As socially conscious “green buildings” become the standard in world-class architecture, it has also become one of the fastest-growing design and construction concepts. Whether motivated by cost efficiencies, energy usage, quality of life or modern materials, developers and architects have been building green-certified buildings at a rate that has been doubling every three years around the world.
With the goal of better understanding how these green buildings translate to green “global cities,” Singapore-based growth strategy firm Solidiance recently conducted a study to see which 10 international cities came out on top.
To rank each of the global cities, criteria were developed to measure the total number of green buildings within the urban boundary, along with initiatives put in place by the city to foster a sustainable and healthy green building movement. Specifically, these criteria included city-wide green building landscapes, green building efficiency and performance, green building policies and targets and green city culture and environment.
Unsurprisingly, the green architecture movement in Paris has helped propel it to the number one global city for green buildings, while Singapore and London weren’t too far behind at two and three, respectively. Following the top three were Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, Dubai, Beijing, and finally, Shanghai.
Paris—the number one ranked global city—has the lowest CO2 emissions and energy consumption from buildings, thanks to projects like its Clichy-Batignolles eco-district. (Image courtesy of Tolila+ Gilliland Atelier d’Architecture.)
Although some cities may have ranked higher than others in specific categories, the rankings were based on the total score across all four measurement categories.
“Green buildings present themselves globally as an opportunity for generating sustainable growth,” according to the whitepaper. “When considering just some of the benefits of building green, it is easy to see why this is a strategic initiative worth pursuing for many cities and countries that are trying to mitigate their negative footprint on the environment, reduce operational costs and sometimes add additional sources of revenue (e.g. eco-tourism, competitiveness, green job creation, etc.).”