USA urban foreclosures provide opportunity for Greening of America

Seattle, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago; Rising foreclosure risks

Major US cities are experiencing a forsclosure crisis in 2011, and this presents a window of opportunity for urban energy efficiency and clean energy technologies. According to Alex Veiga's Associated Press report in the Toronto Star today:

In Seattle, Houston, Chicago and Atlanta, a growing number of homeowners are falling behind on mortgage payments and finding themselves on the receiving end of foreclosure warnings. Others have already seen their homes repossessed by lenders.

All told, foreclosure activity jumped in 149 of the country’s 206 largest metropolitan areas last year, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

The firm tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions — warnings that can lead up to a home eventually being lost to foreclosure. Job loss, rather than time-bomb mortgages resetting to higher payments, has become the main driver behind rising foreclosures.

“We’ve actually had a sea change in what’s causing foreclosures, from the overheated home prices and bad loans to a second wave of foreclosures actually caused by unemployment and economic displacement,” says Rick Sharga, a senior vice-president at RealtyTrac.

The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area in Texas saw its foreclosure rate jump 26 per cent from 2009, the largest increase among the top 20 biggest metro areas, the firm said.

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, in Washington State, ranked second with an increase of nearly 23 per cent, while the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta metro area in Georgia was third with a 21 per cent bump.

In the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metropolitan area of Illinois, foreclosure activity rose 16 per cent, while home repossessions climbed nearly 20 per cent, RealtyTrac said.

“As the economy and unemployment improve, you’ll see those markets recover fairly quickly, whereas you’re still going to have a bit of a hangover in places like California, Florida and Nevada,” Sharga said.

Those states, and Arizona, remain the country’s foreclosure hotbeds, accounting for 19 of the top 20 metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates in 2010.


The worst may be behind us, but we're not out of the woods yet. Instead of packaging these homes by the dozen and selling them to the same realtors who helped get us into this mess, innovative banks should hook up with local retrofitters to "green" these homes before returning them to the real estate market.

Full AP article about Rampant foreclosures in big USA cities

Architect Eric Corey Freed offers 5 Tips to Green Your Home

Courtesy of my email subscription to Inhabitat.com's newsletter (try it, you'll like it!), I was happy to see the article 5 Tips to Greening Your Home, by Organic Architect Eric Corey Freed.

TIP 1: Wrap Your Home in Insulation – “The More, The Better!”

Proper insulation is probably the most important factor you can control in creating an energy-efficient home. I always say insulation is like chocolate, the more you have, the better! On average, ½ of your home’s heating and cooling will escape through walls (35%), windows (25%), floor (15%) and roof (25%). Therefore, the first thing you should do to determine where insulation is needed is to scan your home with a thermal radiometer or infrared scanner in order to detect where your home is leaking heat.



TIP 2: Manage Your Heating and Cooling Intelligently with a Thermostat

All the insulation in the world won’t make a difference in cutting energy costs if you aren’t smart about how you heat and cool your house. This may sound blindingly obvious to some, but you can cut your heating bill in half if you are strategic about WHEN your heating and cooling is running. Without a thermostat to guide them, most heating/cooling systems are dumb and blind and will consume loads of energy keeping your bedroom nice and toasty during the day (when you are not home), or warming your living room at night (when you are asleep). If you connect your heating and cooling system to a programmable thermostat, you can heat/cool different rooms at specific times during the day when people will be in those rooms (such as between 6-8pm in the evening, after work). Many brands of thermostats (check out Honeywell) even have smart phone apps that allow you to program your heating and cooling on the fly, remotely.


TIP 3: Conserve Water Through Smart Technology

Because water seems plentiful and is all-around us, most Americans have no idea about the coming water crisis. Our water infrastructure is crumbling in this country and potable water shortages are going to become commonplace within 10 years. You can get a jump on tackling this looming problem by installing some water-saving appliances in your house, such as low-flow shower-heads and water-saving toilets. I’m a big fan of the AQUS grey water toilet, which recycles grey water from your sink to flush your toilet!

60% of the average American’s water use takes place outside the home (in irrigating water-sucking lawns), so ditch the 1950′s Cleaver-style lawn and consider “xeriscaping” – planting native foliage that doesn’t need high maintenance watering and fertilizing.


View full online article Five Tips to Greening Your House, by architect Eric Corey Freed

21st Century Architecture profiles Paul Raff, Christopher Simmonds

Ontario architects Paul Raff (Toronto-based Paul Raff Studio) and Christopher Simmonds have each been profiled on the sustainable buildings blog 21st Century Architecture.

Paul Raff architecture:





Paul Raff feature on 21st Century Architecture blog





Christopher Simmonds architecture:






Christopher Simmonds feature on 21st Century Architecture blog

Toronto GTA 3D Digital Architectural Rendering

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New Ways of Working (New WOW) honors Dr. Judith Heerwagen

Dr. Judith Heerwagen is an environmental psychologist whose research and writing have focused on social impacts of sustainable design, workplace performance and behavioral change. She currently serves as Program Expert in the Office of Federal High Performance Green Builldings for the U.S. General Services Administration.

