Wake up to the post-lawn dawn: 4 ways multifamily benefits from ecological landscape design

If your landscaping isn’t building property resilience, restoring habitat, improving your NOI, and helping you draw and retain renters, it’s time to apply ecologically regenerative landscape design & operations thinking to your green spaces.

If your landscaping isn’t building property resilience, restoring habitat, improving your NOI, and helping you draw and retain renters, it’s time to apply ecologically regenerative landscape design & operations thinking to your green spaces.

Wake up to the post-lawn dawn: 4 ways multifamily benefits from ecological landscape design
Meet the panelists

If your landscaping isn’t building property resilience, restoring habitat, improving your NOI, and helping you draw and retain renters, it’s time to apply ecologically regenerative landscape design & operations thinking to your green spaces.

Did you feel that? The ground just shifted.

Around the world, a land-use renaissance is underfoot (literally), as communities increasingly partner with local ecologies rather than ignoring or imposing on them. In drought and wildfire-stricken California, hurricane-threatened coastal regions and neighborhoods labeled “food deserts,” people are brilliantly leveraging small and large-scale solutions for food, fiber and energy production, water conservation, storm protection, fire suppression, carbon sequestration, building preservation, and habitat restoration — to cultivate resilience and thriving community in a rapidly changing world.

What does Multifamily stand to learn and gain from applying ecological landscape ideas to property development, ownership and operations? With budgeting season in full swing this quarter, it’s high time to consider how you can factor in landscape improvements that yield a meaningful advantage.

Beyond delivering positive outcomes, many of these eco-ideas have caught fire in the mind of the mainstream consumer. By inviting eco-resilient design to your communities, not only will you impress residents and prospects with your ability to tap into the cultural housing zeitgeist, you’ll save on water costs, energy and labor costs. And often, such solutions don’t require much in the way of CapEx. But for many Multifamily companies, landscaping might be little more than an afterthought. Here’s why it shouldn’t be.



The Post-Lawn Dawn

What's so bad about a well-kept lawn?


“The lawn looks sort of natural — it’s green; it grows — but in fact it represents a subjugation of the forest as utter and complete as a parking lot. Every species is forcibly excluded from the landscape but one, and this is forbidden to grow longer than the owner’s little finger. A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. Lawns are, I am convinced, a symptom of, and a metaphor for, our skewed relationship to the land.”

Michael Pollan
Author, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education



Lawns. For a long time, Americans have been obsessed with them. We’ve fretted over their upkeep in fear that our personal or business reputations will suffer without their constant maintenance. But our insistence on preserving a narrow view of landscape perfection comes with massive costs. Lawns hurt our wallets and environment, and drain time and resources we could put to better use.


Lawn Maintenance



To nature, lawns are ecological desert zones, providing little to no habitat. To Multifamily operators, they’re burdens. They require constant and costly inputs — labor, time, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and carbon to maintain their characteristic displacement of ecology. In fact, the very expensive efforts property owners and managers take to preserve their lawns are what makes them such poor substitutes for ecologically valuable land use. To keep lawns green, we deplete our water supply, then pollute that same water with lawn care chemicals. The thirstiness of lawns contributes to drought, their dryness, to fire — and to add insult to injury, they don’t even produce food.

But views are changing. Our cultural eye for residential aesthetics is on a transformational trajectory thanks to expanding consciousness around land management. The conventional “well-manicured lawn” that guzzles fuel, chemicals, and manual labor, is being replaced by symphonies of plant and animal biodiversity based on regenerative design ideas — like rain gardens that absorb runoff from paved areas. And the trend toward repurposing and upcycling materials like urbanite (reused concrete) is granting them an artful second life before they end up in landfills or oceans.

The average landscape gets replaced every few years. Ditch the disposable landscapes. By implementing holistically designed gardens, you’ll lessen your portfolio’s dependence on distant sources of fuel to shrink your carbon footprint — and cut down significantly on labor, water, heating and cooling costs. Best of all, whole-systems landscaping is intended to be self-maintaining, requiring little human intervention.

"If we let them, plants could do much of the hard work of gardening for us. Unfortunately, the ways we have been taught to garden actually prevent them from doing so."

