Leading urban transitions through green building

The building sector is one of the largest contributors to human-related greenhouse gas emissions but also one holding great potential to lower emissions due to the availability of technologies and opportunity for innovation... [ view full abstract ]

The building sector is one of the largest contributors to human-related greenhouse gas emissions but also one holding great potential to lower emissions due to the availability of technologies and opportunity for innovation related to new constructions, retrofitting of existing buildings and a more general shift to green energy supply and demand. This potential has been identified by cities around the world that are incorporating green building into local policies and initiatives to combat climate change and transition towards low-carbon futures. The concept of urban sustainability transitions has been broadly adopted as framework to identify and analyze climate change action at the urban scale but relatively little attention has been paid to why green building innovations emerge in specific cities and how they change over time. This paper seeks to help fill this gap presenting findings on green building transitions from your cities in Europe, Canada and Australia responding to the following questions: How do green building innovations as they relate to municipal policy making and planning come into being and are put into practice locally? To what extent are they influenced by external (beyond the local) processes and discourses? And how do urban green building transitions change over time? The paper analyzes and compares insights from two cities that are generally understood as leaders in green building and two cities considered as followers to tease out spatial drivers of change. As such, the research questions probe common assumptions of (green) urban leadership as being strongly rooted and driven by local factors. Empirically, the research employs a 3-pronged approach consisting of secondary data on green building, World Café inspired expert workshops held in each of the locations followed by 107 personal interviews conducted across the four cities. Additional workshops following preliminary data analysis were used to validate findings. Findings highlight the role of innovative policies and planning initiatives as expressed in particular in green neighbourhood developments in Freiburg and Vancouver. Municipal policies adopted certification standards which were seen as crucial to establishing green building. Both political and scientific leaders with visionary ideas were key to pushing green building agendas within cities. The local context expressed through broader public support of greening in the case of Freiburg and Vancouver were also identified as central whereas local politics and socioeconomic characteristics challenged green building innovations in Luxembourg and Brisbane. The nature and objectives of green building changed over time and illustrate how green building initiatives are increasingly used for competitive positioning and city branding as reflected in policies and planning initiatives. In particular in Freiburg and Vancouver, this change has been criticized as losing touch both with the original goals of greening and local community. While some of the examples can be rightly labeled as early leaders in greening, current green building transitions are largely incremental and predictable rather than radical questioning claimed leadership status. Radical change is sparse but not restricted to the green cities of Freiburg and Vancouver but also detectable at the margin in Luxembourg and Brisbane.

Keywords: green building, urban sustainability transitions, low carbon policies, certification standards, city branding