Small City, Big Impact: How West Hollywood is casting itself as a green leader

NEWSWEEK. Oct 18, 2007. By Andrew Murr.

Being green means different things in different parts of the country. In St. Louis, Seattle and other places, eco-friendly construction standards apply only to city-owned or city-funded buildings. In Boston and a few other cities, green construction codes also apply to major commercial or residential developments.

So which American city thinks it can lay claim to the most comprehensive green building standards? Look west to tiny city of West Hollywood, Calif., a 1.9-square-mile patch of Los Angeles with 37,000 people, making it the city with the highest population density west of the Mississippi. Starting October 1, every private and public development must meet the city's ambitious new green building requirements. The policy includes new construction, rehabs and additions. The only exemptions: duplexes and single-family homes. Requiring so many of the city's real estate projects to meet green building standards puts West Hollywood in the forefront of the move to thrust eco-friendly design closer to the mainstream of architecture and planning.

According to city officials, thinking about smaller projects was the only way to make a big dent in West Hollywood's carbon footprint. "We thought it was important to involve everybody [to be part of the solution]," says councilmember Abbe Land, coauthor of the new ordinance.