Sustainability from Dwelling to Development: Making the ConnectionBetween High Performance Homes and Communities

摘要

Using four Building Science Consortium Building America community-scale projects,this paper investigates the nature, strength, and durability of connections between highperformance dwellings and developments. There are few inherent or natural links between thetwo (particularly in the production home setting); the connections must be either imposed (bygovernment entities) or created in the marketplace. Because communities often involve two verydistinct players—the developer and the builders—and the project often spans up to 10 years, it ischallenging to develop and sustain either an imposed or marketed system with strong andmeaningful links between high performance homes and neighborhoods.An important element in keeping high performance homes and neighborhoods linked isbringing Building America performance criteria into ongoing efforts to develop national greenbuilding criteria, at both the building and the development level. Overall, perhaps the mostpromising approach is to combine certain imposed elements (from the Prairie Crossing andCivano projects) with new quality/value strategies that capture the developer's, the builder's, andthe homebuyer's interest. If the developer and the builder have the tools they need to link qualityand high performance, the buyer will have no trouble recognizing the value of living in both ahome and a community that is lighter on their budget and their environment.