Comparative Analysis of Material Criteria in Green Certification Rating Systems and Urban Design Guidelines

Green certification rating systems have been developed for building construction and renovation of an existing building from 1990s by international building assessment tools such as LEED, BREEAM and DGNB. Green certification rating systems for buildings have been upgraded and recently adapted to the urban design and planning. LEED Neighborhood Development, BREEAM Communities, and DGNB Urban Districts are examples of green certification rating system implemented respectively in USA, UK and Germany. As the notion of green urban design gains more significance, city governments have started to set its own green standards in urban design guidelines, based upon studies of green certification rating systems. Recently various issues on materials and resources such as material selection, material recycling, and resource protection are recognized in urban design principles as well as building designs, with a strong relation to other environmental problems. This paper focuses on comparative analysis of how material criteria are embedded for sustainable urban design in LEED ND, BREEAM Communities and DGNB-UD with urban design guidelines recently developed and issued for multiple cities worldwide including cities in Korea. The paper examines differences of material assessment criteria, evaluation parameters and methods, descriptions in green certification rating systems and urban design guidelines. In the analysis, materials are categorized into: (1) building materials (2) infrastructure materials (3) landscape materials, and management of different categories is assessed in existing urban planning and design procedures and practices. In conclusion, overview of material criteria is discussed to discover limits and possibilities of material assessment in sustainable neighborhood development.