{"id":36,"date":"2018-02-09T16:05:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T21:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/?page_id=36"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:10:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:10:00","slug":"animating-performance-zoning-at-sustainabilitys-competitive-edge","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/in-print\/volume-29-issue-4-summer-2017\/animating-performance-zoning-at-sustainabilitys-competitive-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Animating Performance Zoning at Sustainability\u2019s Competitive Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This Article argues that economic competitiveness compels cities and towns to\u00a0reimagine their zoning codes by incorporating technological advances into land\u00a0planning and to implement resource sustainability<sup>1<\/sup> in commercial real estate\u00a0development. The U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (Twenty-first\u00a0session) near Paris hosted a program, \u201cBuildings Day at COP21\u201d on December\u00a03, 2015, advancing this thesis. Buildings Day\u2019s themes included the proposition\u00a0that improving building operating efficiency is instrumental in reducing global\u00a0energy demand and emissions.<sup>2<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>This Article asserts that the optimal means to accomplish this \u201cdecarbonization\u201d\u00a0of the built environment at the local government level is to adopt\u00a0a performance zoning platform\u2014a type of American land use regulation with\u00a0origins in the mid-20th Century but widely overlooked since the late 1980s. Such\u00a0a platform facilitates engineering resolutions to problems accompanying increased\u00a0urban core density in transit-oriented and other intensely occupied\u00a0districts. Its re-introduction is desirable because performance zoning will better\u00a0address negative land use externalities than conventional Euclidean zoning, as\u00a0will be explained below. This Article argues that the imperative of community\u00a0competitiveness, optimized when millennial-managed enterprises occupy and\u00a0manage resource sustainability-focused urban developments, is animated best\u00a0through performance zoning codes.<\/p>\n<p>This Article proceeds in Part II by exploring how performance zoning\u00a0induces municipal sustainability gains by reviewing land use tenets of\u00a0community competitiveness while also incentivizing private developers to\u00a0leverage sustainability in order to increase profitability and institutional\u00a0reputations. Next, in Part III, it reviews community competitiveness in the\u00a0frame of sustainability, and in Part IV it describes the millennial generation\u2019s\u00a0consciousness of sustainability\u2019s benefits and the modern worker\u2019s facility\u00a0with sustainability technologies. In Part V, the Article identifies technology\u00a0drivers of energy savings and other sustainability tools readily accessible to\u00a0millennial professionals and suitable for incorporation into commercial\u00a0projects, thus propelling interest in environmentally-advanced building performance\u00a0in competitive cities. The final two parts inform readers of how\u00a0technological innovation in design tools and monitoring systems enables the\u00a0development community, together with local spatial regulators, to expand\u00a0forthcoming urban projects\u2019 sustainability features and systems employing\u00a0environmentally sound, flexible spatial regulations. Finally, this Article\u00a0argues that a new era of heightened sustainability consciousness, embodied\u00a0in performance zoning codes, will improve quality of life and spur democratization\u00a0of local governance for both the millennial \u201cpilots\u201d of environmental\u00a0awareness and citizens alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Article argues that economic competitiveness compels cities and towns to\u00a0reimagine their zoning codes by incorporating technological advances into land\u00a0planning and to implement resource sustainability1 in commercial real estate\u00a0development. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":62,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-36","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1766,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36\/revisions\/1766"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}