This document provides a literature review on sustainable development and greening the built environment. It defines sustainable development as having five key aspects: environmental limits, demand management, environmental efficiency, welfare efficiency, and equity. Several articles are then summarized that illustrate these aspects, such as how green buildings can improve employee health and productivity, new regulations requiring home appliances to use less energy and water, retrofitting homes to increase insulation and efficiency, using unused window space in buildings to generate solar power, examples of recycling and reuse in impoverished communities, and a system to treat human waste for use as fertilizer.

1. AshleyAnne Strobridge
Environmental Science I
ProfessorCharlesMilling
Literature Review
5/1/11
1
Abstract: Since the Industrial Revolution, the people of industrialized nations have
gathered more and more in cities, and made the land surrounding and within these cities more
and more “built-up”/urbanized. This “building-up,” or development of the landscape, has led to
the pollution of our watersheds, loss of habitat for flora and fauna leading to loss of
biodiversity, and a lack of connection with the natural world around us, as well as a lack of
connection to each other. Cities have become less about community, and more about
commerce. This review will define just what sustainable development is, which will be the
framework that this paper will refer back to while exploring different articles that illustrate
aspects of sustainable development, or greening the built environment. We will explore the
reasons why we must change our built environment, how we can do so, and how once we make
the necessary changes toward sustainable development, our built environment can help rather
than hinder us on the road to sustainability and community.
Definitions and abbreviations:
IEQ: Indoor Environmental Quality
LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Sustainable Development:
There are five practical features to sustainable development, they are as follows:
1. Environmental limits
2. Demand management
3. Environmental efficiency
4. Welfare efficiency
5. Equity
Environmental limits are the thresholds that the environment imposes for “certain
human activities in terms of resources, absorption of waste, and maintenance of life support
services such as temperature and protection against radiation,”(Smith et al. 18). These limits
define our world as finite, yet we continue to treat our resources and the earth that provides
them as infinite. Sustainable development hopes to create a built environment that
acknowledges these thresholds and to work within them.
Demand management is an important policy and concept that accepts environmental
capacity limits. Instead of the ‘predict and provide’ approach to meeting the demands of the

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public in creating a built environment, basic objectives are met rather than a derived demand.
This incorporates methods of recycling and reusing, as well as reducing demand for energy.
According to Greening the Built Environment, environmental efficiency is defined as ‘the
achievement of the maximum benefit for each unit of resources and waste produced.’
Environmental efficiency can be created in many ways; they are as follows:
1. “Increasing durability so that environmental costs are spread over a longer
useful life
2. “Increasing technical efficiency of resources conversion, for example through
greater energy efficiency or recovery of waste heat.
3. “Avoiding the consumption of renewable natural resources, water and energy
faster than the natural systemcan replenish them.
4. “Closing resource loops for example by reuse, recycling and salvage.
5. “Simplifying and avoiding the need for resource use (non-renewable)” (Smith et
al. 19)
Welfare efficiency is the equivalent of environmental efficiency and has the goal of
achieving the greatest human benefit from economic activity. A built environment that hopes
to achieve this must provide a greater range of opportunities for enhanced productivity and
health. Finally, equity has to do with providing each person with an equally healthy
environment within which to function, regardless of class, race, sex, species etc.
These five aspects of sustainable development spelled out by Smith et al.’s book
Greening the Built Environment, as well as other aspects of green building will be examined
more fully with the exploration of the continuing texts I explain for this review. The next text,
Effects of Green Buildings on Employee Health and Productivity, I will explore why green
buildings are important.
Green buildings can have a profound effect upon the health and wellbeing of the people
living and working within. Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) can affect productivity and health
and can lead to either the degradation of such, or its improvement. Poor air quality, extreme
temperatures, insufficient light, excess humidity, and insufficient ventilation can affect
psychological health as well as physical health (Singh et al. 1665). These are dangers not only to
the people working in the buildings, but to the employer as well, as these health problems can
lead to loss of productivity. In a study conducted in Lansing, MI , Singh and her colleagues
researched the affect on “employee perceived asthma and respitory allergy symptoms and
depression and stress conditions and the effect of these perceived changes on self-reported
absenteeism, work hours affected and productivity changes, following the movement from
traditional to green (according to LEED) office buildings,” (Singh 1665). They studied the

