City buildings—Eco-labels and shades of green!

The concept of the sustainable city seems to fall somewhere between the ideal of sustainability and the more pragmatic responses to environmental degradation that lies within the ambit of sustainable development. Buildings are significant in terms of the economic and social development of cities, as well as their environmental impacts. Eco-labelling has emerged to provide a measure of the environmental performance of buildings, but what shade of green, i.e. environmental friendliness, is manifest in a particular eco-label, and how does the assessment and certification of individual buildings contribute to a city that is more sustainable? This paper examines the extent to which a building eco-label, defined here as a certified performance grade under a building environmental assessment method (BEAM), characterises the performance of a building in environmental terms, and considers the link between the issues covered in BEAM assessments with the indicators for the sustainable city. Given their significant influence on cities, the discussion focuses on heavily serviced office buildings.