Green Building Law Update : Green Building & Construction LEED AP, Lawyer & Attorney Chris Cheatham : Washington DC, Virginia, New York City

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Over the weekend, we here at Green Building Law Update had some green building epiphanies.  So let’s start with epiphany number one.  As I was driving into my law firm’s office in Tyson’s Corner on Saturday, I looked out at the construction and thought to myself, why am I not writing about that? 

This isn’t any regular construction I am referring to either.  The construction I see everyday is the beginning stages of the Tyson’s Land Use Task Force Recommendations.  While I have been perusing the Internet for green building stories, there is a green building story happening in my backyard! 

The first time I read about the Tyson’s Corner redevelopment project was in this post  from Kaid Benfield’s NRDC blog.  Kaid describes the current design of Tyson’s Corner:

an absolute mess of a place that would be hard-pressed to function worse environmentally or even as a place to navigate in a car.  You'd have to be suicidal to try it on foot. 

Kaid is right – I have worked in Tyson’s for three years and walked to lunch once.  Thankfully, the Tyson’s Land Use Task Force Recommendations are aiming to fix these problems by focusing on “smart growth.”  Smart growth generally is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in the center of a city to avoid urban sprawl.  

Maybe you are wondering, what does this have to do with green building?  Next time we discuss the Tyson’s Corner redevelopment, we will look at the Task Force Recommendations, which include green building regulations.  

Related Links

• Retrofitting suburbia for the 21st century (Kaid Benfield)
• Smart Growth (Wikipedia)