Sustainable Construction, 5th Edition

Appendix CThe Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™) v2 Rating System for Sustainable Land Design and Development

The central message of the SITES program is that “any project—whether the site of a university campus, large subdivision, shopping mall, park, commercial center, or even a home—holds the potential to protect, improve, and regenerate the benefits and services provided by healthy ecosystems.”

The latest version of SITES was issued in 2012 in the form of an assessment tool, SITES v2 Rating System for Sustainable Land Design and Development. Since 2012, 46 projects have achieved SITES certification, including the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. The SITES guidelines and performance benchmarks offer four certification levels based on a four-star rating system, which works on a 200-point scale allocated among 48 credits. The four levels and the associated minimum points for each are shown next. For certification, a project must achieve all 19 of the prerequisites and at least 100 credit points to become certified with a rating of up to four stars. All prerequisites must be achieved. If just one of the prerequisites is not achievable, the project cannot be certified.

Certification Levels (200 Total Points)
Certified	70
Silver	85
Gold	100
Platinum	135

The categories and structure of SITES are shown next. The letter “P” in the numbering of, for example, Context P1.1 in the Site Context Category indicates it is a prerequisite and must ...