michelle kaufmann designs

mkLotus design by Michelle Kaufmann Designs/ photo by John Swain

They say that when a “For Dummies” book comes out in your field (i.e. Estate Planning for Dummies, Blues Guitar for Dummies, Baby Signing for Dummies) then it’s a very good thing: you can be sure you’ve got an established, interested market out there. So the recent launch of my friend Eric Corey Freed’s addition to the list, Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies, has all of us at MKD ecstatic. However, we are savvy enough to not rely on the existence of this fantastic book as our sole metric for how well green building is doing as an industry. We like numbers, too. For example, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has reported that the number of U.S. cities with green building programs has increased 418 percent since 2003. Not bad.

Also not bad: 92 cities with populations greater than 50,000 presently have established green building programs, up from 22 programs just four years ago. And the AIA predicts that more than 130 of the 661 cities examined will have a green building program in place by the end of 2008. These numbers really underline the enormous importance of city and county planning departments. Planning department officials, people like Alex Hinds who is head of Marin County’s department in charge of planning and with whom we recently had a conversation (posted yesterday), have the power to set the standard for how buildings will be built and how green they must be. They also have the even greater power to educate and enable the average homeowner to go green.

Finding out what your local planning department is doing in the way of greening can be super valuable, not just for the environment but for you! For example, in Portland, Oregon you can get tax credits for green building projects as well as for projects on energy conservation, recycling, renewable energy, and cleaner fuels. Chicago offers $5,000 grants through their Green Roof Program to help with the installation of green roofs, including those on residential properties.

You can find out more about what your city is doing to go green and to help you go green by visiting your city’s website and clicking on the link to the planning department. Or you could also just pay a visit to the fabulous civil servants of the planning department and see if you can get information and answers face to face. If you do all this and feel that your city isn’t doing enough in the way of greening then you can take the initiative and start pushing for change. Get a petition going, organize a town hall meeting, talk to your local paper. After all, democracy means government by the people, for the people and if the people demand greening then there will be greening! You could even buy a copy of Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies as a gift for the good people of your local planning department