In some of my posts I try to express my concerns about the growing believe that green technologies or green buildings will solve our environmental problems. Although I do believe that these new technologies can create less impact than many of our existing constructions, I also see their growing promotion as a new business opportunity, one that many are trying to manipulate and take advantage of.

To rely on green technologies is to abstract and to de-individualize the responsibility we have towards our environment (if you pay a tax for CO2 emissions it doesn’t mean that you are doing better for the environment). Buildings alone wont do it and some even argue that it is citizens and their lifestyles that will achieve sustainability, not engineers, architects or planners (see eg. Julian Agyeman and Per Berg).

Even if we live in a zero-energy building nothing will be achieved if that house is part of the sprawling development of the city, or if the vertical garden demands more energy in its maintenance than the one it produces, or if we still drive to buy the milk (40% of all urban travel in the US happens within 2 miles & nearly all of that travel is by car!), or eat highly processed food coming from the other side of the globe, or follow our current consumption pattern of shop just for the sake of shopping, and so on and so on. 

This seems to be the case in the United States where green-building technologies have become the latest thing in the market. In a CNN special report a group of American architects argue that the American building-design community’s vision of sustainability is myopically focused. They say that the so-called “green” buildings are simply not sustainable if (as it is now):”their occupants drive long distances every day, the energy they consume is carbon-intensive, their technology is too complicated to use or too difficult to maintain, their impact stops at the property line, they deny the use of pre-existing infrastructure or building fabric , they are conceived in isolation from larger, systemic environmental change”.

All these seem to be things that we all (planners, designers, engineers, … news paper boys, house wifes/husbands, doctors, firefighters, gardeners, farmers, teachers ….. buildings, cars, roads, etc, etc, etc) need to address in the development and everyday life of our cities.