SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA-New Songdo City overlooks the Yellow Sea, but creators of the $25-billion enclave favor association with the color green, as underscored by inclusion in a pilot program run by the US Green Building Council. The initiative will result in a new LEED certificate covering entire neighborhoods, and the masterplanned, ground-up New Songdo City will establish criteria for the standard, explains Carl Seaholm of Gale International, lead developers for the multi-faceted project.

"We don't want to just say we are green--we want to prove we are, and this is the best way for us to do that," Seaholm tells GlobeSt.com. The effort involves application for a LEED-ND certificate in which New Songdo City would secure the first citation issued for an entire city. Although stressing that Gale and partner Posco E&C are eager to work with the recently formed Korean Green Building Council, Seaholm says the USGBC LEED certificate currently carries the most validity of any such group globally. Acceding that it can be both expensive and time-consuming, Gale's EVP for international relations says surviving the rigorous USGBC process would put New Songdo City in an esteemed category, and is a goal all members of the project team are enthused about achieving.

"They like to have one foot in the future, and so there is a lot of excitement about this," says Seaholm. The rating process will assess density, proximity to transit, environmental preservation, pedestrian friendliness and materials used in the design, all areas that the architects at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates considered from the outset, according to Seaholm and others active in the planning. "Green principles permeate Songdo's DNA, making it a model of the best environmental practices not only today, but also adaptable for future challenges," says Christine Todd Whitman, the former US Environmental Affairs administrator who is now a member of the Gale International Advisory Board.