January 5, 2009

Sustainable Sites looks at green from the ground up

Photo by Tracy Tackett, Seattle Public Utilities [enlarge]

Bioswales are one of the tools that site designers can use to reduce the impact of development on the landscape. This bioswale is part of the Street Edge Alternatives Project (SEA Streets) completed in 2001.

Green building rating systems, like LEED, focus on finished buildings but largely ignore how the land under and around them is treated. A new rating system called the Sustainable Sites Initiative has been created to change that.

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