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Aggarwala Urges 'Hard Changes' in Green Mindset

NEW YORK CITY—The Bloomberg administration's green policy director said Tuesday that sustainability must look beyond a property's design and construction.

By Paul Bubny | Updated on September 22, 2009

NEW YORK CITY—Having overcome “a major hurdle” in terms of industry and public acceptance, the green building community now needs to address questions that go beyond a property’s design and construction, keynote speaker Rohit Aggarwala told an Urban Green Council audience here Tuesday morning.

Director of long-term planning and sustainability for the Bloomberg administration, Aggarwala encouraged his audience to require “some hard changes” in the way green buildings fit into the overall picture. For example, he said the green community should consider whether a property is truly green if there are no leasing requirements in place to ensure it’s operated in an eco-friendly manner. At present, there is no standard in place to determine the owner’s or tenant’s responsibilities for sustainable operation, and Aggarwala said it’s not government’s place to step in and set that standard.

Aggarwala noted that unlike with any other architectural movement of the past several decades, the green movement has not asked the public to accept that a sustainable building may look different. Instead, sustainable design has had to co-exist with the prevailing “glass box” format of office towers.

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