Assessing Neighborhood Livability: Evidence from LEED® for Neighborhood Development and New Urbanist Communities

Abstract

LEED® for Neighborhood Development has been rapidly adopted as the de-facto green neighborhood standard and is now used to measure the sustainability of neighborhood design in North America and around the world. Similar to previous LEED® green building rating systems, LEED®ND is heavily reliant on physical & environmental design criteria (such as compact urban form and transit accessibility), and is based on an expert-generated point system. LEED®ND excels at measuring ‘environmental sustainability’ through its stringent criteria; however, it fails to critically address important livability factors, namely socio-cultural and socio-economic factors. Furthermore, no study has critically examined how LEED®ND could better incorporate these missing factors through post-occupancy analysis. In fact, very little research at all has been done that examines the role of livability and social sustainability in LEED-ND neighborhoods. This paper assesses livability in four North American neighborhoods: two LEED®ND and two control suburban New Urbanist cases. This article also provides a series of recommendations for the rating system based on key survey findings.