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Reduced local impact fees and increased incentives
: Utility surcharges are often
levied against owners of impervious surfaces. European countries such as Germany, The
Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden offer reduced stormwater and impervious cover fees
plus energy credits, grants and tax incentives.
For example, some German municipalities issue
stormwater fee reductions of 50 to 80 per cent for eco-roofs. Portland provides a discount
on the stormwater management charge for property owners who manage their stormwater
on site. Chicago offers fast tracking permits to developers incorporating eco-roofs and grants
to homeowners and small businesses.
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Positive Development
Box 15 Net Positive (Physical) Development Criteria
Positive Development is that which leaves ecological and social conditions better off after con-
struction than before. Assessment criteria would be relative to pre-development conditions,
rather than conventional buildings. The following criteria relate mostly to biophysical design.
They are also included, together with social criteria, in the SmartMode overview [Chapter 15].
Design for Positive Development would be reversible, and aim to:
•
Prioritize the eco-retrofitting of existing cities and suburbs to eliminate the use of fossil
fuels and toxic materials, mitigate existing impacts of surrounding development, produce
clean air, water and soil, and make humans and ecosystems healthier.
•
Exceed ‘resource autonomy’ (ie self-sufficient energy production, water and waste
treatment), through design that
increases
the ecological base and public estate of the site
and
surrounding region (to counteract decreasing carrying capacity and biodiversity).
•
Create conditions and support for eco-services and integrate them with development
to improve the viability and self-sufficiency of urban areas; in other words provide
infrastructure and space in buildings for the production of ecosystem goods, services and
ecosystems.
•
Actively restore and expand the urban ecology by creating natural habitats, nature
corridors and so on to support appropriate biodiversity in urban areas, by designing
spaces to accommodate the needs of indigenous and, especially, endangered species.
•
Reduce net land coverage of development by combining social functions and natural
systems (ie renewable energy, ecosystems and biodiversity) through design for multi-
functional use of space (eg green space walls with terrariums and vertical wetlands).
•
Weigh in the embodied and ecological waste of development or design decisions, and
compensate for any unavoidable waste or resource use by net positive improvements
to the urban and/or regional ecology (ie not simply aim to reduce embodied energy and
water).
•
Increase the ‘natural security’ and self-sufficiency of urban areas by creating space and
infrastructure for food production, in a manner that mitigates the heat island effect of
existing development (eg green roofs, balconies, building skins and eco-atriums).
•
Identify and correct social, economic and ecological deficiencies of the surrounding urban
or rural environment to reduce social inequities and increase accessibility (eg parks and
playgrounds that also store water for adjacent landscapes and fire protection).
•
Analyse and design for social needs, interpreted broadly to include community,
economic, cultural and psychological needs, making places for positive social interaction,
communion with nature, sense of community, social security and physical safety.
•
Provide training for urban ecosystem managers and facilities managers to plan, design
and manage continuous improvements to buildings that proactively improve human and
environmental health, as opposed to just reducing toxins in the environment.
•
Avoid or replace ‘fossil’ with ‘renewable’ resources: that is, wind and solar power and
biobased materials (as opposed to fossil-fuel-based electricity, fibres, fuels and processes)
to increase available energy while reducing the impact of existing sources.
•
Design to
maximize
‘passive’ solar design systems, which can be more efficient than
energy production in both embodied and operating energy. If under-designed , theydo
not realize their potential, and may even require back up systems.
•
Explore opportunities to replace resource- and capital-intensive machines with
natural micro-organism-powered systems (however, the burden of proof should be on
proponents of patented microbes to demonstrated that no natural life form could do the
job).
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Boxes
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