projects represent a third of nine prestigious awards given out in London yesterday by the Urban Land Institute and the Financial Times.  Winners are The Cascade Land Conservancy, Kennedy Associates and Vulcan.

The Seattle winners are in good company: a fellow winner is the city of Greensburg, Kansas (at right), the current poster child for just how far a city can go to rebuild itself green. If you don’t already know this story, it’s truly a fascinating one that is on its way to becoming a Leonardo DiCaprio-voiced documentary TV show.

Greensburg was a small farming town with a population of 1,389 when 90 percent of its building stock was destroyed by a tornado in 2007. The citizens of Greensburg used the traumatic incident as an opportunity and are rebuilding it as sustainably as they can.

But there’s no place like home and the Seattle winners are also an interesting mix.  We’ve got Vulcan, and if you haven’t heard about Vulcan’s green accomplishments (and you’re from this area) you might be living under a rock. The team is redeveloping South Lake Union as a pilot program for LEED for neighborhood development and uses a lot of green features, etc.

There’s the Cascade land Conservancy who is well known in these parts and won for its 100-year visioning exercise to preserve 1.3 million acres of forest and farmland through incentivizing smart growth.

And there’s Kennedy Associates who operates under the idea that buildings should be developed and managed sustainably because they have a competitive advantage over traditional structures.

The point of the awards was to honor global examples of “ongoing programs that exhibit new ideas and perspectives for best practices in sustainable land use.” Each winner highlights the concept of sustainability in real estate.

It’s some pretty interesting stuff. If you’re interested, check out the winners here. And if you want to read more on what Vulcan’s doing in this area, check out the DJC’s stories. Go here for info on the Westlake/Terry building, go here for Vulcan’s sustainable philosophy, go here for Alley24 (pictures above left) or click here for their award-winning pull-apart sales center.