Regional Trends in Certified LEED Projects in the Contiguous United States Caylen Payne Department of Geography and Planning The University of Akron 11/30/10
Problem Statement
Results
In recent years building trends in the U.S. and around the world have become increasingly concentrated around the idea of sustainable development and green-building. One of the major establishments in the development of sustainable architecture has been the development of the LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program. What spatial trends exist in the distribution of these projects, and what trends exist in project types and certification levels are just some of the questions that arise in examining LEED.
Data Sources The USGBC, or U.S. Green Building Council, a non-profit organization that’s responsible for maintaining an ongoing database of all registered and certified LEED projects was used to determine LEED spatial data. In addition to the USGBC database, the U.S. Census and its corresponding TIGER/Line boundary data were used as the base map files.
Methodology In order to better understand the impetus for such projects a spatial analysis focused on regionalism may be undertaken in order to determine whether market trends favor certain areas. In addition, certification levels and project types were graphed to illustrate trends within the LEED system itself. Using the USGBC’s online database I was able to determine the zip codes of registered projects. Included in the LEED data were all LEED project types that corresponded to an existing 4 or 5 digit zip code that was fully contained within the county level. This data was then aggregated to the county level and then using Zelinsky’s vernacular region data a national thematic map was created to determine what regionalism exists in LEED projects.
Conclusion The results of the thematic map tend to show that a strong positive correlation exists between LEED projects and Metropolitan areas. The exceptions are large institutions situated in relatively low population density areas. In addition, a population per LEED building analysis of the vernacular regions indicated a somewhat static result except for the Middle West and Western areas. These areas exhibited a much smaller ratio than the national average perhaps due to the large distances between population areas. In terms of certification, the Gold level exhibited the highest usage perhaps due to its cost/reward ratio compared to the Platinum level. The bronze level was almost negligible due to its overlapping specifications of other levels. Of all building types new construction was the most dominate perhaps due to the ease of addressing all LEED specifications at once.