Tag: energy-efficiency
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People, Planet, Design
Book Review The world of design and architecture holds untapped potential for promoting sustainability, a topic we dove into with author Corey Squire, of “People, Planet, Design: A Practical Guide to Realizing Architecture’s Potential,” in our latest Booked on Planning episode. In the episode coming out in a few weeks, we discussed how design choices…
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The Net Zero Home: Eliminating an Energy Bill
Net zero homes produce as much energy as they use. A net zero home is not only great for the environment, but your wallet and health as well. While net zero is a method unto itself, similar programs that work towards reducing energy use and leakage in a home include Passive House, Energy Star, National…
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The Eco District
Scaling down further from my last post on the ecocity, this article dives into the ecodistrict. The ecodistrict, a concept that started in Europe, is based on the idea of achieving greater sustainability impacts through a district scale approach. These districts focus on the relation of energy, transportation, water, and land use and the most…
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Key Factors in Building Sustainable Cities
What makes a city sustainable? To me a sustainable city depends on a number of factors including land use patterns and growth, transportation, building reuse, energy and building code adoption, and green energy production. The most sustainable city would be one with a dense, urban fabric that supported public transportation as well as bicycle and…
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Mitigating Climate Change through Preservation
This week I spent my days in virtual sessions for the PastForward conference hosted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. While I’m not a fan of virtual conferences, like most people, I was excited to see this conference go virtual because it gave me the opportunity to attend for the first time. This years…
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Inherent Sustainability of Old Buildings
In recent years preservation has been recognized as a “recycling program of historic proportions.” And when you stop to consider, it is actually a good description. Saving old buildings helps retain history, identity, beauty, and connections to our past, but in terms of sustainability saving old buildings excels at recycling and reusing embodied energy. Many…
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Retrofitting Suburbia
Book Review Despite being published almost ten years ago, Retrofitting Suburbia has many relevant lessons for salvaging suburban sprawl created by generations before us that took the term Euclidean zoning and ran with it. They left downtown’s and created separated districts in the suburbs. One area was for the office towers on the highway, the…
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Passive House: an economic and environmental solution to building
Anyone that owns an old house knows that while they are charming and full of character, they are notoriously inefficient. I love my old bungalow, but it is nearly impossible to keep at a consistent temperature or save on energy costs. Despite being a solid structure that has lasted 100 years without major failures, there…
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The Planning Lady 