Newsflash: Green Building Bested by Human Nature

Green buildings are great. I worked in green building consulting for years, and I believe in the opportunity and need to look at designing and building better spaces. But what never seems to make it into the conversation is how people will actually occupy the buildings. Perhaps this is due to the chasm between the design team and the building owners and occupants.

The CCI Center in the South Side of Pittsburgh is (well, was) an innovative project that was way ahead of its time. But yet time has not been so kind to the building, partially made out of straw bale construction. And to be more precise, the owners have not been so kind to it either. Because of deferred maintenance that is so common it is basically the norm these days, the roof’s hyper-insulated straw bale panels deteriorated to the point of having to be completely ripped up and replaced. The kicker is that the building occupants were well-aware of the sustained leak that caused the irreparable damage. It seems that that proverbial stitch in time would have precluded the need for the upcoming “Rent Party”.

The moral of the story here is that our societal expectation of technology that believes that everything should work seamlessly without intervention or maintenance, a) also applies to our view of buildings, in addition to cars, computers, and cell phones, and b) is completely short-sighted. Building owners are given keys to an extremely complex machine without having a plan in place to make sure it continues to purr. Who’s fault is that? Hard to say, but one thing you can be sure of is that human nature is to blame. Until we overcome our own tendencies towards sloth and neglect, we will see example after example of this same symptom. And to draw this back to the larger issue of sustainability, our inability to behave differently is a recurring theme, and is what keeps us from making progress on the sustainability front. Technology is not going to solve this problem for us, since we, the people, are the root of problem!

Ruminations on Sustainable Pittsburgh's Smart Growth Conference 2010

I was lucky enough to sit in on the SP Smart Growth Conference. Although this is my first conference, many of these concepts have been discussed and presented over the last ten to fifteen years. The keynote address by Peter Calthorpe, an architect and planner who helped found the New Urbanism movement, was very thorough and loaded with actual facts and figures to support the claims. Secretary Hanger’s afternoon discussion struck a defensive tone, delivering a laundry list all of accomplishments by the Rendell Administration in dealing with Marcellus shale drilling and other environmental threats.

The declaration of the Tipping Points of Sustainability winner, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, was wholly disappointing to those of us that look beyond buildings as the drivers of sustainability. I had high hopes for what they might feature as an agent of change of regional sustainability, but I think they missed the big picture with this selection. I genuinely intended to submit an entry reframing the idea to be about people instead of events, though my impending wedding at the time didn’t allow me to complete the submission.

As I mentioned, the concepts are not new, and I feel that we’ve been talking about smart growth for years with little noticeable change in Pennsylvania. Perhaps we’ve reached the point where we need to stop speaking in such grandiose terms, roll up our sleeves, and get to work figuring out how to turn all of these great ideas into policy and planning changes in some of the 2,500+ municipalities in PA. Perhaps we need to apply much more pressure to local and state politicians to champion new initiatives. Perhaps it’s more aggressive leadership we need.

Whatever it is, clearly something is still missing from this puzzle that has stymied our efforts so far. We need to be critical of what we have and haven’t accomplished, identify our barriers to success, and be thoughtful about how we will execute the smart growth agenda. This might beg the question, “Is the agenda clear?” It would seem that the several hundred on-hand in the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom are in agreement on the agenda, but what about everyone else? I propose we turn this forum of ideas into a true marketing campaign, complete with slick branding and advertisements. Make it modern, make it sexy. Make it a brand that everyday people want to be associated with, like the Toyota Prius.

The change we need won’t happen overnight, but will be an ongoing change in ethos that will be decades in the making. Like most culture shifts this starts with the youth, who are not yet set in their ways or have their lives mapped out. We need to target 16-24 year olds, who are still defining their idea of place and home. Smart growth should not just be for middle-aged white people anymore; case in point, the audience at the Smarth Growth Conference.

It’s time to move.