The Green Way: The Future of Development

By Stan Sersen

Just what is "development"? For the short answer, let's check with Wikipedia:

"Real estate development is a multifaceted business, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing building to the purchase of raw land and the sale of improved parcels to others. Developers are the coordinators of the activities, converting ideas on paper into real property. They create, imagine, fund, control and orchestrate the process of development from the beginning to end. Developers usually take the greatest risk in the creation or renovation of real estate - and receive the greatest rewards. Typically, developers purchase a tract of land, determine the marketing of the property, develop the building program and design, obtain the necessary public approvals and financing, build the structure, and lease, manage and, ultimately, sell it."

How's that for a short answer? Let's face it, we need developers. Without their courage, vision and financing, we would not have the places to live that we enjoy.
However, we also might not have the endless sprawl of roads and parking lots that carry toxins into the water and into the air.
During the post-World War II era that brought the United States out of the Great Depression, soldiers returned to a jubilant, welcoming and spending society. Americans were told by the oil, auto and housing industries that to be a "successful" American, you needed a house, a car, two kids, a dog, a "chicken in every pot" and a white picket fence.
Historically, many developers created a bad reputation for themselves and for the industry by minimizing their cost, maximizing their profits and not being responsible for the long-term damages to the environment they caused.
But we shouldn't blame anything and everything that went wrong on the developers. After all, the elected officials, zoning boards and public servants created the laws that supported the developers and kept the economic growth engine running.

Greed
Short-sighted, greedy developers reaped huge profits by clearing fertile land to create cookie-cutter communities without thinking twice about the devastation that was taking place or the cleanup that would be needed. The destruction of habitat, the loss of farmland and open space, the damages of polluted storm water run-off and the ill effects from pollutants spewed into the air from the cars, buildings and factories were not even considered.
Worse yet, the creation of subdivisions that were completely void of being a close- knit neighborhood has destroyed the sense of place which we, as humans, find comforting.
What many developers saw was a way to make lots of money - under the guise of helping the people. But the days of a developer buying a farm and quickly converting it to row after row of like houses, inconsiderate of the site, the sun and the social needs of humans are (hopefully) a thing of the past.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service and its National Resources Inventory Urbanization and Development of Rural Land 2001, the decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States has now elevated the housing market as the scaffolding that is holding up the American economy.
So when the housing market collapses, as it has recently, the economic impacts are more devastating and harder and harder to recover from. That's why new ways of development are being sought within our communities, abroad and at home.

The Future
As the economy continues to contract and adjust, and as we are in (or reaching) peak oil production, we as a society must demand from the developers, the planners, the architects and our elected officials more true communities - where we don't need cars to go shopping and to work, where people care about their community, where energy is produced locally, where human and solid waste is a sought after commodity and where food is produced locally.
In other words, we need to create a society where we only consume one planet's worth of resources, versus the five planets' worth that we Americans are currently consuming.
This is not a vision of Atlantis that can never be achieved. Examples exist, such as the BedZED community in London, England, and the Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park, Calif., both of which use the One Planet Living concepts (www.bioregional.com).
Dockside Green of Victoria, B.C., takes the concept a little further by actually designing treatment plants that create heat and electricity for the entire region (www.docksidegreen.com). All of these incorporate "living buildings" that go beyond green to eliminate the typical negative impacts found with normal grey, or even green, developments.
Unfortunately, it often takes three to 10 years to get a development from concept to reality. So why should we settle for the same old way of doing things? As a species, we should not settle for "less bad"; we need to plan now for the future in order to restore and regenerate our neighborhoods, our communities, our watershed, our environment and our health.
Once you have experienced developments that enrich your life and those around you, you will see the future is here and that it is promising. Embrace it, demand it for future generations - and, by the way, don't forget to thank the developer.

Stan Sersen is an eco-architect, the developer of the EnviroCenter and the founder of The Green Building Institute in Jessup. He can be contacted at buildinggreen@greenbuildinginstitute.org.