Assess livability, health and smartness of your city
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has a strong vision of a sustainable built environment within a generation and is transforming the communities where we live, work, learn and play. This vision is simple—that buildings, communities and cities will regenerate and sustain the health and vitality of all life within a generation. USGBC believes that this vision is only possible through the development of smart cities at a global scale.
In order to ensure a sustainable future for all, we must adopt smart city and grid policies, implement technologies that improve the performance of our cities, continue the transition from the concept of green buildings to green cities, and incorporate wellness and sustainable sites into city planning and development. USGBC works towards market transformation for the built environment through LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the most widely used green building program in the world.
A global, regional and local mass market transformation tool, LEED helps us to accelerate better, high-performing, healthier and sustainable buildings, communities, and cities and it is a solution to current environmental challenges and a tool that improves human health. Today, there more than 170,000 square meters certified to LEED every day, more than 32,500 LEED certified commercial projects representing more than 451 square meters of space, and LEED projects in more than 162 countries.
The international demand for LEED also continues to grow: India is now the third largest market for LEED outside of the United States, with more than 2,150 projects participating in LEED, comprising more than 82.33 million gross square meters of space. It is anticipated that the trend of major growth in green building in India will continue at a strong space over the coming years.
In response to this, Green Business Certification Institute Pvt. Ltd. (GBCI) is poised to further the global growth of LEED and GBCI’s other complementary rating systems in India and the rest of the Southeast Asia region. Established in 2008,GBCI is the premiere organization independently recognizing excellence in green business industry performance and practice globally. GBCI exclusively administers project certifications and professional credentials and certificates for LEED, as well as PEER, WELL, EDGE, SITES, GRESB and Parksmart.
In order to achieve this goal of smart cities at a global scale, USGBC has taken an integrative approach to sustainable development and city planning through the development of a new, innovative performance platform. This platform evaluates a city’s ability to implement energy efficiency, water preservation, waste management, health and wellness, sustainable sites and other important infrastructural elements of a city.
This performance platform allows cities all over the globe a credible way to measure, compare, manage and improve the performance of their urban infrastructure. It allows key decision-makers around the world to identify and guide the planning, implementation, management and operations of sustainable, high-performing cities. Green buildings—or LEED certified buildings—are just one subset of this platform.
We are excited to bring this platform to your building, to your community and to your city, and we encourage interested cities to test this performance platform out for free and share their data with info-india@gbci.org.
In support of USGBC’s sustained efforts to acknowledge the transformation happening place in our cities, we challenge cities around the world to join us and participate in this performance platform. Participating cities can compare and compete, sharing data and benchmarking their city performance to provide a more sustainable, healthier, livable environment for their citizens. Here’s how to get involved:
The performance platform will give cities around the world the power to positively impact their communities. To ensure that citizen health and wellness is a right, not a privilege. To ensure everyone has the opportunity to learn in a green school. To ensure everyone has access to clean and reliable energy. To develop more sustainable, healthy buildings, communities and cities, and to benchmark these so that we raise the bar on how they are planned, developed and measured.
