The health of our planet and ourselves depends on how we plan, design, and construct the world between our buildings. Our increasing dependence on fossil fuels over the last century has given us unprecedented individual mobility and comfort, but the consequences are clear. Climate change, sprawl, and reliance on foreign oil are just a few of the challenges we face in designing new-and adapting existing-communities to be greener. Based on the National Building Museum's Green Community exhibition, this book is a collection of thought-provoking essays that illuminate the connections among personal health, community health, and our planet's health. Green Community brings together diverse experts, each of whom has a unique approach to sustainable planning, design, politics, and construction.

In the city an abandoned lot squeezed between two buildings becomes a community garden.

US cities are faced with the joint challenge of our climate crisis and the lack of housing that is affordable and healthy. Our housing stock contributes significantly to the changing climate, with residential buildings accounting for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. US housing is not only unhealthy for the planet, it is putting the physical and financial health of residents at risk. Our housing system means that a renter working 40 hours a week and earning minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any US county. In Gray to Green Communities, green affordable housing expert Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from a gray housing model to a green model, which considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities, and the planet. She demonstrates that we do not have to choose between protecting our planet and providing housing affordable to all. Bourland draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development intermediary. Her work resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing which was designed to deliver measurable health, economic, and environmental benefits. The book opens with the potential of green affordable housing, followed by the problems that it is helping to solve, challenges in the approach that need to be overcome, and recommendations for the future of green affordable housing. Gray to Green Communities brings together the stories of those who benefit from living in green affordable housing and examples of Green Communities’ developments from across the country. Bourland posits that over the next decade we can deliver on the human right to housing while reaching a level of carbon emissions reductions agreed upon by scientists and demanded by youth. Gray to Green Communities will empower and inspire anyone interested in the future of housing and our planet.

Explores the importance of environmental responsibility.

Cities are growing at unprecedented rates. Most continue to sprawl into the countryside. Some are only now adopting policies that attempt to control air pollution from vehicles, reduce water pollution from urban runoff, and repair fragmented urban ecosystems. Can good urban design and sound environmental design coincide at a neighborhood level to create healthy communities? Absolutely, and the strategies presented by Cynthia Girling and Ronald Kellett in Skinny Streets and Green Neighborhoods illustrate how to weave together contemporary thinking in urban planning with open space planning and urban ecology. Drawing from eighteen case studies, these green neighborhoods are the best examples of how the natural environment can play integral roles in neighborhoods. Green neighborhoods offer a mix of housing types in order to serve a broad cross-section of people with a finely-grained variety of land uses and services, all close to home. In ecologically sound communities, the urban landscape is a functioning part of the whole ecosystem. Wooded areas, meandering streams, wetlands, and open spaces are planned and engineered to clean the air and the water. Skinnier streets and practical pathways weave into a functional, economical network to provide a range of equally good transportation choices, from walking to mass transit, that move people efficiently and economically. This book moves beyond identifying problems to demonstrate proven methods and models that solve multiple, complex problems in concert. With innovative ideas and practical advice, Skinny Streets and Green Neighborhoods is a guide for today's planners, architects, engineers, and developers to design better neighborhoods and a more natural metropolis.

Social issues are, and need to be, a central part of environmental and economic sustainability efforts. Using stories of extraordinary communities across North America, Living Green showcases the social side of living green. The book features communities that explicitly integrate social and human factors into their design and planning, and examines the impact living in these communities has on personal health, well-being and the capacity for pursuing sustainability. It includes interviews with developers, architects and residents, highlighting personal ideals and efforts to pursue a sustainable lifestyle. The book's three parts explore: How community is central to sustainable living in everything from co-housing to communes Communities that specifically integrate green building design components with social justice politics such as racism, poverty and urban alienation. Housing options geared toward mainstream living that offer individual choices to those who wish to live green. Written for those desiring to hear a good news story, Living Green will appeal to individuals and communities living a sustainable lifestyle, green building activists, and academics in sociology, planning and design, architecture and environmental fields. Check out the authors' website and blog .

In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/