Peter Thompson
Author, The Self-Sustaining Garden

Alternative Ground Cover



By making ecology work for you (and working with ecology), you can turn your properties’ green space into productive, edible, water-conserving landscapes. The positive outcomes arising from better land management across your portfolio range from improved Net Operating Income (NOI) to increasing resident retention and mitigating risk from natural disasters.

Read on to learn about the 4 main ways you and your business will benefit from ecological landscape design and operations.

1Improve NOI

By Driving Whole-System
Landscape Efficiency

2Win Market Share

By Creating A Sought-After
Green Resident Experience

3Reduce Risk

By Increasing Property
Resilience

4Go Beyond Sustainable

To Restore Habitat,
Produce Food, Generate Energy, & Establish New Revenue Streams

1. Drive NOI: Let Ecology Naturally
Improve Your Operating Efficiency

Look to your landscapes for untapped business boons.



Watering Pot NOI



The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) notes that on average, a well-designed landscape saves enough energy to pay for itself in less than 8 years, citing lower maintenance costs, water use reduction (which allows you to more easily comply with state water restrictions), lower heating and cooling costs, and building preservation. “A well-planned landscape can reduce an unshaded home’s air conditioning costs by 15-50 percent,” says the DoE, and “windbreaks [such as strategically planted trees] to the north, west and east of houses cut fuel consumption by an average of 40 percent.” But when you factor in the full scope of what you can achieve at your properties through ecological landscape design and upkeep, the 8-year return on investment for smart landscaping feels very conservative.

When Independence Plaza, a 186-unit affordable housing complex in the city of Alameda, CA replaced labor- and water-intensive turf and lagoons with a no-mow landscape featuring abundant California native plants, maintenance costs dropped by $12,000 annually. The community now saves 1.3 million gallons of water each year and avoids 77 tons of greenhouse gas emissions yearly. By using sheet mulching (layers of cardboard, compost and mulch), the landscape renovation also kept 65 tons of turf out of landfills and created a healthier soil base. The new landscape has also reduced the annual removal of plant debris by 27 tons and cut fertilizer use by 1,100 lbs each year.

You might think: “Hey, saving on water and all that is great, but higher occupancy is our company priority right now, so shouldn’t we hold off on re-evaluating our landscaping until later?” Well, it turns out a study by the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Arlington discovered that of all the architectural and urban design variables evaluated, landscape amenities had the highest correlation with the occupancy of rental properties.

"Any time we reduce costs through sustainable projects, we’re increasing NOI and the property value simultaneously. It’s pretty amazing the impact sustainability efforts make on your bottom line."

Rae Schnabel
Director of Sustainability & Special Projects Coordinator, Maxus Properties

Renters are also willing to pay an extra $32.64 per month in rent to live in a certified green community. To put this in perspective, that is more than the $32 per month renters are willing to pay for parking according to a recent NMHC Resident Preferences survey. They’ll also pay an extra $26 per month to live in a building that recycles. So it’s worth taking your sustainability initiative, waste management, energy efficiency and water use seriously when striving to capture more revenue. Approaches like xeriscaping can provide pathways to high-performance landscaping. And comprehensive frameworks such as SITES (The Sustainable Sites Initiative) can provide guidance in planning and maintaining healthy functioning landscapes that benefit all life.

Certain plants (often called companion plants ) help maintain each other by attracting beneficial insects or warding off harmful microorganisms in the soil, retaining water, and fixing nitrogen to negate the need for nitrogen-based fertilizers. Already, you might be envisioning how rolling out a strategy to choose complementary, climate-appropriate plants for your properties that work together in what are called “guilds,” can save you from paying yard crews for constant upkeep. Plant enough alternative ground cover (as opposed to turf grass) that requires less watering, and less maintenance — and your operating costs will ultimately decrease.

Enlightened and ultra-practical landscape planning embodies the design principle of stacking functions — meaning elements serve more than one purpose in a space. You decide how you’ll position elements through analysis of the inputs (what it requires) and outputs (what it provides). Take a tree for a classic example. Trees need inputs like sunlight, water, soil, air, space to grow, care, and symbiotic relationships with microorganisms. In return, they provide windbreaks, temperature-regulation with shade, erosion control, organic matter, food, habitat and beautification. Looping inputs and outputs to create closed systems allows you to reduce the amount of work a landscape requires. For an excellent example, check out perennial polyculture food forests.

