I'm in CA and a good friend of mine is a green developer: Lorax Development

In California developers are people(?) who go out into the valley and throw up 90 houses into a 1-horse field, or chop into the sides of hills to install another block of "ticky-tack", all the while using the freeways as local streets and parasitising the local infrastrucure and services (we also have an increase in mountain lion attacks to to increased population density in rural areas).

A green developer would be someone who recycles space already claimed by society into something locally useful, a proctice for which there is ample oppurtunity in our urban centers. However most urban developers are doing the same thing as their "pioneering" cousins: packing 90 "live-work" (read luxury 1 bedroom condo) spaces into a post manufacturing warehouse space without regard to the impact on local services, quality of life and infrastructure.

There are some exceptions, and those have been projects which have worked with and for community groups to acheive the goal of improving quality of life for the communities into which they are inserted.

From a social perspective, I have been impressed by Delancy Street, even though they are not neccessarily "green builders", their efforts have provided the opportunity for locally marginalized people to build their own housing and places of work in an area of San Francisco dilapidated since containerization moved port trade to Oakland. (As Mutaburuka says '...and the Salvation Army is *still* leading the revolution...")

But that is exactly what is required to stem the tide of commuter housing moving into previously unpopulated lands. Safely making more out of what we have at hand is green building, not trucking in bamboo tiles from Indiana only to slap it down with toxic mastic.

I suppose to me infrastructure and materials recycling is what would make a developer green, not what materials they buy in bulk from across the globe.

Any thoughts? What's eating your commuter pioneers in New Jersey? Bears?


-=c

surely there are / will be in that superficial way that doesn't really change anything. "developer" is almost a dirty word, but, (like chris points out,) it should evolve into something responsible, creative, and positive. Pedro: what you describe is the terrible reality of our corrupt standards in place-making. Zoning laws reveal that the auto has become more important than the pedestrian, and the "single use" nature of these laws prevent corner stores for the neighborhood. While most of us are caught up in the housing sham, (just looking for a version that fits "us",) issues in American housing, urban planning and transportation run deep to the earliest robber-baron types. James Howard Kunstler writes about this and you might enjoy it > "the geography of nowhere"

as per "Green Developers," a different type of land tract and client would be necessary. Echoing Chris, breaking no new ground would be ideal. "Green" materials wouldn't be enough; designing for walkability, human interaction, civic art, waste management, and connection with the land through gardening would have to supplement better materials.

Springboarding from there I'm curious what people think about eco-village proponents as "green developers."
Aren't they advocating the same kind of isolation developers of gated communities enable?
Why should people with positive vibes and good ideas all get together and isolate themselves in the woods,
away from the broken society that needs to hear people with a different way in mind?

damn good question

a lot of the green building hoopla seems to be about high end greening, whereas that is certainly nice in the architectual digest kind of way -- my passion is to bring forth radically affordable super-low embodied energy earth architecture -- what i call Future Primitive - think Flintstones meets Jetsons. Kinda a cozy cave with cat 5 fiber (love that Tivo...oops)

the key ingredients are intention, community and a bit of knowledge...anyone who's experienced the magic of a cob project springing up amidst the joy of peeps working together knows that that stuff can not be bought at the hardware, lumber or even the groovy green supply store...

the sheer need and growing interest/demand will bring these kinda of modular small scale eco-developments more and more to the fore...

Check out hartmarin...sometimes...it is a good idea if the land it already lock zoned for residential.

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my experience has been that the problems stems largely from buyer preference. I've spoken to sales agents at a great deal of conventional projects that incorporate a few green building features, but when given the option of solar panels versus other types of upgrades such as bathroom tile, high-end appliances, granite counters, they shy away from the green options and go for luxury. buyers need to be better educated and green options more affordable.