Green Roofs for Healthy Cities will host a Green Roof Symposium in Austin, TX. December 7 at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. The agenda will focus on local research needs and obstacles to green roof implementation in Austin. It will also offer participants an opportunity to develop an Austin Green Roof Action Plan.

So far there is one green roof project in Austin. Stratus Properties hired The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to install an 8,000 square foot green roof over a shopping center at the corner of Escarpment and Slaughter Lane that you can see from the second story of Starbuck’s. The project is testing the effectiveness of native vegetation for use on extensive green roofs and aims to quantify stormwater retention rates, water quality, and thermal properties of green roofing for subtropical regions.

Although green roofs are rare in the U.S. there is a limited green roof building boom taking place. Two U.S. cities are on the leading edge of this trend Chicago and Washington D.C. In 1998 Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago began directing municipal funds towards green roof development. The city offers grants; tax breaks and regulations that help mitigate the initial costs of going with a green roof or in retrofitting an existing structure for a green roof. Chicago has over 200 green roofs, covering 2.5 million square feet, more than any other U.S. city. Washington D.C has at least eighteen green roof projects totaling 171,426.00 square feet.

Increasingly green roofs are being recognized as environmental workhorses. They lighten the load on municipal sewage treatment facilities by retaining up to six times more storm-water than conventional roofs; reduce urban heat islands; absorb air pollution, store carbon; provide new habitats for wildlife and are an aesthetic option to traditional roofs. For more information about green roofs check out:

http://www.wildflower.org/?nd=green_roof
http://hortweb.cas.psu.edu/research/greenroofcenter/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003738.html