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employees’ reaction to traditional office space, and then green office space, and found that the
event of absenteeism was substantially reduced, as well as affected work hours after the move
to a green building. Health and wellbeing, as well as productivity, were sharply increased as a
result of moving to a green building.
In Singh’s study, it is clear that green buildings have a positive impact on the health and
productivity of those functioning within their walls. There are many ways a building can go
green, in the next texts I will explore how.
In Genevra Pittman’s article Building the Superefficient Home, Pittman outlines the new
standards that are coming into effect that will require household appliances to be more
efficient. Driers will be required to use 5% less energy, where washers are going to be required
to use 40% less energy; most other appliances fall somewhere in between. Clothes washers and
dishwashers are going to be required to use less water, with clothes washers using 50% less
water. With the energy saved over 30 years, 40% of American homes could be powered for one
year, and with the water saved, Los Angles could be supplied with water for 25 years. The new
efficiency will be achieved by retooling appliances with better insulation, seals, compressors,
and temperature controls. This retooling will require workers, which will result in more
manufacturing jobs. All around, this agreement for new regulations on efficiency reached by
the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, NRDC, and other environmental and
energy-efficiency organizations will be a great step towards better technical efficiency, which as
noted above, is one aspect of environmental efficiency, one of the five practical features of
sustainable development.
In Josephine Hearn’s article Home Energy Makeover, she explains that “in the U.S.,
homes account for 20% of carbon dioxide emissions, mostly though electricity use and heating
systems that run on natural gas and oil. Efficiency improvements, which can be completed in a
matter of hours, can lower energy consumption as much as 40%,” (Hearn 16). If the nation
were to retrofit their homes by increasing insulation and upgrading appliances, by 2020 we
could cut emissions by up to 160 million tons annually, while saving homeowners $21 billion in
utility bills each year. There is a program called PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) in place
in many states where the town pays for the retrofitting of homes in these ways, and the owner
pays back over time from what they save in heating and air-conditioning costs. The owners’
savings eventually outpace what they are required to pay back. It is also a win-win situation
because all of these retrofitting jobs go to out of work construction crews.
There is plenty of unused open window space in buildings and skyscrapers around the
world. This is a resource that Peter Stark and Ana Dyson, and their company HeliOptrix hope to
utilize for solar power using a new technology that they developed. Sandwiched between two
glass panes in a window, a pyramid-shaped solar concentrator catches 85% of sunlight as it

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moves on a pivot following the sun, which it is programmed to track all day, in any season. This
new technology is being looked at for use in a skyscraper in Korea, the Fashion Institute of
Technology in New York City, a hospital in the Middle East, and a technology center in
Botswana. It is already in use at Syracuse University’s Center for Excellence in Environmental
and Energy Systems, (Ferris 22). This is an example of utilizing the built environment to
generate energy, and avoiding the need for consumption of non-renewable energy sources,
which is listed above as an aspect of environmental efficiency, one of the practical features of
sustainable development.
Learning from Informal Cities, Building for Communities explores how impoverished
communities have much to offer by displaying examples or recycling and reusing at its most
ingenious. The slums of India are full of folks reusing old garments and collecting rainwater to
use in growing food or for drinking, (Ilieva & Lian 24). This type of ingenuity is key if we are to
work with nature to reduce our consumption of resources.
The article The Virtues of Human Waste by Jocelyn Zuckerman illustrates just how
important and easy closing that resource loop can be. By incorporating aromatic sawdust into
outhouses which then use the human waste mixed with the sawdust for fertilizer once it has
gone through a breaking down period at a composting site which kills the pathogens, a new
way to utilize human waste has been found. This innovative solution to waste management,
invented by Sasha Kramer who has a PhD in ecology from Stanford, has been utilized in Haiti
and has become a real hit there by creating clean, practically odorless waste management,
(Zuckerman 22-23). This idea, which also uses the sawdust for ‘flushing,’ would make for a
great replacement to traditional water toilets.
Over the last century, the number paved roads and surfaces have increased rapidly.
According to Masonry Design, “these impervious surfaces created significant environmental
and economic impacts such as stream bank erosion, flooding, and polluted streams, lakes,
rivers and estuaries.” The EPA and many other environmental commissions echo these
sentiments. The EPA lists porous pavement as a Best Management Practice performance tool
on their NPDES site (EPA). The article Permeable Pavement Comparisons offers a summary of
what these types of pavement are and how they work. Essentially, permeable pavement has
interlocking pavement tiles that fit together in a grid with spaces in between each tile for small
stones and gravel to filter the water that comes into contact with them into the ground,
through tubes and more gravel, for further filtration. Permeable pavement has an incredible
longevity of more than 20 years, and will still be standing when regular pavement has long
become a victim to potholes and wear. This kind of increased durability feeds into
environmental efficiency, as well as welfare efficiency.

