Green Roof Resource

For those who have taken the 101 course, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities is returning to Ann Arbor to instruct the 201 course on design and installation.

Additional locations and dates for the 101, 201, 301, and the green roof symposia can be found here. I took the 101 course earlier this year and enjoyed it. The course materials are quite useful and provide a thorough overview of the subject.

More green affordable housing news announced today. The National Building Museum released transcripts and audio of their workshop entitled,Sustainable Design: New Directions for Affordable Housing Symposium, which has held on
May 30, 2007.

Anne’s earlier comment is timely as I recently attended a workshop on sustainable affordable housing where Chris Benedict spoke on the simple (and affordable) steps that can be taken to significantly improve building energy efficiency.

There are several available resources for learning more about affordable green housing. While the Energy Star Program typically brings to mind energy efficient appliances, there is a section devoted to green building. Another web resource is the Minnesota Green Affordable Housing Guide. The site provides information targeted to Minnesotans, but the practices can be adapted to other low-density housing projects with component strategies adaptable to larger scale building projects. For higher-density projects, The Affordable Housing Design Advisor provides a check list of items to consider from public and private open spaces to unit layout within a building. One last site worth highlighting (especially for those in the Bay Area) is the Green Affordable Housing Coalition, which maintains a list of local, regional, and national case studies on green affordable housing projects. The coalition also provides fact sheets on technical, financial, and project implementation issues.

I know that I’ve left off others, but the point is that there are many regional and national organizations that are working on this issue. Green living shouldn’t be novel - it should be the standard. The sooner that happens, the less we will need to worry about the unintended consequences of not living green.