The recent annual announcement of a 16.1% growth in the green roof industry for 2009, published by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, came with the listing of the Top 10 cities for green roofs, with again Portland not making the list. From the press release: “In the Top Ten Cities List, Chicago led the way for the sixth year in a row, with more than 500,000 square feet installed, followed by Washington, DC, co-host of the June 1 & 2, 2010, Regional Green Roofs & Walls Conference and Training, at 190,000 square feet installed, respectively… We are definitely seeing the emergence of more public policies and direct investment that support the implementation of green roof infrastructure due to its many public benefits, such as stormwater management, air quality improvement, and reducing the urban heat island effect. Policies in cities such as Chicago, New York, Washington, Portland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Toronto, to name a few, are making a difference”, said Jeffrey L. Bruce, Chair, GRHC.”
While I’m not disputing the numbers (and incentives in Chicago and DC are great drivers of the market), it’s a bit of a mystery how Portland and Seattle don’t make this list as a mere 50,000 s.f. would allow one to crack the top ten. This is evident in the last two years – as you can see from the 2008 survey results which is totally a mystery, as I can count 2-3 projects in each city that easily add up to over an acre, and I’m guessing well over 100,000 s.f. (In fact the latest large ecoroof for the Gates Foundation in Seattle is over 60,000 s.f. for one project).
While this is an industry survey, perhaps that’s the issue, as the Pacific Northwest ecoroof industry is much less driven by large manufacturers and a more ‘buy local/support local’ mentality that builds our ecoroof numbers and our local economy. The overall growth of the industry is wonderful, and our team works with any number of local and national industry leaders for roofing, and ecoroof products from a variety of suppliers. The goal is project specific, not to promote a particular project – to use the right system for the project. So, if there’s some bias towards cities or particular industries in the formulation of this data, then it should be much more obvious in the results. If that’s the case, we think it’s OK we aren’t on this particular list.
It would be nice to have a summary of local square footages installed for comparison, just so we know what the real score is.
Or maybe it’s just that we call them ecoroofs?