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What to do with storm water is a big problem for many cities and urban areas, from the
Chesapeake Bay watershed, to the city of Philadelphia, where as divulged in Dana Difilippo’s
article Philly Seeks Answers Down the Drain, storm water mixes with waste water and overflows
into rivers, and into people’s basements, creating numerous health and ecology hazards. There
is a new solution being discussed and put into place where instead of digging new tunnels,
ditches, and culverts, a more ecologically sound method is being used. Impervious surfaces,
which are the main problem in water run-off, are being replaced with permeable ones which
will filter the run off. Green roofs are being put in place to catch rain water. Urban farms, rain
gardens and newly planted trees are all being used to catch the rain and storm water in order
to keep it from creating overflow with wastewater. Despite zoning laws and reluctance from
the some of those in power in Philadelphia, the residents of Philadelphia are in motion to
create a new green built environment to replace the old malfunctioning one. Robert Traver, a
civil and environmental engineering professor at Villanova University and director of the
Villanova Urban Stormwater Partnership stated of the replacement of concrete barriers to
nature with ones that mimic her, “It really is easier to work with nature than to try and fight it."
(Difilippo). This type of working with nature exemplifies welfare efficiency, one of the five
practical features to sustainable development.
The central goal expressed in the article Redrawing the American City by Laura Wright, is
explained best by Randy Blankenhorn, CMAP's (Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning)
executive director, “What we really want to do is build suburban downtowns where people
want to be -- a thriving, vibrant, and attractive downtown that's got open space, business,
entertainment, and transportation." The article outlines the efforts of CMAP is to rebuild
Chicago’s suburbs in order to avoid continuing to destroy wild, undeveloped lands by building
outwards, these efforts of CMAP should save the people of Chicago quite a lot of money in
transportation costs. Many of Chicago’s suburbs have become dilapidated, but there is an effort
to rebuild using green standards, and utilizing the already-in-place rail system. One aspect of
the greening of Chicago’s built environment includes creating green roofs, which are grassy
park-like areas with flowers, and the one on top of Chicago’s City Hall is even equip with a
beehive. Chicago is making the effort to rebuild itself with green aspects in mind, creating
“Millennium Park, a leafy plaza where city dwellers can dine at the Park Grill restaurant, catch a
concert at the Pritzker Pavilion, stroll among white oak and flowering cherry trees, or picnic in a
quiet spot near the water”(Wright 1). As well as miles of bike lanes and plenty of green
buildings built with community at its core. This type of development keeps environmental
limits in mind when constructing by creating livable places on top of dilapidated ones, utilizing
old spaces in a new type of recycling.
Instead of the Interstate highway system, the article Roadmap to the Future suggests
that rapid transit buses, light rail, high efficiency vehicles, oil security fees, traffic management

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systems, congestion pricing, alternative transportation, and smart growth can be better
transportation methods than using your car on the interstate. All of these alternatives to the
way we currently travel simplify and avoid the need for non-renewable resources use, aspect
five of environmental efficiency.
Sarah Schmidt’s A Wildlife Crossing That’s Truly Wild explains how nature and human-
made structures can coexist. In Vail, CO, there is a proposal to build a football field sized wildlife
bridge that will serve wildlife as well as people traveling the highway over which the bridge may
be built. According to the article, “More than a million animals are killed each year trying to
cross the road in the United States,” (Schmidt). The bridge will be a huge tree and vegetation
lined path over the six-lane highway that runs between Vail and Boulder. According to the
article, there are no bridges like this in the U.S., but they are “really effective” in Canada and
Europe. This bridge is related to welfare efficiency, the welfare of the people traveling the road,
as well as the animals trying to cross it.
Summary: Whether we are dealing with issues of public health, productivity,
transportation, or housing, it can all be tied back to the five practical features of sustainable
development. All of these articles discuss aspects of sustainable development and greening the
built environment, which is truly something that humans must learn to utilize if we are going to
continue to dwell upon Earth. Earth is finite, and treating her like she and her resources are
infinite can only lead to certain destruction.
Bibliography:
Difilippo, Dana. “Philly Seeks Answers Down the Drain.” Onearth: A Survival Guide for the
Planet. 19 Feb. 2010. Web. 30 April 2011.
<http://www.onearth.org/article/phillywater>.
Grushkin, Daniel. “Roadmap to the Future.” Onearth. Winter 2011: 48 & 49. Print.
Ferris, Dave. “Innovate: Windows that Generate Energy.” Sierra: Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the
Planet. March/April 2011: 22. Print.
Hearn, Josephine. “Home Energy Makeover.” Onearth. Spring 2010: 15 & 16. Print.
Ilieva, Pavlina, and Kao Pao Lian. “Learning from Informal Cities, Building for Communities.”
Futurist 1 Sept 2010: 24-26. Ebscohost. Web. 20 Feb 2011.
“Permeable Interlocking Concrete Pavement.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 10 Sep.
2009. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.
<http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/menuofbmps/index.cfm>.
Pittman, Genevra. “Building the Superefficient Home.” Onearth. Winter 2011: 58 & 59. Print.

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Schmidt, Sarah. “A Wildlife Crossing That’s Truly Wild.” Onearth. NRDC. 8 Feb 2011. Web. 20
Feb 2011. <http://www.onearth.org/article/a-wildlife-crossing-thats-truly-wild>.
Singh, Amanjeet, Matt Syal, Sue C. Grady, and Sinem Korkmaz. “Effects of Green Buildings on
Employee Health and Productivity.” American Journal of Public Health 1 Sept 2010:
1665. Ebscohost. Web. 20 Feb 2011.
Smith, David. “Permeable Pavement Comparisons.” Masonry Design. 2010 Lionheart
Publishing. Summer 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.masonrydesignmagazine.com/content/view/241/40>.
Smith, Maf, John Whitelegg, and Nick Williams. Greening the Built Environment.
Earthscan/James & James, 1997. Print.
Wright, Laura. “Redrawing the American City.” Onearth: A Survival Guide for the Planet. 1 Dec
2009. Web. 30 April 2011. <http://www.onearth.org/article/redrawing-the-american-
city>.
Zuckerman, Jocelyn C. “The Virtues of Human Waste.” Onearth. Winter 2011: 22 & 23. Print.