The green trend

There is widespread recognition that sustainability is an holistic concept that encompasses many things within it. Even though there is a standard definition to it, it is a term than can be applied to different situations, contexts, disciplines, cases, etc. Sustainable buildings fit in one of the categories of this global concept. Despite difficulties that have always existed in defining the term sustainable building, it can de described as “a building that has high efficiency in the use of energy, water and materials, and reduced impacts on the health and the environment throughout its life-cycle” (Cassidy, 2003, p.4). In the wide variety of buildings an important type of them in most market economies are shopping centres, a.k.a. malls in America.

In Santiago de Chile, the opening of a ‘sustainable mall’ is expected for the second semester of this year. Then, the question that arises is: can shoppings centres, flagship feature of capitalism be considered a sustainable building? On my opinion, the project characteristics should be analysed in depth to determine if the building accomplishes the principles given by Cassidy in his definition. In this particular case, taking into account the poor information available, i would say it is far from being sustainable for several reasons. Let’s discuss at least three of them.

First, the development will have 4,000 parking lots, this means thousands of avid shoppers cars emitting carbon emissions, polluting the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. Second, the use of the building is for retail shops, a main element of neoclassic economies, which as stated by Hamilton, “have failed to give sufficient weight to the environmental and social impacts of economic activity” (Hamilton 1997, p.35). Hamilton suggests that conventional economies should be modified to address the impacts he refers to. Then, environmental or ecological economies should be the model to be adopted in sustainable development. In this new model, actual behavior of retail activity is debatable. Third, most of the goods that are going to be sold, are imported items like clothing and electronic appliances that will need to travel many kilometers to their final destination, which translates in a high ecological footprint, with the obvious impacts to environment. Another issue to be considered are the big retail companies practices, e.g. Zara and H&M, which every now and then are in the spotlight, blamed for having dangerous working conditions and abusive employment methods. I will not go further in this facts, because is matter of research and debate, but clearly they does not reflect social equity.

To sum up my position, i would say that being ‘green’, i.e. how the developer promotes its mall, and having energy efficiency principles in a building is not sufficient for being labeled as sustainable. Sustainability implies a high level of understanding and incorporation of complex and various concepts that go beyond from a trend or advertising purpose.