Response to The Quiet Revolution Revived: Sustainable Design, Land Use Regulation, and the States by Sara Bronin

• Date: 01 August 2010
• Author: Felicia Marcus and Justin Horner

8-2010 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY ANNUAL REVIEW 40 ELR 10743

R E S P O N S E

Response to The Quiet Revolution

Revived: Sustainable Design,

Land Use Regulation, and the

States by Sara Bronin

by Felicia Marcus and Justin Horner

Felicia Marcus is Western Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She previously served as Chief Operating

Ocer of the Trust for Public Land, and Regional Administrator of the U.S. EPA, Region IX during the Clinton Administration.

Justin Horner is a Transportation Policy Analyst at NRDC, where he specializes in the

environmental impacts of land use and transportation policies.

The focus of much dialogue and debate in the public

eye over climate change and greenhouse gas emissions

(GHGs) tends to focus on industrial emissions of pol-

lution for manufacturing or the production of electricity.

Emissions from transportation sources (like trains, planes,

and automobiles) and from the heating, cooling, and light-

ing of buildings themselves a re less readily visible, yet each

constitutes roughly a third of America’s total greenhouse gas

emissions. In e Quiet Revolution Revived: Sustainable

Design, Land Use Reg ulation, and the States,1 Sara Bronin

correctly focuses on the importance of facilitating the cre-

ation of “green” buildings, and identies what she sees as sig-

nicant barriers, at the local level, to the implementation of

greener buildings.

While agreeing with Bronin’s objectives, we feel that e

Quiet Revolution Revived could benet from consideration

or reconsideration of three par ticular areas: (1) the article’s

conation of “green building” regulation and “land use” reg-

ulation; (2) transportation energy related to building loca-

tion; and (3) recent federal, state, and local eorts that are

addressing all of these issues in ways consistent with what

we see as Bronin’s intent. Our intent here is less to critique

the article than to provide other information t hat interested

readers should know about reducing GHG emissions related

to buildings. In short, we think there are both times when

localities will lead states and times when states need to step

in to facilitate important policy objectives. In this case, there

are other vehicles to achieve greater GHG reductions that

do not require even a “quiet revolution” in order to have a

tremendous impact.

1. Sara Bronin, e Quiet Revolution Revived: Sustainable Design, Land Use Regu-

lation, and the States, 40 ELR (E’ L.  P’ A. R.) 10733 (Aug.

2010) (a longer version of this Article was originally published at 93 M. L.

R. 231 (2008)).

I. “Green Building,” “Building Codes,”

and “Land Use”: The Importance of

Terminology

From a technical perspective, e Quiet Revolution Revived

conates “green” building standards, building codes, and

design standards into “land use” policies, when, in fact, the

terms are considered separate in practice. “Land use” generally

refers to the type, general size, a nd use of a structure for a given

location (that is, residential vs. retail vs. industrial; oces vs.

restaurants vs. drugstores), whereas the article focuses more

specically on building codes and design standards. e ques-

tion the article tackles is not whether we put residential or

mixed use on a particular parcel (which is a land use question),

but rather, since we know we’re putting, say, a house, on a

particular parcel, how do we make it green? Bronin recognizes

this important distinction between zoning and design stan-

dards in her Section Ia, but the paper would benet from a

more precise treatment of each of the three elements.

e distinction is important because there are a variety

of mea sures at both the state and local levels that encour-

age “green” principles outside of zoning or other aesthetic

requirements.2 California’s Title 24, for example, is a national

leader in energy eciency without being cha racterized as a

“green building” reg ulation. Changes to existing codes, or

environmental performance standards within existing codes,

can do as much without the “green” trappings.

Building codes a re extremely important; indeed, they are

far more important from a n environmental standpoint than

2. We think it is also important to note that there is really no consensus denition

of “green building,” so even that frame can lead to misunderstanding. NRDC,

for one, prefers the admittedly clunky phrase “environmentally sustainable ma-

terials, design and construction.”

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