Sustainable Sites Initiative, a LEED/BREEAM for landscape?

I've been writing a few blog posts and then for one reason or another not posting them. However, this post has three of my favourite topics in one, so it's a must for me. Politics, systems and the landscape. Awesome.

SITES aka the Sustainable Sites Initiative, now in version 2 is a credit scoring system akin to LEED and BREEAM that seeks to provide true sustainability assessing criteria upon developments. The charges leveled against all such systems is that they are fundamentally blunt instruments. In other words, they miss the nuance that can provide true measurements of whether a development is truly sustainable or not. I've not made my mind up about SITES, but it is developed by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the United States Botanic Garden, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin so I'm expecting something good. To be level headed about this, with these credentials I would expect these stakeholders' perspectives to totally ignore the impacts of economics. I don't know if that's fair or not. From my perspective of the sustainability debate, social and environmental sustainability are always trumped by economic sustainability. Naive I know, but for me, any classification system has to acknowledge that imbalance, not rage against it or meekly comply with it, but tacitly and clearly deal with it...

It's been in development since 2006 and version 2 was released earlier this year so I don't feel like I've missed the party too much on this one.

Finding the information

Okay, so first of all, how easy is it to get hold of the information. First of all, the reference guide costs $75. Part of getting any standard adopted is knowing who to charge. Charging the casual reader like myself to get an understanding of what you're trying to achieve... not a great start. Still, you get the rating system and a scorecard, so theoretically you could go ahead and score any development without paying a cent, but end up with weird results, because you didn't use the reference guide... Not sure I understand the logic.

The rating system

Okay, let's have a look under the hood. I've got the rating system and the score card. Ah ha, I need the reference card to be eligible to test my site. Well kind of, if you look at the assessment criteria in the light blue filled cells that have hatched out the question mark and no columns, these are mandatory requirements of the standard.

What areas are being tested?

1. Site Context
2. Pre-design Assessment & Planning
3. Site Design - Water
4. Site Design - Soil & Vegetation
5. Site Design - Materials & Selection
6. Site Design - Human Health & Well being
7. Construction
8. Operations & Maintenance
9. Education & Performance monitoring
10. Innovation or exemplary performance

Reading the Introduction

The introduction is always the sales pitch. The message I'm getting is definitely a forward looking, disaster averse attitude underlined by a thorough understanding of the systems that are impacted by development. Not really surprising to see this attitude given the involvement of Landscape Architects.

In contrast to buildings, built landscapes and green infrastructure have the capacity to protect and even regenerate natural systems, thereby increasing the ecosystem services they provide. These services are the beneficial functions of healthy ecosystems such as sequestering carbon, filtering air and water, and regulating climate. Their economic value is highly significant, yet the cost of replacing these functions is rarely reflected in conventional decision-making.

The central message of the SITES program is that any project ... holds the potential to protect, improve, and regenerate the benefits and services provided by healthy ecosystems. 

Sadly it doesn't quantify these economic values, I think whenever you're discussing economics, hard figures are always going to beat assertions. Nevertheless, I totally agree with the sentiment. Let's push on.

Ooo shiny principles

I do like a good set of fundamental principles, they scream landscape architecture at me, being a Landscape Architect that's hardly surprising. "Do no harm has an air of religiosity about it... let me check..oh no, sorry, the hippocratic oath no less, I quite like being the idea of doctors of the planet.

• Do no harm.
• Apply the precautionary principle.
• Design with nature and culture.
• Use a decision-making hierarchy of preservation, conservation, and regeneration.
• Provide regenerative systems as intergenerational equity.
• Support a living process.
• Use a systems thinking approach.
• Use a collaborative and ethical approach.
• Maintain integrity in leadership and research.
• Foster environmental stewardship.

Where and When to use the standard

Basically it covers every sort of development on land that you can think of. It's interesting to note that its remit ends (or is that begins) at the building envelope.

For sites that include buildings, the SITES v2 Rating System focuses on the area from the building skin outwards

Right... that's quite enough of that... back to real work. I'll review the individual chapters soon (I really mean that, I will)