Oakland's Treasure Trove of LEED Riches, or "Location, Location, Location"

If you hear about Oakland at all, the news isn’t always good.  Like many cities throughout America, we’re struggling with a depressed economy, crime, and poor schools.  We have a football team that doesn’t always reflect the best in us, and a baseball team that’s fed up and looking for new fields of green.  Attracting and keeping business in town has always been a challenge. 

But Oakland is also amazing in so many ways.  The most diverse city in America, it’s home to the nation’s 4th largest container port and incredible weather.  It’s located in the heart of the Bay Area, one of America’s strongest and most diverse regional economies.  Oaklanders love their neighborhoods and enjoy the city’s friendliness and overall lack of pretension.

And now it’s also a national leader in green residential development.

In the past year, two Oakland homes have distinguished themselves nationally:

Margarido House is the first residential home in America to be certified both LEED-Homes Platinum and Greenpoint rated.

Gottfried House, rehabbed and owned by David Gottfried, founder of the US Green Building Council and the World Green Building Council, is being called the Greenest Home in America.

Now, you may have heard of both of these houses, but what you may not know is that they are less than a mile from one another in the same community: Oakland’s beautiful Rockridge neighborhood (also home to yours truly).

Both homes have received an entirely deserved amount of media attention, focusing on the amazing effort and cutting-edge technology put into their design and construction.  The innovation, thoughtfulness and just straight-up coolness of so much in these houses are inspiring.

But the as-yet-untold story of these houses is that they are even greener than the ratings say they are.  How?

It’s the old real estate adage: location, location, location.

The total energy use of a home is not just in the utilities, fixtures and appliances; it’s also in the amount of energy used to get to and from the home to work, school and all the other places we travel each day.  Older urban homes may be drafty, but you don’t have to drive as much to get your needs met.  Suburban homes may be built at the highest efficiency standards and filled with EnergyStar appliances, but then you have to drive 20 minutes to do something as simple as getting a gallon of milk.

When you add it all together, as the graph below does, you get a slightly different view of what constitutes a “green building.”  

So, green may be good, but green in the right place is best. 

For example, the Gottfried house is a 10 minute walk from the Rockridge BART station, and the Margarido house is a 14 minute walk.  If you bike, it’s even faster.

Commuting to and from work makes up less than a third of the total miles we drive, so how conveniently located things are when we get home has a tremendous impact on our carbon footprint.

For example, the Gottfried house is 6 houses down from a major supermarket, a butcher, a flower shop, a produce stand, a dry cleaner and, of course, a coffee shop.

The Margarido house is a 14 minute walk from Rockridge’s renowned Market Hall, more than a dozen restaurants, two independent book stores and, of course, coffee shops (and very good beer, I might add).  And even when they need to drive, they are only 1.2 miles (or 4 minutes) from a major supermarket, pet store and drug store. 

And all the kids can walk and bike to schools less than a mile away.

Of course these folks can’t get all their needs met without driving, but when they do drive, they’re driving a whole lot less than your average suburbanite.  That’s good for their pocketbooks, good for the environment, and good for their health, not to mention just a whole lot less day-to-day aggravation.

These two places are great for Oakland and great for the green building movement. You can make green homes happen in the city. In fact, it’s the best way to do it.

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