Abstract
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED ND) rating system has been considered one of the major tools to assess the performance of green communities. However, few studies have been conducted on how the traditional focus on green building can be effectively transitioned to green communities. In order to facilitate the transition process, this paper reviews and analyzes the credits obtained from LEED ND 2009 certified plans. A total of 55 projects were identified from the LEED project directory of the U.S. Green Building Council. The performance of these neighborhood development projects, including project landscape, percentage of achievement and predictors of LEED ND rating, was analyzed. The performance was then compared with the performance of green buildings certified under LEED New Construction (LEED NC). The results indicate that there is an unbalanced allocation of credits to economic, social and environmental sustainability in the LEED ND rating. In addition, green infrastructure and building credits, such as wastewater management, on-site renewable energy and solar orientation, have extremely low percentage of achievement, indicating that these credits should be redesigned. The results provide useful insights for developers to prepare for LEED ND certification and for regulatory bodies to improve the performance of the current LEED ND rating system.
Highlights
Green building has been rapidly recognized for its contribution towards sustainable development
The results show that a major difference between green neighborhood development and green building is the significantly different order of influence of the main assessment criteria, which represent the priority of the rating systems
The results indicate that the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) neighborhood development (ND) rating system may have unbalanced allocation of scores to the three aspects of sustainability, including economic, social and environmental sustainability
Summary
Green building has been rapidly recognized for its contribution towards sustainable development. Many studies have focused on the use of LEED NC in the building industry on the requirement of daylighting design in order to improve visual satisfaction of occupants in a LEED Gold laboratory building [3] and whether occupant satisfaction differs significantly in LEED and non-LEED buildings [4]. These studies offer useful insights and can guide individual building design and construction, which can promote the development of high performance buildings
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