The British government’s recent Eco-town Programme represents a challenge in the way we develop new housing and new communities in the United Kingdom. The programme seeks to address the principles of sustainable development, build sustainable communities and achieve sustainable living through new urban developments and expansions. It seeks to balance smarter land use, housing construction, access to public transport and local work; with social integration and principles of social inclusion and affordability. State-of-the-art green building, energy and transport technologies and materials are to be used in an urban development context. The task is to ensure zero-carbon housing and that energy efficiencies are achieved through waste reduction, energy conservation technologies and use of more sustainable sources of energy. Eco-towns are to be the communities of the future.

Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009 assesses the effectiveness of urban planning as atool for dealing with the unprecedented challenges facing 21st-century cities and for enhancing sustainable urbanization.
An important conclusion of the Global Report is that, even though urban planning has changed relatively little in most countries since its emergence about 100 years ago, a number of countries have adopted some innovative approaches inrecent decades. However, in many developing countries, older forms of master planning have persisted. Here, the most obvious problem with this approach is that it has failed to accommodate the ways of life of the majority of inhabitants in rapidly growing and largely poor and informal cities, and has often directly contributed to social and spatial marginalization.

Welcome to the LDC Mid-Year Report 2009. In the middle of a deep recession you could be forgiven for scrabbling around to find anything but bad news in the retail sector but strong June retail sales figures gave a boost to those who see recovery around the next corner.

This report looks at the real impact of the recession on town centres. In particular it looks at the primary manifestation of recession – vacancy.

This document describes the international terrorist threat to the UK assessed by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) to be “Severe”. This is the second highest level of threat and means that an attack, which could occur without warning, is highly likely. Crowded places remain an attractive target for international terrorists. The Government wants to ensure that the right levels of protective security are in place that are proportionate to the risk so that if a terrorist attack does take place its effects can be lessened. The purpose of this guidance is to help local partners, including businesses, understand their roles and the contributions they can make to reduce the vulnerability of crowded places to terrorist attack.

This report aims to help councils and others involved in the planning system address the issue of capacity in planning departments. It seeks to:
● assess current expectations of the planning system;
● evaluate the extent to which the government’s expectations have been communicated to stakeholders; and
● identify how councils can increase capacity.

In bringing forward Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future, a key component of The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, this document acknowledges the scale of the challenge for transport sector, and sets a course towards a low carbon transport system of the future. It also sets out the actions needed to be taken to deliver cuts in emissions in line with meeting our obligations under carbon budgets to 2022. And it finally outlines how the building blocks are put in place for longer-term change for the period to 2050.

This report assesses three possible geoengineering approaches and outlines a roadmap where mitigation, adaptation and geoengineering all play their part in helping us avoid the consequences of dangerous climate change.

This Toolkit is designed to help to make meaningful community benefits more routine and systematic in UK wind energy projects. It sits alongside activities to support improved public engagement in the wind farm planning process (see ‘The protocol for public engagement with proposed wind energy developments in England: a report for the Renewables Advisory Board and DTI’ (URN 06/1819) and ‘The protocol for public engagement with proposed wind energy developments in Wales: a report for the Renewables Advisory Board and DTI’ (URN 06/1820) at www.decc.gov.uk) and to identify specific approaches to enabling local ownership which fit with typical financing structures for commercial wind farm developments (see ‘Bankable models which enable local community wind farm ownership: a report for the Renewables Advisory Board and DTI’ (URN 06/1816) at www.decc.gov.uk).

This final report is in six parts. First, it identifies the nature and scale of the challenges to the future well-being and prosperity of England and the English population. Secondly, it analyses the causes of these challenges, in particular the deep structural forces in our economy, seeking to identify those challenges that need to be addressed at the national level. It goes on, in the third, fourth and fifth parts, to consider current policies and their limits, and then to set out some of the country’s development needs and priorities and the lessons from elsewhere on how to address development issues of national significance. Finally, this report explains how a Development Framework for England could take forward the agenda for action contained in the recommendations.

This paper argues that the revival in interest in allotments should be harnessed. We make a series of recommendations on how we can create, promote and protect them. Britain needs a new “Dig for Victory” campaign that recognises the myriad of positive outcomes that allotments can bring, that captures the public mood and which ensures a sustainable approach is adopted.