Elizabeth Schilling presents final 2008-2009 New Metropolis lecture; series will resume in the fall with focus on international issues and climate change

Elizabeth Schilling, interim program manager, Smart Growth Leadership Institute, Washington, DC, presented the final lecture in the 2008-2009 New Metropolis Lecture Series, sponsored by Urban Affairs and Planning (UAP) in Alexandria. Schilling’s presentation LEED for Neighborhood Development: The Next Wave of Code Reform? focused on the new LEED rating system for making a neighborhood green and how the rating system works as a tool for planners.

Schilling has been on a voluntary committee of 15 professionals working to develop LEED for Neighborhood Development (ND) since 2004. The group has collaborated with three partners -- the Natural Resources Defense Council, representing a smart growth perspective, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the U.S. Green Building Council -- to help advance the concept. Schilling has also served as the executive director of the Growth Management Leadership Alliance and as state policy director for Smart Growth America.

The eagerly-anticipated LEED-ND rating system began as a response to concerns that building ratings alone were not capturing the energy and environmental benefits of whole neighborhoods -- their placement in a region, their design and walkability, and the performance of the infrastructure that connects them. The resulting hybrid of smart growth, new urbanism and green engineering is a nearly comprehensive road map for how to make a neighborhood green. However, according to Schilling, the creators of LEED-ND have been surprised by an intense interest in using the new rating system as a supplement to – or even a replacement of – some local planning efforts.

“LEED-ND is not just a code,” she said. “It effects both development and policy making decisions and is more of a benchmarking tool. LEED-ND shouldn’t be used as a shortcut but rather, to provide communities with a chance to learn and collaborate.”

Since 2004, Virginia Tech's New Metropolis lectures have exposed public officials, the general public, students, and others in the University community to a variety of contemporary ideas about metropolitan development. The lecture series was coordinated by Heike Mayer, associate professor, UAP, succeeded by Kris Wernstedt, associate propfessor, UAP in 2008-2009.

Held on the last Wednesday evening of each month during the academic year, speakers in the series have covered a wide range of practice, policy, and research debates on metropolitan issues. Topics have ranged from local growth issues in the National Capital Region to international challenges posed by urban development in post-Soviet eastern Europe.

In the 2007-2008 academic year, the New Metropolis Lecture Series focused on US domestic issues, covering such topics as transit, immigration, sustainable development, and the rapid emergence of walkable urban areas. This emphasis largely persisted in 2008-2009, with nationally-recognized experts talking about new urbanism, climate change, smart growth, and urban voting patterns in the 2008 presidential election, among other domestic metropolitan concerns.

“The 2009-2010 lecture series will expand more into international areas as well as enlarge discussion on climate change, a pressing current concern that metropolitan areas in America and abroad will continue to grapple with for decades,” said Wernstedt.

“The National Capital Region provides an exciting laboratory for metropolitan planning and policy issues. It epitomizes the dynamism that metropolitan areas worldwide represent and provides a source of nationally and even internationally-recognized expertise to confront the challenges that such areas face,” Wernstedt said. “The New Metropolis Lecture Series provides a forum for officials from multiple levels of government, non-profit organizations, private industry, the wider public, students, and faculty to bring their unique perspectives together to learn and talk about some of these challenges.”

All of the lectures are held at Virginia Tech’s Old Town Alexandria campus and are free and open to the public.

New Metropolis Lecture Series podcasts can be accessed from this page.

Posted June 4, 2009