You might collect rainwater or use a greywater system to irrigate the tree. In temperate regions, as the tree grows, it shades your buildings and patios in the hotter months before losing its leaves to allow the sun’s heat to penetrate your buildings in the colder months. After your communities’ children get a chance to play in them, the fallen leaves can go in your compost pile and nourish your gardens. The tree’s roots filter water, provide your pond fish with habitat and prevent soil from washing away in storms.

Rooftop Garden

Green roofs can provide upper floors with access to green space, create “pollinator pathways,” reduce stormwater runoff, deflect heat in the summer and insulate indoor spaces in the winter.

Your best course of action in crafting your properties’ landscape strategy depends on regional climates, population density and more. And undoubtedly, when managing a portfolio of geographically dispersed properties, it’s critical to get onsite visibility. By using a mobile inspection platform to track the age and condition of your outdoor efficiency features, you’ll be able to quickly deploy preventative maintenance — extending the useful life of irrigation controllers, rainwater collection systems, solar panels and other green property items.

"Mobile inspections help us prevent neglected items from deteriorating — allowing us to reduce liability, drive down replacement costs, and raise NOI by 1.2%, or $1.5 million dollars."

Jaren Bradley
Senior VP of Ops, AMC
95,000 units

The takeaway is that ecological landscaping’s value proposition is more than “pretty”. It benefits your business on multiple fronts to ditch the disposable landscapes and turn them into productive, edible, self-maintaining, water-conserving habitats.

2. Create a Sought-After Resident Experience
with Flexible, Multi-Use Green Space

Enrich the resident experience, stand out in the market and differentiate your brand with lifestyle-focused landscaping.

Housing is becoming much more reflective of how people view themselves, “a veritable extension of their values.” And communities that offer residents a path to fulfilling the lifestyle they want in the competitive Multifamily industry will win the battle for market share. Knowing your market is as important as ever as consumers increasingly focus on 360-degree wellness, living aligned with their ethics, and authentic experiences.

We’ve already seen that implementing and maintaining efficiency features is good for the value of your portfolio, your residents and the planet. In fact, did you know 49% of renters consider eco-friendly features more important than luxury items in a home? Or that green-certified Multifamily properties enjoy an average rental rate premium of 8.9%? Still, features like energy-efficient lighting, sink aerators, or low-flow showerheads, though they save big on water and energy costs and are well-liked by renters, don’t tend to evoke a strong emotional response. They don’t really drive a living experience.

Outdoor spaces are different. Our natural biophilic affinity for fellow living beings means that seeing hummingbirds dip into cardinal flowers on the patio inspires in us not only an emotional response, but a physiological release of stress. Nature truly is healing. But prioritizing experiential landscape design not only brings joy, supports wellbeing and creates resident satisfaction, it also communicates your brand message by building dialogue and emotional engagement with your customers in ways that express their story in authentic, emotional and memorable experiences.

meditating outside



Apartment living has long been critiqued as isolating by design, with little thought given to how people actually live, or our mental and physical health. With former US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy calling loneliness a serious public health concern at an epidemic level, it’s no exaggeration to say that facilitating meaningful social connection saves lives. Multifamily developers, owners and managers are uniquely positioned to make a real, positive impact in this area. Empathic design and community programming with access to shared green space invites residents to interact, form relationships and feel integrated with the street and surrounding neighborhood. Even as fostering connections is welcome, natural noise buffers and a spectrum of outdoor space from public to private should also seek to honor the mental restoration of quiet solitude.

"You see this in many new mixed-use developments, where there are public greens for farmers markets, outdoor exercise, movie nights, or spaces for pop-up stores and community gatherings. Creating a sense of greater community may be a meaningful point of differentiation valued by many renters."

