San Francisco Close to Passing Tough Green Building Codes

There are many good reasons to promote walking, including health benefits and decreasing our reliance on oil, which unfortunately has a tendency to spill. To support walking, the site Walk Score has released a list of America's 10 most walkable cities.

Some cities on the list aren't surprises -- note New York and Portland, Oregon -- but others are not known for being pedestrian friendly (see Los Angeles). However, in the case of L.A., although many of the surrounding regions are indeed heavily car-dependent, a number of neighborhoods nearer to the city's center are highly accessible, earning scores above 90.

A project of civic software group Front Seat, and advised by the Sightline Institute, the Brookings Institution and Google, Walk Score ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the largest 40 U.S. cities, with the goal of helping people locate housing in walkable areas. The group points out that walking is a great way to reduce our carbon footprint.

Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a score for any property.

Hopefully, this list will encourage people to seek out, and take advantage of, oases of New Urbanism. Additionally, the increased attention, coupled with high gas prices, may provide impetus for more developers and city planners to ease away from America's addiction to the automobile.

1. San Francisco, CA

The city is known for its stable, relatively mild climate and progressive viewpoints, and 90% of San Francisco residents have a Walk Score of 70 or above, while 99% have a Walk Score of at least 50. Only 1% live in so-called car-dependent neighborhoods. The top areas are Chinatown, the Financial District, Downtown and North Beach.

Photo: Jim Jurica / Istock

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San Francisco has long been known for progressive politics and innovation, in addition to sweeping views of the bay and hilly streets. Now, the much beloved city is close to passing the country's strictest green building codes, which would be another green feather in Mayor Gavin Newsom's cap, as well as source of civic pride.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the regulations winding their way through the halls of local government would require new large commercial buildings and residential high-rises to contain key eco-friendly features such as solar power, nontoxic paints and water-saving plumbing fixtures. Officials estimate that by 2012, the new green building codes could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60,000 tons and save 220,000 megawatt hours of power and 100 million gallons of drinking water.

If passed, the rules would be phased in gradually until 2012. Estimates are that developers may see initial costs rise as much as 5%, although that is expected to drop with time. According to the Chronicle, the gradual phase-in of the program has made it more palpable to the building industry.

So what are the rules? New residential high-rises taller than 75 feet, new commercial buildings larger than 5,000 square feet and renovations on buildings larger than 25,000 square feet would have to comply with the U.S. Green Building Council's rigorous Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, which were designed to be comprehensive measures of energy efficiency, water use and overall footprint.

All new residential construction would also have to comply with California's GreenPoint Rated system from Build It Green, which maintains its own independently verified criteria for green building. Learn more about various home green building labels here.

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