By Sherif Goubran, Ottawa Citizen, June 10, 2019
In the last few decades, governments have focused a great deal of attention on the impact of buildings on our environment.
(...)Building “green” is a prerequisite for mitigating climate change. But this approach misses a key point.
In a purely efficiency-focused approach, you can find yourself comparing a multi-storey parking garage with an elementary school, or a suburban strip-mall with a library building. In such comparisons, you can even find the parking garage to be more energy-efficient than the school.
But in the big picture, what impact do energy-efficient parking garages have on climate change, our cities and even our health? Perhaps the greenest parking garage is the one that is never built.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/goubran-lets-build-sustainably-not-just-green