GreenPrint - enabling sustainable communities

Today a key challenge for planners, designers and developers is ensuring that the places in which we live, work and play are sustainable in every sense. BRE have advocated this for decades and have over recent years been helping design teams maximise their sites’ sustainability potential via BRE’s consultation process - GreenPrint.

GreenPrint can be viewed as an iterative process, involving facilitated workshops which bring together a range of stakeholders. Using the GreenPrint benchmarking tool, the BRE team engage with and enable project teams to set objectives, prioritise sustainability issues, drive innovative solutions and demonstrate their sustainability credentials to a wider audience.

 Because every site is unique, the GreenPrint process takes account of the particular opportunities and constraints of each site and focuses on issues that project teams can influence whilst supporting creativity. It looks to address the spaces between buildings and the design process; typically covering the following eight categories:

• Climate change: mitigation and adaptation to current and future climate change impacts
• Resources: efficient use of materials, water, energy and the reduction and reuse of waste, both in construction and operation
• Transport: provision of multiple transport options and local facilities
• Ecology: protection and enhancement of existing biodiversity and ecological value
• Business: supporting local economic wellbeing through employment, skills and services
• Community: ensuring vibrant, diverse, integrated and inclusive communities
• Placemaking: provision of new places that are appropriate to the local context, safe and engaging within the public and semi-public realm
• Buildings:  creation of high quality, sustainable and adaptable buildings

Scenario testing using the GreenPrint tool helps the project team visualise their sustainability credentials, challenge their plans and investigate improvements in individual categories. Used iteratively, the final project team outputs are a more rigorous suite of development proposals and an effective way to demonstrate to communities and planners the proposed developments’ sustainability credentials.