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Green buildings have gained increasing momentum during the past decade, evidenced by an uptick in green building construction worldwide. To facilitate green building development, it is crucial to understand the current geographical distribution of green buildings, thereby identifying emerging markets and opportunities for future growth. However, very few studies investigated the spatial characteristics of the green building market and the factors influencing the distribution of green buildings. By examining the national green building market in the United States, we studied the spatial distribution patterns and significant influencing factors of the county-level US green building markets. Cluster mapping and hot spots of the green building markets were identified through spatial autocorrelation analysis. A spatial regression model with high performance (R2 of 0.83) was developed to identify the significant influencing factors. We found a statistically significant clustering phenomenon of county-level US green building markets. The spatial error model reveals that three factors, namely, the number of housing units, gross domestic product, and the local green building company index, significantly influence the number of green buildings at the county level. We also found that the county-level green building market is influenced by these factors of not only the host county, but also the neighboring counties. Our findings provide a useful reference for stakeholders' decision-making process concerning local green building market development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban green spaces assume a pivotal role in city-level nature-based solutions for sustainable development. Parks, street greening, and community greens play a significant role in regulating the urban microenvironment, enhancing subjective well-being, and increasing regional attractiveness. Additionally, urban greenbelts have the capacity to control urban sprawl, thereby influencing housing prices and population distribution. However, the exisiting urban models have typically addressed greenbelts and other green spaces in isolation, resulting in fragmented planning strategies. This study aims to establish a novel spatial equilibrium model that accurately assesses the socio-economic effects resulting from the combined impact of various urban green spaces. This model encompasses green infrastructure components and carefully balances their appeal against the consequent rise in housing costs. The proposed model can elucidate the latent synergistic interactions among multiple urban green policies, which enables urban policymakers to access the multifaceted impacts of greening policy combinations. and suggests that combining different urban greening policies can mitigate the negative effects of a single policy type, such as population redistribution. A case study based on empirical data from Shanghai, China, has been employed to identify the additional value associated with diverse urban green spaces. The scenario analysis suggests that combining different urban greening policies can alleviate the negative impacts of urban population relocation. These findings furnish urban planners and policymakers with novel insights to develop the distribution strategy of urban green spaces via judicious policy integration. Consequently, the proposed model furnishes a novel academic standpoint on the role of urban green spaces within the context of nature-based solution for sustainable development of metropolitan conglomerates and nascent urban agglomerations amidst the evolving post-COVID-19 environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, the architecture, engineering, and construction industry has witnessed increasing growth in the green building market and continues to expect a promising future. Although companies in the industry have played a significant role in developing the green building market, scarce studies have analyzed changes in the market from the perspectives of these corporations. Also, few studies classify green building companies by characteristics. To fill these gaps of knowledge, we explored the characteristics of the US green building market from a corporate perspective, specifically investigating green contractors and design firms. We first collected data of 464 top US green building companies identified by the Engineering News-Record over the past decade and explored the development trend of the green building market, based on the green revenue generated by these companies. We found that the general growth trend in the US green building market in the past decade could be divided into three stages: a rapid-growth stage (2000–2008), a steady-growth stage (2009–2013), and a maturity and transformation stage (2014–2016). We then categorized the 464 organizations into three groups with distinct characteristics by k -means cluster analysis techniques, including mature green building companies, sector-oriented green building companies, and primary-stage green building companies. This study provides the academic and practitioner communities with a holistic understanding of the development of the US green building market from the view of burgeoning companies. Corporate-level management systems and sustainable practices of the three clusters of green building companies also provide guidance for construction companies in the various stages of transformation towards sustainability to adopt different strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]