Karen Hollinger
Vice President of Corporate Initiatives, AvalonBay Communities

Source: NMHC. "Disruption: How Demographics, Psychographics And Technology Are Bringing Multifamily To The Brink Of A Design Revolution." January 2018.

movie night in common area

Gerding Edlen’s LEED-Certified property, The Cyan, hosts a community movie night outside.

A report from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) revealed multifamily owners’ and residents’ choices for the most in-demand landscape amenities of 2018. And the hottest items on the list reflect renters’ needs for relaxation, social interaction and wireless connectivity. As Multifamily Executive (MFE) notes in its commentary on the report, “residents want to enjoy flexible-use spaces outdoors — while their phones are charging nearby.” Flexible-use space for activities such as yoga and movie nights garnered the vote of 74% of respondents, with charging stations for mobile devices coming in at 70% and play areas for children at 58%. Other top 10 items, like bike storage (70%), bike-repair stations (46%) and transit screens that provide updates on public transit (39%) are well-aligned with new transportation trends that are disrupting multifamily parking.

But the top 10 outdoor design elements with the highest consumer demand across all residential real estate, including multifamily, showed a strong desire for sustainability. Native plants and adapted drought-tolerant plants drew 83% popularity, with low-maintenance landscapes at 80%, permeable paving at 74%, water-efficient irrigation at 72%, rain gardens at 71% and reduced lawn area at 71% — perhaps logically tied with food and vegetable gardens, also at 71%.

movie night in common area

Many apartment communities today offer bike maintenance workshops, tools and workspaces for residents. Why not go a step further? Provide residents with garden plots and gardening implements — and watch their sense of community grow, along with hyper-local food.

Just like many of us have memories of going out to the backyard in warmer months to pick herbs, greens, tomatoes and such for sunlit dinners on the patio, creating sweet seasonal memories for apartment dwellers is a way to differentiate yourself from the competition and attract multiple market segments — families, millennials, retirees, and more. Waitlists are often prohibitively long for community garden plots in urban areas due to their popularity and limited space, so offering a bit of earth for resident gardening becomes a most a welcome perk. You can even put it on your roof!

Good design works wonders, both in software and in the realm of real estate — and often holds the key to maximizing value. Your landscape design has the power to influence behavior, enrich the resident experience, and support physical, social and emotional health. So you may want to rethink the experience your green spaces create to be competitive differentiators in your markets.

3. Increase Property Resilience: Ecological Landscaping as Insurance, Risk Mitigation and Future-Proofing

Regeneration is resilience.

regenerative landscape practices



Compared to industries like tech, it’s obvious how real estate (literally, physical property) which releases between 40 and 50% of global CO2 emissions through construction and operational use, is vulnerable to extreme weather and economic volatility. Storms, flooding, erosion, drought and wildfire — ever more frequent and catastrophic due to climate change — pose real business threats that have companies and governments rethinking codes, policies, and community design. For Multifamily, taking preventative action to promote resilience equates with managing risk and even maintaining or increasing property value.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported $18 billion in total losses from western wildfires last year, with more than 10 million acres left charred by flame. The Center for Insurance Policy and Research (CIPR) warns that wildfire seasons now start earlier and last longer into the fall months; and apprehensively notes the swelling housing development near naturally fire-prone ecosystems.

Such growth can accumulate flammable building materials on a landscape that gets drier and drier every year, with rising populations that bring new ignition triggers. And without eco-conscious planning, you end up with industry rushing to fill a powder keg with more fuel. A housing crisis provides plenty of incentive to rebuild rapidly after fire — but the pressing question is this: How do we plan, build, buy and operate apartment communities differently so we can prevent another wave of fire destruction?

Riding past Santa Rosa, California recently, I was struck to see new housing construction underway adjacent to group of trees blackened by the 2017 Tubbs fire, which was documented as the “most destructive fire in CA history” — and burned 5,643 structures, including 5% of the city’s housing stock, to the ground. But this fast-paced new development I was seeing looked ominously similar to the residential real estate that was destroyed barely one year before.

wildfire burning grasses



In an industry defined by physical assets, the point to drive home is that environmental resilience and your business resilience go hand in hand. Thinkers in ecological landscape design know that often (if not always) the problem is the solution. And to avoid being victimized, you can look to your landscaping as a previously unseen source of protection.

