Building Sustainable Communities: Seminar Three

Monday, 2nd June 2008, MDDA, Manchester

The link between environmental sustainability and participation – how can sustainable lifestyles and behaviour change be encouraged in new housing developments and how does this link to participation?

 

The third seminar in our series explored the promotion of environmentally-sustainable lifestyles and how this can be tied into developing stronger community cohesion and encouraging participation of residents in civil society.

The seminar involved three presentations throughout the day which looked at these issues at a national level in China through to practical examples of work at a very local level in the UK. Our first speaker was Peter Head, Director at Arup, who discussed the importance of sustainable development for China and briefly looked at some of Arup’s work in two Chinese Eco-cities, Dongtan and Wanzhuang. Peter explained that with continuing global population growth, the way we plan cities will be a vital component of our efforts to reduce resource consumption, and prevent the most serious consequences of climate change.

Then we looked at the example of Hammarby Sjostad in Stockholm, Sweden. This development on the edge of the city centre is now home to 6,600 households, and when complete will contain 11,000 units. The development has been carefully planned to ensure that the different forms of infrastructure needed to promote environmentally-sustainable lifestyles have been included from the start of the development and are integrated well with each other.

Finally we heard from Alexandra Allen from Sustrans, who talked about their organisation’s work in the Dings, Bristol, where they were able to work with the exisiting community to redesign the layout of the streets around their homes to reduce car speeds and parking. The scheme’s features were carried through into the neighbouring new-build development by Barratt Homes, to try to promote a sense of continuity between the old and the new.

The seminar was attended by a diverse group of practitioners from English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation, local authorities and third sector organisations.

You can download the framing paper which was sent to the members of the audience before the event here. You can also view the presentations from the day below: