Canada & USA:
Sonoma Mountain Village:
North America's first endorsed
One Planet Community

Sonoma Mountain Village is a 200-acre Zero Carbon, Zero Waste development in Rohnert Park, California designed with a philosophy centered on restoration instead of minimizing harm. Careful design and social marketing will intentionally foster a "local-first" culture of healthier, more sustainable lifestyles.

If everyone lived as Americans do we would need 5.3 planets to support us.

Codding and BioRegional North America are working together to create a process to reduce the ecological footprint of the entire 1900-home community down to a truly sustainable, one planet level by 2020.

This is the first community in North America to sufficiently set ambitious targets within the guiding framework of the Ten Principles of One Planet Communities.

Forty miles north of San Francisco, Sonoma Mountain Village combines new urbanism with deep sustainability in the redevelopment of an industrial site. Centered on a town square that adaptively reuses 700,000 square feet of buildings clustered around a new daily farmer's market, the community is planned to ensure every resident is no more than a five-minute walk to groceries, restaurants, day care and other amenities offering local, sustainable, and fair trade products and services. The pedestrian scale extends into the commercial core where more than 500 people already work in renovated buildings; a long-term balance between housing and jobs is planned.

The developer, Codding Enterprises, is making a replicable and scalable model for truly sustainable construction, operation, and lifestyles. Codding and BioRegional will monitor the project for progress against ambitious sustainability targets each year until 2020. Many of these targets are outlined in the following summary.

Sustainability Summary:

1. Zero Carbon - Codding's goal is to reduce carbon emissions in building use by 100% by 2020, cutting 4.5 tons CO2 emissions per resident. New buildings are designed to beat California's stringent Title 24 Energy Code by 80%. Existing buildings are getting retrofit to reduce energy use by 50% or more. However, such measures fall short: an energy efficient LEED Platinum Sonoma Mountain Village would still generate 16,870 tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases each year. Codding are therefore investing in a portfolio of renewable energy sources. Heating will be primarily served with passive solar features; supplemental sources include solar-electric heat pumps, biomass, biogas and ground-source heat pumps. The homes are designed in joint effort with the local utility to define the State of California's basis for legislation requiring "net zero carbon homes" by 2020. In October of 2006, Codding installed the 2nd-largest privately owned solar photovoltaic installation in Northern California, at 1.14MW. It will help power homes, businesses, and a zero carbon data center - the first of its kind in the world.

2. Zero Waste - Codding's plan will limit total solid waste sent to landfill to 2% by 2020, ensuring at least 70% of waste by weight is reclaimed, recycled or composted. After designing for waste minimization and future recyclability, we issued a new standard set of specifications to ensure the use of deconstructable assemblies made in a controlled factory environment on site. The new factory (www.coddingsfs.com) produces no garbage, runs on 100% solar power and creates wall, roof and floor assemblies that can be completely recycled at end of life.

3. Sustainable Transport - The combined impact of green transportation strategies will reduce by 82% the total GHG emissions arising from travel to, from and within the community, and all unavoidable emissions will be offset with a certified carbon sequestration scheme - a savings of 4.5 tons of C02 per resident. We start by reducing the need to travel offsite and the need for fossil-fuel-based modes. Bicycling and walking are primary with pedestrian promenades, narrow tree-lined streets, paths and convenient bicycle parking everywhere. Next, neighborhood electric vehicles charged by solar arrays and inter-connected with the grid allow the utility to pull energy out of the cars' batteries during peak periods. Live/work housing, hot desks for telecommuting, and local small businesses further encourage reduced travel, while a planned biofuel filling station gives long-distance drivers a low-carbon option. Other planned programs include a plug-in hybrid carshare system, carpool concierge services and a free bicycle program. We are building a major bicycle path and setting up an alternative fuel shuttle service to a nearby commuter rail station and university.

4. Local and Sustainable Materials - 20% of all materials will be manufactured on site; 60% will come from within 500 miles. Codding's Standard Specifications ensure local, reclaimed, renewable, recycled, healthy and low impact materials will be selected to maximize opportunities for cradle-to-cradle management. We are exploring using innovative accounting and building performance modeling systems to track the embodied carbon in materials and activities, allowing the company to minimize total embodied emissions on a lifecycle basis.

5. Local and Sustainable Food - By 2020, 65% of all food consumed on-site will come from within 300 miles and 25% from within 50 miles. Codding will work with local community supported agriculture programs to invent a system for picking up healthy prepared meals from convenient neighborhood locations. Local, organic and biodynamic foods - much of it grown on site - will be available in the community's restaurants and grocery store, which will abide by ambitious local sourcing guidelines. Community gardens and fruit trees are accessible to every resident. A year-round daily farmer's market will encourage healthy diets and invest in the local economy.

6. Sustainable Water - Through extensive conservation measures, innovative water re-use in greywater and reclaimed water systems and massive rainwater harvesting, Sonoma Mountain Village will add 1,900 homes without increasing the use of municipally-supplied water to the site. A detailed Water Plan articulates the on-going management of water quality and conservation on site several decades into the future.

7. Natural Habitats and Wildlife - By restoring seasonal wetlands from their current degraded state and creating ponds and a riparian corridor to link habitats, Codding hope to attract and nurture endangered populations of the California Tiger Salamander. Urban habitat restoration will emphasize diverse species of trees, rooftop apiaries, food garden/pollinator garden combinations, and green roofs with undisturbed nesting habitat. Codding are setting aside 10% of the land for habitat, 20% for green space, and are acquiring conservation easements equal to 50% of the project area.

8. Culture and Heritage - Valuable local culture and heritage must be maintained, enhanced or revived. The past will be showcased in the nucleus of culture at Sonoma Mountain Village - the Town Square - with its farmer's market, public art and art exhibits, local landscape, staged plays and concerts, and venue as the community gathering place. A points-based rewards program will encourage "local-first" purchasing.

9. Equity and Fair Trade - Codding has committed to creating 1900 on-site jobs - half of which will last beyond 2020. A leasing program will require retailers and grocers to promote fair trade products and local business. To promote upward economic mobility, Codding will provide roughly double the required affordable housing, removing deed restriction from a portion of the homes. Codding will create small systems of self-governance with cohousing, senior housing, artist housing and through the use of expressly permissive homeowner's association rules. Codding founded the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster, a non-profit business incubator for sustainable resource technologies that assists startups with training, management, investment resources and support networks.

10. Health and Happiness - Codding will incorporate findings from 'happiness' research and conduct periodic residents' surveys. Community meetings will gather input on what works and what doesn't work about local neighborhoods and the larger community's vision for Sonoma Mountain Village. Play and fun will be used to generate ideas; lightheartedness in evaluating our success.