I have an out of town couple who are thinking about buying as much acreage as they can and putting a simple green home up with a small footprint. They will be stewards for the property as long as they live there and are considering utilizing a conservation easement to preserve the property in perpetuity. The other day though Terri (the wife) told me she had been talking with a green architect and that he told her that if she were in sync with being Green she would buy or build something close to town like green condo with easy access to public transportation and stores for shopping that she could walk to. Reduced driving would also be good for the environment by reducing carbon emissions. The architect was basically talking about principles of New Urbanism which I totally support and which Joan Whitebrookrecently posted a blog on.
Terri was now a bit confused about what type of land they should be looking for and asked what I thought. I did have to think a minute because we have had the same discussion among the Eco Consultant Association a while back in trying to determine criteria for Green Home listings in the Asheville, North Carolina area. Some agents were finding it difficult to say a Green home with a huge footprint ( over 2100 square feet) located far away from town was really that Green even if it did have a lot of energy efficient systems and used sustainable building materials. We came to the conclusion that each type of home was indeed green but in a different way and that we would need to develop a green rating system to let customers know how homes were being ranked on the green scale. (I do like Gary Smiths green color scale! )
What I ended up telling Terry was that in her and husbands case their wanting to buy a large parcel of land and basically preserve it was definitely a highly valued Green Initiative in my book and that the way land was been developed here in the Western North Carolina mountains I would rather they protect the outlying land now since the city land will always be there. Now seeing that Asheville, was just named the top relocation destinationin the country only reinforces my view in regards to saving our view-sheds and mountain slopes from over development.
So what would you have told Terri?
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