Leed-nd Usage Model for Measurement of Neighborhood Environmental Sustainability and Energy Planning in Neighborhood (Case Study: Eghtesad & Sar-Cheshme Neighborhoods of Gorgan)

Sustainable development, as the most important goal of environmental movements, introduces the stability of small society as the most important way of reaching sustainability. Neighborhood sustainable development will lead to communitie's ability to utilization management and using of natural, human and ecological resources which will cause environmental sustainability. Despite the above mentioned factors, during the contemporary era, Gorgan urban contexts went through a lot changes in economic, social and environmental contexts which affected the neighborhood skeleton and its performance in satisfying the needs of residents to great extent. The most important factors of such changes are automobiles domination, linkage breakdown and lack of attention to context and locality which not only forms new neighborhood developments but also dominates old and historical contexts of the city which caused problems such as environmental sustainability decay of city neighborhood, increase of energy consumption and decrease of satisfaction of residents.
One of the patterns which directly targeted energy and environment is the pattern model of leadership in energy and environmental design in neighborhood development which provides approaches for neighborhood development that compatible with environment during assessing and comparing different areas based on their environmental sustainability. Standards of this pattern are based on a complex of urban smart growth principles, new urbanism movement and green buildings. On this ground, by using leadership in energy and environmental design in neighborhood development for Eghtesad and Sar-Cheshme which were chosen among historical, planned urban contexts were assessed and compared according to their environmental sustainability. The results showed that although all of the two neighborhoods possessed low levels of environmental sustainability according to the standards of this pattern, Eghtesad neighborhood which is a relatively new and planned context is in better conditions. The final result say Eghtesad neighborhood got 33 points, Sar-Cheshme neighborhood got 28 points out of 100.