Fire-resilient landscaping uses natively adapted plants that are strategically selected and planted where they can resist the spread of fire to your properties. Rock, mulch, beds and gardens can serve as effective firebreaks, and high-moisture plants that grow close to the ground like aloe, rockrose and ice plant resist ignition. They’re drought-resistant as a bonus, saving on water. Hardwood trees like maple, poplar and cherry trees are less flammable than pine, fir and other conifers (source) and can provide some windbreak effect to calm raging air flow. It’s highly important to note that appropriate plant selection depends on the specifics of your region and locality.

Regularly checking for dead plants, grass, dry leaves and pine needles is equally important to maintaining a defensible space that keeps your buildings and firefighters safe in the event of a fire. You can make inspections easier, ensure property conditions are well-documented and lower your liability with a mobile inspection system that helps you track wildfire protection measures at your properties.

Sufficient horizontal and vertical clearance between trees, shrubs and your buildings is critical to fire-safe landscaping. The slope of the landscape affects how much space should be left between trees. Cal Fire recommends 10 feet between trees on a flat to mild slope, and 30 feet between trees on a moderate to steep slope (greater than 40%). These tactics are just the tip of the iceberg for how you can implement natural fire protection in areas where wildfire is a natural occurrence.

Natural building techniques of the sort humans have been practicing for millennia might also offer answers to building more fire-resistant structures. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but research is finding earthen straw bale structures can perform better in fires than conventional stick-frame construction. In some cases, naturally-built homes survived massive wildfires fully intact without igniting, while all else around them went up in flame. In an innovative move, the city of Berkeley has even permitted its first cob structure, similar to adobe in that it’s made from a mixture of clay, sand and straw — actually viewing such ancient carbon-sequestering building techniques as a technological advance. The structure won approval after successfully fulfilling the Alternative Materials and Methods Requests (AMMR) process.

dry landscape natural building

Ancient building techniques such as cob construction are coming into focus as fire-resistant and carbon-sequestering alternatives to modern practices.

Though wildfire is prevalent across large swaths of the country, the figures from hurricanes and flooding dwarf those from fire. NOAA gave a price tag of $306 billion in damage to the 2017 hurricane season. And with more than 44% of the U.S. population living in the hurricane landfall zones, the potential for loss of life is immense.

Houston Flood

Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

Multifamily companies, like Gerding Edlen, have successfully saved on their operating budgets by taking a whole-systems approach to property resilience, including landscaping. Among many flood mitigation features, Gerding Edlen’s The Eddy property in Boston “features hardy, native plantings that are accustomed to coastal sites and are able to withstand immersion in salt water.” The 258-unit waterfront multifamily structure has reportedly earned an insurance premium 10x less than a comparable building without these features in place.

a rain garden absorbing stormwater runoff



For stormwater management, rain gardens and bioretention planter boxes can be strategically located to intercept runoff from streets, roofs and pavement, slowing the flow and sinking rapidly moving water into the ground or to drains, so you can avoid overwhelming your drainage system. These have the added benefit of helping to filter out pollutants before they wash into the water supply.

You can also incorporate vegetated swales, which are “narrow, linear depressions designed to capture and convey stormwater” — and mimic a natural creek — to direct water away from the base of your buildings and curb the rushing water to a trickle, or retain the water long enough for it to infiltrate down into the ground. Berms, or small raised hills, are the negative image of a swale, and often placed downhill from them to further channel, slow and absorb stormwater. Leveraging design elements from pervious (aka permeable) pavement, to rainwater cisterns, to green roofs can help you control the burden heavy rain imposes on your properties to reduce moisture intrusion and mold.

