Adele Houghton and Matt Kiefer think the real estate industry needs to do a better job of understanding the health effects of development. In a recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review called “How Real Estate Development Can Boost Urban Health,” they propose using a public health method called health situation analysis to define, measure and address public health issues in a context-sensitive way, especially in low-income communities and communities of color who are often most at-risk. When applied to commercial real estate development, they argue health situation analysis can transform the public approval process by centering neighborhood health and well-being in ways that are clear to local residents and community members.

Matt and Adele also suggest that their approach can reorient value creation in real estate from the property itself to a project’s broader effects on the surrounding neighborhood. They see health situation analysis redefining value so that the most profitable project is also the one that provides the greatest benefits to local populations and the planet itself.

Adele Houghton is president of Biositu, LLC, and a lecturer at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she earned her PhD. Matthew Kiefer is a director of Goulston & Storrs, a Boston-based law firm, and a lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Toronto was the first North American city to pass a green roof law, in 2009, requiring new buildings or additions that are greater than 21,000 square feet to cover between 20 and 60 percent of their buildings with vegetation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s General Services Administration has over 80 buildings with green roofs, spanning approximately 2.2 million square feet, which is about 48 football fields of green roofs. This includes what is believed to be the second largest green roof in the world: the U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC, about as large as 10 football fields.

Today in the US, there is more than 17.5 million square feet of planted roof surfaces, which is music to the ears of my guest, Alan Burchell.

Alan launched his company Urbanstrong in 2014 to promote rooftop development strategies that integrate nature back into cities. Based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Urbanstrong provides finance, engineering, design, and construction services for green roofs and to date has installed hundreds of thousands of square feet of green roof and wall projects throughout the northeast, on schools, offices, restaurants, apartment buildings, and brownstones.

Alan is an engineer by training, with an MBA and a masters in sustainability management from Columbia University. He previously worked for the wind energy company Siemens Gamesa and is cofounder of the New York Agriculture Collective.

In this episode, Alan joins me to discuss the state of green roof installations in the US and abroad, the challenges as well as the most promising strategies to a greener rooftop future.

In our last three-person episode, we explored the future of work in the post-pandemic, climate age, about office space and commuting patterns. These changes are happening in real time, before our very eyes.

The same can be said about the future of cities writ large, not just office buildings and commutes, but cities as a whole: housing, transportation, retail space, parks, institutions. All seem to be in a state of flux, at best, crisis at worse.

Are we in a transitory part of the cycle or the beginning of a bigger transition, an evolutionary leap in urbanism and patterns of human settlement? And what does that mean for cities of different sizes and cultures, coastal, heartland, red, blue, and so on. Where do politics fit in? And what about the so-called “Urban Doom Loop?” Is it hype or reality?

In this episode, we talk about these things, about the cities we think will thrive going forward and those that might struggle, the sink or swim of our urban future.