Green Building is a Neighborhood Thing – Like New Urbanism

By Don Browne

When you see what’s trending about green buildings, you are often inundated with big houses in large suburban lots or rustic locations with no other homes around them. You also see “small house” custom designs made from the finest materials that might cost more than your three-bedroom home, and they are also located in rural or wooded lots.

However, effective green building is most needed in traditional neighborhoods and higher-density communities (where most of us humans live), and the price tag must be affordable.

Thanks to the New Urbanism movement and the polymeric exterior products industry, designers can have the best of both worlds in shaping beautiful homes and neighborhoods using almost 100% recyclable materials. These same quality materials, in fact, will stay on homes for the next 50-75 years to maximize resource and energy efficiency.

On page 48 of the Polymeric Exterior Products Association’s (PEPA) Architectural Design for Traditional Neighborhoods by Korkut Onaran, Fernando Pagés Ruiz, Ronnie Pelusio and Tom Lyon, the designer can see why vinyl siding and polymeric exterior products are the optimal choice for green building.

It starts with the environmental impacts of traditional neighborhood design principles that transcend material choices: compactness, connectivity and walkability. It also shares methods for using modern materials to maximize energy efficiency in traditional neighborhoods whose homes were designed for effective energy management in the days before air conditioning was a thing. Finally, this page cites the BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) analysis, which shows that vinyl siding is second only to cedar siding in resource efficiency. And since cedar siding is disqualified by its higher cost and combustible risk, vinyl siding is the top choice, especially considering that fiber cement has 200 more times the environmental impact, and brick and mortar are even higher.

Since this book was published in 2019, we have seen a couple of significant developments in home building that further support the argument for traditional neighborhood projects specified with polymeric claddings as the ultimate green building solution.

First, the cost of building materials has skyrocketed since the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, negatively impacting the affordability of workforce housing. In this current economic climate, vinyl siding may be the best option for green homebuilding. Second, changes in the developing energy code call for continuous insulation and vinyl siding is the best installation choice for ensuring maximum energy efficiency for continuous insulation.

To learn more about the benefits of vinyl siding for green homebuilding, visit our website!

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Don Browne is a writer, entrepreneur and local legislator who believes that the power of words can change the world. He provides unique writing services for clients in the construction, health care, IT and hospitality sectors. He has a passion for small business and start-ups, as well as writing about Irish history, family and corporate biographies. As a homeowner and father of four who is passionate about community development, Don looks forward to writing more about the exciting possibilities of creating traditional neighborhoods and more sustainable communities using modern materials.