Soft Assets
Hard Accounting for Soft Assets
How to add a billion dollars worth of green to Seattles books.
The building boom thats driving up real estate prices and jamming Seattle with housing and high-rises is also squeezing out and devaluing the citys green, open spaces. That progress presents a paradox: Hard assets provide value temporarily during their useful lives; green, or soft, assets provide value forever. But the city sees dollar value in…