Greenwashed?: Developers, Environmental Consciousness, and the Case of Playa Vista

Abstract

While many businesses are becoming greener, development corporations may have the greatest incentive to integrate environmental values into their everyday business practices. With the effects of urbanization, suburbanization, and sprawl, cities are increasingly requiring environmental mitigation measures for approval of new development. In response, some development corporations may become greenwashed to obtain discretionary land use approvals to build their proposed developments. Others may build greener developments to meet the market demand from environmentally conscious buyers. An increasing number of developers, however, adopt environmentally responsible business practices for, at least in significant part, altruistic reasons. A prime example of this phenomenon is Playa Vista, the more than 1000-acre development in Los Angeles that is currently the largest urban infill project in the country. Playa Vista serves as a useful case study for exploring how developers' inclusion of various stakeholders - particularly environmentalists - may signal a paradigm shift in how development occurs.

Keywords: development, development corporations, environment, mitigation, land use, greenwash

JEL Classification: K11, K32