One of the most powerful approaches is to allow wetlands to function as natural buffers by either leaving existing wetlands undisturbed, or restoring degraded wetlands to full health with appropriate plantings and zero-chemical landscaping.

wetland restoration



Also of note is the usefulness of green facades in preserving and prolonging the lifespan of your buildings. In addition to noise reduction, visual appeal and air quality, green walls can provide temperature regulation that prevents extreme expanding and contracting of building materials in the face of big temperature variations or heat island effects, and may help tamp down high winds before they hit your buildings. Green walls can also divert heavy rain and shield your buildings from UV radiation deteriorates certain materials.

green facade



The exciting thing is, businesses, organizations, cities, governments, real estate owners, designers and developers are now putting their heads together to address long-standing gaps in resilience. Responding to the $65 billion in damages and economic loss wrought by Superstorm Sandy, the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Rebuild by Design Competition which brought together design teams and provided funding for innovative resilience projects meant to protect the affected East Coast regions from the next catastrophe. The design competition soon sprung up in the San Francisco Bay Area as Resilient by Design to improve regional housing, infrastructure, and societal resilience in the midst of sea-level rise before the next earthquake, fire, landslide or economic meltdown.

Acknowledging the disproportionate impact of extreme weather events on low-income communities, Washington DC has launched what is being called the nation’s first Multifamily Housing Resilience Tool to aid in vulnerability assessment and resilience audits. The goal is to deliver better safety, health, comfort, financial and durability outcomes for affordable housing residents and apartment communities — which brings up an important point highly relevant to current public discourse.

True resilience is only possible where there is community strength. As multifamily leaders begin to embrace forward-looking and ecologically sound solutions for their portfolios, it’s critical to keep in mind the most important resilience strategy of all — connecting with the communities of human beings supporting and/or affected by your business. When it comes to future-proofing and mitigating risk through a whole-systems approach, don’t forget that people are integral to the system. There’s much transformational work to be done in this area, but the third leg to the stool of resilience is to find ways to more compassionately, affordably and equitably operate; and really listen to community members.

Triple bottom line assessment in which social and environmental factors are beginning to receive the weight they deserve alongside financial considerations, can provide you with a starting framework. You might also pursue B Corp Status (Benefit Corporation) as a company by meeting higher standards for social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability — as Gerding Edlen successfully did.

4. Go Beyond Sustainable: Habitat Restoration, Food Production, Energy Generation and More

The future ain’t what it used to be.

The market disruption characterizing our age is evidence enough that being a true business leader today — a thought leader, a visionary, or simply a shrewd and successful business person in the traditional sense — means thinking differently, and from a solutionary vantage point. The alternative is to risk obsolescence. That’s why it’s the experimenters in property development, ownership and operations who end up becoming the groundbreakers. And that’s what makes the potential for transformation so exciting.

The future, especially from an environmental and societal outlook, feels overwhelming, full of anxiety and uncertainty. But in problems lie solutions. From suburban neighborhoods like The Cannery outside of Davis California, where farms are the core of the community to mixed-use developments operating as urban agriculture hubs, like Hilltop Farm in Pittsburgh and an “agrihood” in Detroit that produces food for 2,000 households; residential areas are reflecting a national trend toward hyper-local food production. Targeting younger, health-conscious residents and billions of dollars in investment, the cutting edge of the apartment industry is whetted on ideas that are thousands of years old.

When ancient land use practices are combined with the latest in technology, we might envision living at a place like the planned ReGen Village near Amsterdam, which has generated significant interest and investment as it seeks to reinvent the suburban model of development by generating its own energy, growing its own food, collecting and storing its own water and even processing much of its own waste on 50 acres. Not to mention doing it all carlessly.

High-Tech Eco Village

Rendered visions of ReGen village hint at how integrated living systems, like vertical aquaponic farming that incorporate fish in a closed loop, can replace long, carbon-intensive supply chains. Trends in residential real estate are starting to benefit residents and the world by bringing production, distribution, consumption, waste processing and more onsite where people live and eat.

Out of a healthy sense of self-interest, cities like Philadelphia aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% over the next 3 decades. And a buzzed-about smart city within Toronto will soon transform 800 acres along Lake Ontario, featuring “dynamic streets” that track use and allow adaptability with modular pavers, buildings constructed with sustainable timber, and engineered shades that double the amount of “usable outdoor hours” (though questions about the project’s data collection, use and privacy still remain). Projects like New York’s underground Lowline prototype — a kind of mirror image of the popular High Line greenway, that creates more green space in one of the world’s densest urban environments — prove that thoughtful design can draw thousands of consumers while creating healing ecological benefit.

