Forecasting the Future of SustainableDevelopment

Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 3:09PM

Your contributions are welcome, but until then, my thoughts: What is a trend? Whatis on its way? What we might expect in sustainable development? 1. Government will be the prime driver of sustainable development, via state-level legislation that mandates green building standards at the regional and local level. 2. The cost-benefit analysis of green buildings will increasingly be evident with increasing water and energy prices. 3. Research, technological advances, and building operating histories will soon persuade all stakeholders that green buildings are more profitable than traditional non-green buildings. 4. There will be legal challenges to determine whethergreen building mandates fit withinpolice power jurisprudence. 5. The variety of government economic and planning tools (e.g., subsidies, tax credits, density concessions) will increasingly influence green development. 6. International law will pressurenations to impose sustainable development regulations for private sector building practices. 7. Environmental education will be integrated into all levels of education and throughout all programs. 8. The use of open standards Building Information Modeling (BIM) will be the accepted shared knowledge resource for the life cycle of a facility. 9. BIM will be THE tool to connect multiple disciplines.