Pilot Version: LEED for Neighborhood Development
Tuesday February 20, 2007
The U.S. Green Building Council, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Natural Resources Defense Council—three organizations which represent that nation’s leaders among progressive design professionals, builders, planners, developers, and the environmental community—have come together in partnership to develop LEED for Neighborhood Development.
Unlike other LEED products that focus primarily on green building practices, with relatively few credits regarding site selection and design, LEED for Neighborhood Development places emphasis on the design and construction elements that bring buildings together into a neighborhood, and related the neighborhood to its larger region and landscape. LEED for Neighborhood Development creates a label, as well as guidelines for design and decision making, to serve as an incentive for better location, design, and construction of new residential, commercial, and mixed use developments.
The existing LEED for New Construction Rating System has a proven track record of encouraging builders to utilize green building practices, such as increasing energy and water efficiency and improving indoor air quality in buildings. It is the hope of the partnership that LEED for Neighborhood Design will have a similarly positive effect in encouraging developers to revitalize existing urban areas, reduce land consumption, reduce automobile dependence, promote pedestrian activity, improve air quality, decrease polluted storm-water runoff, and build more livable, sustainable, communities for people of all income levels.
LEED provides rating systems that are voluntary, consensus based, market driven, grounded in accepted energy and environmental principles, and that strike a balance between established practices and emerging concepts. LEED rating systems are developed by committees in adherence of USGBC policies and procedures. LEED rating Systems typically consist of a few prerequisites and many credits. In order to be certified a project must meet each prerequisite. Each credit is optional, but achievement of each credit contributes to the project’s point total. A minimum point total is required for certification, and higher point scores are required for silver, gold or platinum LEED certification.
Click Here to Download the LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System Official Publication
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