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.
