The first North American Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities conference was held May 29-30, 2003.

The first North American Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities conference was held May 29-30, 2003. There were more than 30 exhibitors and nearly 500 people attended, almost twice the number expected.

Sponsored by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, Toronto, and the City of Chicago, the objectives of the conference were to raise awareness of the technical design and implementation of green roofs and to solicit further support among public and private interests in developing the marketplace. The conference also sought to profile exceptional green roof projects that illustrate a wide range of applications, such as Chicago’s City Hall, the Fairmount Hotel in Vancouver and Toronto’s City Hall Green Roof project. .

The conference emphasized the sharing of information about methods of research and findings on the technical performance of green roofs, at both the building and city-wide level in areas such as energy efficiency gains, stormwater management and urban heat island mitigation. It is hoped that the end result of such research will aid in efforts to develop public policy support for green roofs, such as those in Chicago and Portland.

In conjunction with the conference and trade show, Green Roof Awards of Excellence were presented to the Montgomery Park Business Center, Baltimore; the Gap Inc. 901 Cherry Offices, San Bruno, Calif.; the Garden Room, Shorewood, Wis.; Ducks Unlimited National Headquarters and Oak Hammock Marsh, Interpretive Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum Green Roof Demonstration Garden, Chicago; and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Conference Center, Salt Lake City (profiled in Roofing Contractor, September 2001).