Desert Vernacular: Green Building and Ecological Design in Scottsdale, Arizona - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 494

FIGURE 28.5
Gabion tiered walls in a section of the Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt. The seven and a half miles of lush parkland
provide lakes, golf courses, swimming pools, many recreational facilities, and an extensive multiuse path sys-
tem for skating, biking, walking, and jogging.
Arizona's first green building program through a collaborative effort of a citizen
advisory committee, staff and the support of city's executive leadership. Originally
focusing on new single family residential construction, the program added criteria for
commercial projects in 2001 and multifamily projects in 2005. Scottsdale developed
its own voluntary green building rating criteria based on the geographic and climatic
conditions of the northern Sonoran Desert region. The rating criteria are structured as
a flexible, point-based system, containing both mandatory and optional green building
measures organized by categories.
The city provides technical assistance, expedited plan review, educational programs
and promotional incentives to residential and commercial builders, architects, developers,
and project owners to encourage them to participate in the program. Public acceptance
has continually matured to the point that by 2006, one of every three new home building
permits was approved under city's green building program. The City has also developed
residential remodeling guidelines for retrofitting existing housing in a more sustainable
and environmentally responsible manner.
In March 2005, Scottsdale became the first city in the country to require all new City
buildings, and major renovations to be designed, constructed and certified at the LEED
Gold level of certification under the U.S. Green Building Council. 18 This groundbreaking
policy represents a major commitment in city leadership toward achieving a healthy,
sustainable, and desert appropriate developed community. Scottsdale's Granite Reef
Senior Center (LEED Gold) along with a downtown fire station (LEED Platinum), trailhead
facility (LEED Platinum), and library (LEED Gold) are among the first city buildings
constructed under this policy (Figure 28.7). At the time of this publication, there were over
nine LEED certified city facilities.
In July 2011, Scottsdale adopted the International Green Building Construction Code
(IgCC) as a voluntary code to replace the city's existing commercial green building rating
program. The IgCC is a new overlay code designed to work in unison within the existing
framework of building codes. It was developed by the International Code Council (ICC),