UNEP climate campaign features One Planet Communities
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has featured One Planet Communities in their new 30WAYSin30DAYS climate change campaign. The campaign states: “UNEP’s 30 case studies prove that solutions to combat Climate Change are available, accessible and replicable”
Click here for more details
Watch the CNBC One Planet Communities Film here!
Crest Nicholson BioRegional Quintain’s OneBrighton, UK and Codding Enterprises’ Sonoma Mountain Village, USA, two of our fully endorsed One Planet Communities, were featured in last week’s CNBC Responsible Business Television series.
Pooran Desai OBE, the International Director for the OPC programme and Co-founder of BioRegional gave his views in the film on how to make sustainable living easy, attractive and affordable.
Geof Syphers from Codding Enterprises, the developer of Sonoma Mountain Village, USA, also shared his experience on creating a sustainable community.
Here is another chance to see what they said about these ground breaking sustainable projects around the world.
More Videos about One Planet Communities can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/1planetcommunities.
SOMO developer named best place to work
Santa Rosa. The North Bay Business Journal has recognized Codding Enterprises, the real estate developer behind Sonoma Mountain Village, as one of the best places to work in California’s North Bay region. An excerpt: Codding has transformed into an investment holding company with interests spanning construction, green building, clean energy and mixed-use community development…
The company provides the full spectrum of employee benefits, along with telecommuting, flextime and social events. “Wine and Worms” had the employees making composting worm bins, while enjoying local wines. Another event had them volunteering to plant native grasses along Cotati Creek. Read the full article in the North Bay Business Journal.
Oct 27 2010, Portland OR: One Planet Training at EcoDistricts Summit
Tuesday October 26 2010 @ 10:45am PST. Greg Searle of BioRegional North America and Indigo Teiwes of Carbon Advantage will be speaking on metrics and footprinting at the EcoDistrict Summit in Portland. The conference will focus on learning from integrated district-scale sustainability projects and will explore the topics of district utilities, green buildings, smart grid, transportation, urban habitat, water management, waste management and community development.
Wednesday October 27 2010 @ 9:00am PST. ONE PLANET TRAINING COURSE. Eco-districts + Eco-lifestyles = One Planet Communities. Learn from Geof Syphers, Chief Sustainability Officer at Sonoma Mountain Village, how this 1,900 unit masterplanned, solar-powered community is being designed to create an 83% reduction in total carbon footprint of its residents — and creating thousands of green jobs with its green business incubator. The workshop goes on to teach the practical implementation of the One Planet Living process, including strategies for Zero Carbon, Zero Waste, and Sustainable Food and Transportation. You will help create a Sustainability Action Plan for a real-world new project and learn the science and process of the One Planet Living program through its application. The program will emphasize “fostering” and “enabling” eco-lifestyles for residents in new build and existing building situations, which have been shown at the BedZED eco-neighborhood in the UK to have contributed 42% of total carbon savings. Learn from Greg Searle, Executive Director at BioRegional North America and a former BedZED resident, how this eco-lifestyles program succeeded and is evolving in One Planet Communities around the world. Read More.
United Nations report highlights One Planet Communities
A new United Nations report, TRENDS IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION, identifies 8 case studies of sustainable communities around the world – and 6 of the 8 are One Planet Communities! Sonoma Mountain Village, Mata de Sesimbra, Masdar City, Barangaroo, Panyu Jinshan, and BedZED all earn mention.The report was produced by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat.
Download Report (13MB)
New Urban News on SOMO: A melding of new urbanism and One Planet Communities
New Urban News, a monthly online magazine at the forefront of new urbanism, recently featured a long and interesting article about Sonoma Mountain Village.
An excerpt: Factory and office buildings that Hewlett-Packard erected in the 1980s — extremely strong, they were built to accom- modate any HP product line — will end up serving a variety of purposes, including manufacturing, offices, theater, retail and live/work units, says planner Laura Hall.
“It’s a little like a redevelopment retrofit lab,” Hall says of Sonoma Mountain Village. “They’re figuring it out here in hopes it can be replicated throughout California.” Because business and industrial parks like this are numerous and because demolishing them would waste resources and generate pollution, “the retrofit aspect is really important,” she believes. To make the entire site walkable, pedestrian connections are being cut through the large buildings, which otherwise pro- duce excessively long blocks. One building has been cut open to insert the equivalent of a paseo into its ground floor, Fisher notes. A farmers’ market will operate there in the winter.
Read the full article at New Urban News.
Sonoma Mountain Village Approved
An existing light industrial "big box" building at SOMO, with a facade newly retrofitted with Genesis SFS steel framing..
America’s first One Planet Community is well on its way to realization – Codding Enterprise’s Sonoma Mountain Village project has been approved for entitlement by the Rohnert Park City Council. Included in the plan are new fire and police stations, a broader range of housing types, greater sales-tax revenues, precedent-setting green and sustainable environmental practices and significant employment opportunities for the city.
The project is “exactly what we need in terms of stimulating economic development in this city,” Councilman Jake Mackenzie said.
Slated to begin construction on new homes in 2011-2012, the plan consists of 1,892 homes and over 825,000 square feet of retail, commercial, and hotel space. There will also be 27 acres of open space, which is distributed among 12 small parks and a village square. The plan is expected to be built in three to six phases over the next 12 to 20 years.
Over 4,000 jobs will be created in SOMO which recently was named one of six Innovation Hubs in the state of California. Some of the companies that have located at the SOMO village are AT&T, Comcast, DC Power Systems and Genesis SFS (formerly Codding Steel Frame Solutions).
Codding Enterprises, the owner/developer of the project, strictly follows One Planet Communities guidelines.
More information about the Sonoma Mountain Village can be found at http://www.sonomamountainvillage.com/.
#1 US solar distributor relocates to Sonoma Mountain Village
Synergy Solar owner Jeff Mathias, left, installs a system with panels supplied by DC Power. (credit Synergy Solar)
ROHNERT PARK. In another leasing success for One Planet developer Codding Enterprises, DC Power has moved into 30,000 square feet of office and warehouse space in the Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park, and added 55 employees in the last six months. According to vice president of marketing Chris Phipps, at least 20 more will join the staff of 140 before the end of the year. DC Power supplies solar panels and system products to most of the North Bay’s solar providers and distributes local clean-energy products to 5,000 contractor customers throughout the U.S., Canada and South America. Read full article in the North Bay Business Journal.
Jun 9 2010, San Francisco: One Planet Panel at Pacific Coast Builders Conference
2010 Pacific Coast Builders Conference, June 9-11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
June 9 @ 11am: Greg Searle will join David Nelson, Senior Vice President of Land Development for the A.G. Spanos Companies and Michel St. Pierre of architecture firm Gensler in a panel about master planning a One Planet Community at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco.
May 21 2010, Atlanta: Congress for New Urbanism: Life Beyond LEED-ND
Friday May 21 2010 @ 230pm – Congress for New Urbanism, Atlanta, Georgia
Greg Searle will join representatives from the Living Building Challenge, STAR Community Index, and EarthCraft Communities for a panel on “Life Beyond LEED-ND: Sustainable Communities” that compares and contrasts these approaches and One Planet Communities with LEED-ND.
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"Our partnership with BioRegional has helped us to deliver high quality homes and lifestyle packages for residents and visitors to our developments. Sustainable solutions such as fossil fuel-free transport, ecosystem restoration and new building technologies are essential to meeting this target, and to Pelicano's success in the market place."
Joaquim Mendes Duarte
Chief Executive
Pelicano