The point is to think beyond what efficiency and sustainability mean in Multifamily today. Retrofitting your properties with energy-saving lighting, sensor controls, and smart thermostats; or installing sink aerators, low-flow showerheads and toilets is a move in the right direction — and demonstrably benefits your budget, the atmosphere and our water supply. But they aren’t the only measures of benefit to your operations or to the world.

What if your multifamily communities could grow food onsite through edible landscaping? And what if you provided residents with garden plots to tend and harvest as an amenity? Would residents be more likely to renew their leases when they’re living with a stronger sense of community? Would having highly desirable, low-cost, fresh local food outside their doors improve their satisfaction and feelings of wellbeing? If your residents aren’t interested in growing food for themselves, could you rent the plots to local restaurants and create a new revenue stream? Could you realize social benefits by donating surplus food you’ve grown to families in need?

Female resident holding chicken

With appropriate oversight, property operators can partner with various animals to manage a landscape. For example, raising egg-laying chickens in residential zones is more than a Silicon Valley fad. Hens not only produce fresh eggs — they eat weeds, provide pest control, natural fertilizer, garden tillage, and offer no small amount of “hentertainment”.

What if you processed more community waste onsite through composting or vermiculture (worm bins)? How much would you save on waste disposal fees? Could you sell the rich soil to local gardens and farmers to, again, create a revenue stream? Or simply spread the nutritious soil on your properties’ own landscaping without having to purchase from suppliers and landscaping vendors?

By developing better soil and establishing stronger root systems, would you protect your properties from the dangers of erosion? Could you harvest rainwater? Or hook up washers to greywater systems to meet all of your landscaping water needs? Additionally, you might be surprised at the extent to which animals from goats to weeder geese offer valuable landscaping functions while reducing your reliance on outside sources of pest and weed control, fertilizer and landscape maintenance.


Integrated Design

Pictured: a greywater or rainwater hydroponics system that reuses water resources to grow salad greens. For its part, bamboo is a rapidly growing renewable resource that is increasingly being used in modern building — and can boast a tensile strength stronger than some forms of steel.

The cost of renewable energy has plummeted in recent decades—with solar power costs, for example, down from $76 per watt in the late 1970s to less than $1 per watt today (source). What if your buildings supplied their own power, even generating excess electricity to sell to utility companies and neighboring buildings? What would achieving net-zero or net-negative energy usage mean for your bottom line?

What if your newly verdant, innovative and productive green space became a clamored-for destination for hosting events? How much value could you add? How much more revenue could you generate outside of rents? How recognizable would your brand become? Maybe your properties would gain renown as labs for residential best practices? With potential accolades and recognition pouring in from industry associations and other organizations? (just sayin’.)

native plant landscaping in multifamily



Is it plausible your company could lead the way? With properties that are not only carbon neutral but carbon negative — in other words, actually absorbing carbon from the atmosphere — while restoring wetlands? Forests? Coasts? While reconnecting vital habitat that has been bisected by paths and roads? And reaping benefit from natural ecosystem services? “Sustainable” implies maintaining a livable status quo. But I have faith the multifamily industry, and all of business for that matter, can do better than merely reducing ecological and social harm. We can help regenerate what has been lost.

It has been said that if the Dark Ages had known what the Renaissance around the corner would be, they would have been the Renaissance. We find ourselves at a similar crossroads today, with the ability to cultivate a new renaissance through an enlightened approach to land and community management — or descend into ecological illiteracy. Today’s opportunity for creativity, imagination, technology and eco-social conscious action to redefine real estate and create healthier outcomes for all life is so extraordinary as to have been unthinkable mere decades ago. And it’s happening now. Really gives future-proofing a new meaning, huh?

Earth is a beautiful, life-sustaining place. As an industry of placemakers, Multifamily is waking up to the fact that until Elon Musk puts people on the desolate face of Mars long-term, there is no Planet B. That’s why the embrace of solutions that restore our shared habitat and build social prosperity is an encouraging trend in Multifamily leadership today — and will determine the wider impact of the Multifamily industry for decades to come.

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Ben Chadwell
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Ben Chadwell
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