In recognition and appreciation of her contributions in workplace research, New Ways of Working (New WOW), an organization dedicated to examining the changing nature of work in a distributed world, has awarded Dr. Heerwagen an honorary fellowship for the 2011 calendar year.

Over the past decade, Dr. Heerwagen ran her own research and consulting business in Seattle. Previously, she was a research faculty member at the University of Washington, Department of Architecture, and a staff scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. At both the University of Washington and PNNL, her research focused on sustainable architecture and the occupant experience in buildings. She has lectured widely on the human factors of sustainable design, workplace productivity, and the impacts of physical space on emotional, social and cognitive functioning. In 2005, she was named Environmental Champion by ASID. Dr. Heerwagen has been a member of the US Green Building Council since 2000 and currently serves as the vice chair of the USGBC research committee. She is a co-editor of Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life (Wiley, 2008) and author of numerous papers. She received a PhD in psychology from the University of Washington and a BS in communications from the University of Illinois.

Read full article on New Ways of Working honors Dr. Judith Heerwagen for green building research

EnviroCities calls for the Zero Carbon City

During the 2nd day of the EnviroCities conference in United Arab Emirates, "Sustainable Cities: Strategy, Elements and Indicators to Counterbalance Climate Change," was presented by Prof. Mohsen Aboulnaga, Government Strategy & Policy Advisor and main founder of Emirates Green Building Council.

"Creating and designing cities is one of the most complex and sophisticated processes as they ultimately consume most natural resources, an awful amount of energy, and use huge quantities of water as well as produce air pollution and generate waste. These pose a huge risk to our health and environment, and ultimately contribute to climate change; a phenomenon that is of prime global concern," Aboulnaga pointed out.
"Another crucial dimension impacting climate change is the gigantic rise in world population particularly, in urban areas and beyond," he pointed out.

According to the United Nations 2009 report on water shortage, and keeping in mind the world's high energy consumption rates, it is becoming assertive that strategy and policy, and its assessment tools in sustainable national planning should be firmly developed and exploited to put forward appropriate key performance indicators to encounter such great challenges and ensure our cities are sustainable," said Aboulnaga.

"To curb green house gases emissions and reduce its impact on climate change, it is vital to efficiently plan our cities to be sustainable yet, to diligently develop strategy and policies that promote sustainability to the extent these cities are eco-friendly and maintained," he said.

Full article on Creating and Sustaining Eco-friendly Cities

More Green links:

Green Mutual Fund Investing

3d Architectural Visualization Renderings

Best Green Stocks Blog

Greening an Office Tower; An Architect's Advice

The following is excerpted from an article by Dermot Sweeny (Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co) in the May 2010 issue of Sustainable Architecture and Building Magazine:

Natural light

There is lots of anecdotal evidence, and some empirical evidence, to support our contention that natural light and views to the outside are critical contributors to stimulation, human comfort and well being. Effective daylight harvesting depends on capitalizing fully on daylight penetration into the space while controlling direct sunlight and glare.

We achieve this by maximizing ceiling heights, arguing successfully with our clients that the best compromise between economy and performance is achieved with a 13ft. floor-to-floor height incorporating 18in. of raised floor, a 10in. slab, and ceiling heights approaching 11ft., with full height glazing for excellent natural light penetration.

ASHRAE has tended to discourage this fully-glazed approach in order to increase insulation levels and reduce solar heat gain or conversely heat loss. This resulted in a reduction of glazed surface from somewhere between 80% and 90% in Mies’ day, to about 40% in the 1990s. What ASHRAE fails to recognize is that over the same period, the relative importance of solar gain through windows has been reduced both by advancements in glazing technology, and by the dramatic increase in internal heat loads noted above.

While it is still important to work on reducing the amount of excess heat in buildings, we believe that the environmental and psychological benefits of natural light far outweigh the disadvantages of any additional solar heat gain. We do, however, work to control heat gain, and the negative effects of glare while maximizing the positive attributes of daylight.

Typically, an external solar shading device at a height of approximately nine feet creates a clerestory and shades the glass curtain wall below. At the same time, an internal light shelf aligned with the exterior solar shade reflects sunlight penetrating the clerestory off the concrete slab and deep into the building. The light shelf is coupled with a roller blind that lowers automatically [while the light shelf rotates upward] in response to solar intensity and potential glare. The blind never comes to the floor so some views are always maintained.

The additional ceiling height enables us to suspend indirect lighting fixtures fitted with T5 or T8 fluorescent lamps. The goal is to achieve even, ambient lighting. Experience has demonstrated that where there is too much variation the natural tendency is to enhance the dark spots by introducing more light. This of course uses more energy and costs more money.

We find that if we can achieve savings by designing for lower overall lighting levels, it is easier to convince clients to invest money in control systems that further improve energy efficiency. Maximizing indirect lighting also dramatically reduces glare which further increases human comfort.

Full article on Converting office towers to green sustainable technology