EPA Region 7 Headquarters (Lenexa)

EPA Region 7 Headquarters is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in the suburb of Lenexa, Kansas. It turns up in Walkable City (Jeff Speck): It is the book’s showcase of ‘LEED Brain’: a green building in the wrong place.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Walkable City	Jeff Speck	subject	The EPA publishes a study showing location trumps building design, then moves 672 employees from downtown Kansas City twenty miles out to…

Walkable City — Jeff Speck (2012)

Source: Walkable City · Original · Readwise highlight

A mere month after releasing the above study, the agency announced that it was relocating its 672-employee Region 7 Headquarters from downtown Kansas City to the new far-flung suburb of Lenexa, Kansas (Walk Score 28).

• Role: subject
• In the book: The EPA publishes a study showing location trumps building design, then moves 672 employees from downtown Kansas City twenty miles out to Lenexa, into a former Applebee’s office park, because the building is LEED certified. Kaid Benfield’s numbers show transportation emissions per person nearly tripling and commutes lengthening.
• Why it matters: It is the book’s showcase of ‘LEED Brain’: a green building in the wrong place. The point works because it is a specific downtown-to-office-park move; elsewhere it would lose the downtown-versus-suburb contrast.