Building a green future?: SDC e-bulletin
The Delivering Sustainable Communities Summit, was hosted by the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott in Manchester.
With 2000 UK and international delegates attending, the Summit provided an unparalleled opportunity to further understanding of building sustainable communities for the 21st century. It focused on the Government’s £38 billion Sustainable Communities Plan to reflect on progress and look ahead to the challenges of delivering ‘prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities’.
Delivering ‘prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities’.
(Poplar Housing and Regeneration Community Association).
It is the environmental impact of the built environment that SDC and Defra concentrated on as joint participants in the three-day Summit running a major workshop, ‘Creating Communities with a Low Environment Impact’.
Recognising the need to mainstream best practice within the Sustainable Communities Plan, the SDC and Defra aimed to broaden this debate by inviting green housing and regeneration experts and advocates to contribute views, expertise and learning via our website prior to the Summit.
The workshop was chaired by SDC Commissioner, Walter Menzies, Chief Executive of the Mersey Basin Campaign who sits on the ODPM steering group that will develop the new Code for Sustainable Buildings. At the workshop, policy-makers and key stakeholders considered how sustainable communities may be delivered without negative impacts on the environment through design standards, construction measures, planning and policy.
We welcome your views and expertise on:
- How cost effective measures in design and construction/refurbishment for energy, water, materials and waste can be mainstreamed.
- How to tackle the environmental performance of the existing domestic and non-domestic building stock.
- How to ensure that infrastructure investments will deliver best environmental benefits
- Identifying the key environmental challenges and solutions for the Thames Gateway, London-Stansted-Cambridge corridor, Ashford and Milton Keynes-South Midlands southern growth areas and the nine Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder areas in the Midlands and the North.
Your input will also contribute to our growing programme of work addressing sustainable buildings and the opportunities for improving the environmental performance of existing buildings - from energy efficiency and micro-renewables, to water efficiency, sustainable construction materials and household waste management.
» Contribute your expertise in The Forum
» Or browse the case studies, contribute your own, or air your views on their environmental sustainability.
The SDC’s recent work in this area includes our review of the Sustainable Communities Plan:
Sustainable Development and Sustainable Communities
And an investigation into how neighbourhood regeneration may be made more sustainable:
Mainstreaming Sustainable Regeneration Part 1 and
Mainstreaming Sustainable Regeneration Part 2
