Conceiving and delivering infrastructure at a neighbourhood scale as an integrated package represents a very significant opportunity to deliver environmental, social and economic objectives. A 'community infrastructure' package will have a variety of constituent elements and deliver a range of sustainability benefits. Constituent elements of a community infrastructure package could include: Heat and cooling, electricity supply, energy generation, water supply, water disposal, waste disposal, waste re-use and communications infrastructure

Infrastructure is vital to our nation. It is a complex and interdependent system which provides us with the energy, transport, water and other essentials that are the basis of our civilised society and our economic well-being. This overview of ICE’s assessment of the State of the Nation’s infrastructure in 2010 examines key sectors such as transport, local transport, waste, energy and water for an increasingly urban society. The nation that respects its infrastructure respects its people, and provides for their sustainable future.

The Code for Sustainable Homes (the Code) was introduced in England in April 2007 as a voluntary national standard to
improve the overall sustainability of new homes by setting a single framework within which the home building industry can design and construct homes to higher environmental standards.

The Code measures the sustainability of a home against nine design categories, rating the ‘whole home’ as a complete package.The case studies cover a range of social and private housing, using a variety of different build systems or materials, and achieving a range of Code standards. The research has helped further develop and improve the operation of the Code. The case studies also include key learning points that should help those who decide to build to Code standards.

In the UK, most policy decisions are informed using social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) using an approach set out by HM Treasury. This helps officials to set out the relative merits of alternative policy approaches when advising Ministers. We have identified a number of ways in which existing approaches to SCBA can be improved to give better assessments of the impact of policy on the environment.

This Report sets out the progress that has been made. More fundamentally, we proposed to move to a ‘capitals approach’ for assessing sustainability, which shows more explicitly whether the stock of wealth-creating assets we pass on to future generations is better or worse that than what is available to us today. Using this approach, it is easier to see which aspects of sustainability are well reflected in SCBA and which are not. Research for this Review suggests that much of what is needed to assess sustainability is, in principle, already taken into account by SCBA when it is done well.

Integrating local and national interests on commons: guidance for assessing the community value of common land. The objective of the work is to identify mechanisms to recognise and take account of local community interests on commons, hence complementing established criteria used in assessing national importance of land for interests such as nature conservation and landscape. For part 2 click here

Urban Design Week is an annual, national event that champions urban design by promoting and encouraging awareness of places through good practice, fostering innovation in the built environment, and celebrating urban culture and lifestyles.

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.