Roger Platt, Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Growth for the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in a scintillating discussion, provides us with his insight in the now, and the future, for the impacts and synergies that the LEED high-performance green building standards are bringing to states and also to cities.  Prior to the USGBC Roger served for fifteen years as Senior Vice President and Counsel for the Real Estate Roundtable, served on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Green Building Council, and also serves on the Board of Directors of the Urban Land Institute.  A graduate of Harvard College and the San Fransisco School of Law, Roger provides a global perspective and strategic advice on developing megatrends to Mahesh Ramanujam, President and CEO of the USGBC.  

Over the years USGBC developed and has published an annually awaited ranking of the "Top 10 States for LEED Buildings".   In this presentation, Roger elaborates how that seemingly simple ranking system has come to represent the exceptional dynamics and drivers for impactful economic development, good sustainable design, and measurable outcomes for carbon reduction and carbon sequestration.  Roger touches upon the "secret sauce" of behavioral economic completion between states and cities where sustainability and green development is remaking the development landscape for the good.  The globally recognized LEED building standards, LEED for Neighborhood Development, SITES - The Sustainable Sites Initiative, and now the pilot LEED for Cities are becoming more and more of a real-world basis, and a quantitative/quantitative "proxy" for driving the dynamics of public-private partnerships, and the growing initiatives of states and cites that are embracing robust economic competition with smart and sustainable cities.