As Director of Online Services at BuildingGreen, Inc., Jim Newman has led the design and development of the BuildingGreen Suite of online tools from BuildingGreen, Inc.—the well regarded publishers of Environmental Building News and the GreenSpec product directory. As part of this work, Mr. Newman has spent several years researching how architecture, engineering, and construction firms integrate sustainable design into their firms' practice. The initial results of this research were published in Environmental Building News, in May of 2004, under the title "Greening Your Firm: Building Sustainable Design Capabilities." Jim Has a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design (Architectural Design) from MIT, and a Masters of Management Science from Lehigh University. In and around those degrees, Jim ran a design/build company in the Boston area, and participated in six software and web start-ups.

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Jerelyn and Alex Wilson of BuildingGreen

Back in March BuildingGreen was introduced to The New Amsterdam Project , a bicycle trucking firm in Cambridge, Ma. We tried them out moving our convention booth and materials in and out the NESEA BuildingEnergy 08 conference in Boston. If you attended BuildingEnergy this year, you may have seen their red bike-truck parked out front of the Seaport World Trade Center.

We think this is a great development in transportation for cities like Boston. No carbon emissions, no diesel fumes, much easier on roads and traffic, and fast and efficient. Here is what they say: "NAP provides human-powered pick-up and delivery services for local businesses, organizations and universities. We can provide your business with full service route delivery- inclusive of drivers, fossil-fuel free vehicles, and unparalleled marketing opportunities for your business on our unique, environmentally friendly trucks."

Here is what the Christian Science Monitor says: "In a city choked with diesel-spewing delivery trucks, the fledgling New Amsterdam Project (NAP), a Cambridge-based cargo-hauling company, is pedaling toward profits aboard an emissions-free fleet of urban 'cargo trikes.' "

We say... Look for the New Amsterdam Project cargo trike at the upcoming AIA National Convention at the Boston Convention Center. BuildingGreen will be using that cute red trike to move our material to and from the convention center again.

Last week was great for learning about positive approaches to solving our collective climate change problems. First, I attended the MassImpact: Cities and Climate Change symposium at MIT on Friday (March 28, 2008). Then I got to see Michael Singer present some of his work at the down2earth event in Boston on Saturday.

Pretty jam-packed.

Jaime Lerner lead the MassImpact event through a visual description of his understanding of the ways that urban livability and vitality are directly related to reducing environmental impact and creating regenerative built environments. Jaime's perspective is summed up in his statement, "Every city that has a good quality of life... is sustainable."

Here's Jaime speaking at last year's TED conference.

In Jaime's view, many policymakers and politicians don't have a very "generous" view of their cities. His goal is to bring the place and its inhabitants together into a joyful community. Jaime's commandments for great cities:

1. Use cars less
2. Separate your garbage
3. Live closer to work
4. Multi use all of the city — don't have parts of the city that are used only a small part of the time
5. Sustainability is the relationship between use and waste — don't waste things

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Notes from BuildingGreen's breakfast gathering at Greenbuild for partners and Sustainable Design Directors from forward-thinking firms around the U.S.

Overarching Issues
Several topics seemed to permeate the conversations among all of the breakfast attendees.
• Expanding the Reach of Green Design: Many attendees discussed how to get green design skills into the hands of more people in their firm, or how to bring these ideas to their interior designers, or even how to how to make relevant green product information available to their Asian-based design teams.
• Understanding Building Performance: This topic came up in several forms throughout breakfast. The contexts ranged from defining what metrics to track to how to share project performance information within each firm and among firms. Everyone was interested in learning how to tell when they'd gotten it right.
• Meeting the Architecture 2030 Challenge: This was the topic that we at BuildingGreen had brought to the breakfast, following pre-breakfast conversations with Charles Brown of sfL+a Architects and Kathy Wardle of Perkins + Will. The topic seemed to resonate on many levels with all of the breakfast attendees.

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