In many ways, cities are a natural point where to begin a policy discussion related to sustainable development. The general consensus among scholars is that cities are significant source of greenhouse gas emission, from transportation, buildings, productions and consumption. Cities have addressed their sustainable development goals from buildings and transportation sectors. The effort many cities have made is to promote and require green buildings. Buildings are the source up nearly 40 percent of all CO2 emissions in the United States. Specific to climate change target, green buildings are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emission by enabling alternative form of transportation, using fewer building materials and producing renewable energy. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED, developed by the United States Green Building Council provides solutions for cities to meet climate change goal via a green building. The LEED standard is our rating system based on checklist of items pertaining to design and construction of buildings, which is intended to identify buildings that offer superior environmental performance. The promotion of green building offer a kind of localizing impact of climate change policy that are necessary to turn a rhetoric policy idea into tangible reality. Green buildings offer a number of additional benefits to all city residents, building developers and inhabitants of buildings. Generally, green buildings are usually more aesthetically pleasing in terms of design, tend to hold their value over time and can even foster better physical and mental health of workers. In addition, promotion of green buildings offer benefits such as less waste production, reduction of traffic and typical less urban sprawl. To figure how to visualize, situate the extent of green buildings in the United States, three setup descriptive finding emerge from this map. First, green building project are widespread, occurring in nearly every American state. Second, while the general act of green building is widely used, LEED construction project are unevenly distributed across the state. Most LEED project occur in coastal cities and states such as California, Washington, New York and Illinois. Third, important for our discussion, cities with mayor who signed a US Climate Agreement are likely to have more LEED project. So, what drive the green buildings adoption? First, I argue that Political Leadership matters. Local climate change agreements have been instrumental communicating climate change policy decisions. However, what is the practical implication of this potential symbolic decision? My study examined the power of mayoral participation in climate change agreement in driving the proliferation of sustainable or green buildings in a city. We analyzed the impact of Political Leadership on green buildings in 591 cities in 50 states, controlling for a variety of city and state-level variables. Statistical model indicate that mayoral leadership in climate change policy foster green building. Our research conclude that the action of mayors and the political leaders are at the forefront of creating green jobs. Saving energy and tackling global climate change through such city-specific effort as encouraging sustainable building practices. Second driver for green job adoption in city is Policy by Doing. Government are the most visible member of the community and they are in a prime position to lead by example. The literature on regulatory compliance consistently finds that people do as they see other doing. And government have ample opportunity to walk the talk as a method to encourage the behavior change of other target groups. As consumer and purchaser of goods and services, government have ability to shape policy outcome outside the legislative policy process, in what we term Policy by Doing. We conceptualize Policy by Doing as a decision making by government whose actions are intended to influence the decision of target group, in addition to legislative policy to do such behavior. Many federal agencies, state governments and municipalities have increased the number of publicly owned green buildings by way of state law, executive orders and municipal ordinance. In contrast, far fewer pieces of legislation target the private development of green buildings. Green buildings are a good case for the purpose of examining Policy by Doing because city has actively acted as leaders to their communities. We assess the impact of this city-level decision to build green building on private decisions, controlling for existing policy effort. We draw three mechanisms by which Policy by Doing influence non-governmental decision making. First, it create market and reduce uncertainty. Second, it provides symbolic leadership. And third, telegraphing future regulatory actions. Overall, the plan shows that, all else being unequal, city that have more publicly owned green buildings tend to contain a large number of private project. Moreover, even the federal government or state government builds fewer building in a city, in comparison to municipal government, local government constructions of green buildings is critical to private construction. Empirically, we examined the relationship between public green buildings and private green buildings using time series cross-sectional data over seven years in 591 American cities. We've found that the government, federal, state and local government that build green encourage more green buildings. But this effect is quite strong at local level. Most importantly, we found that government can exhort action on the part of their constituencies by leading the way. It is clear that citizens and government are aware of the influence that government-specific decision making can have impact on broader community. The symbolism and public practice of green buildings are good. A positive decision can be seen in the choice of building designs for new private buildings. Innovation in green building policies and technology can lead sustainable development in cities.
