Category: Businesses

CCCRdg will be representing Climate Change activities in the Reading / Thames Valley Berkshire area at the Future of Places (FOP) forum

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Climate Change Centre Reading
How can Reading / Thames Valley Berkshire become a role model in Climate Change? How can our leadership in in this very current area attract green businesses to the region? How do we form a strong sustainable community 2020-2050? These are questions the Climate Change Centre will deal with; and in doing so will help safeguard the future of our children;

1. Placemaking at a micro level
2. The Space we want
3. Research and theory of places

Please see our press release here: https://tvb-climatechallenge.org.uk/?attachment_id=580

Press-release_CCCRdg_180613

On June 24-26th, 2013, Placemaking leaders from around the world will gather together with UN officials, representatives from international government agencies, NGOs, designers, change-agents, mayors, local politicians, and other place-centered actors for The Future of Places. This will be the first of three linked conferences that will develop a ‘Future of Places Declaration’ to influence the discussion at the Habitat III gathering in 2016. The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), School of Architecture and the Built Environment (Contact: Dr. Tigran Haas) is excited to be participating in the organization, as the Scientific Advisors (together with the University of Miami, School of Architecture, Contact: Dr. Charles C. Bohl) for this very special series of events; a partnership between the UN-Habitat, the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, which will host the event at the Stockholm City Conference Centre in Stockholm, Sweden and PPS (Project for Public Spaces) in New York City.

BACKGROUND TO THE PUBLISHER:

The agreement which led to this was penned in Nairobi and signed by the UN-Habitat
Executive Director, Dr. Joan Clos and Project Leader for Urban City Research, Peter Elmlund for the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, a guest research fellow in residence at KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology). This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) forms a partnership with an outcome of creating a series of three conferences in the lead up to Habitat III, with a special emphasis on Public Space and Placemaking. The planned conference series will see the first two being held in Stockholm while the final one has been proposed for Nairobi in 2015. The conference series aims to shift the focus from objects to places, with an emphasis on functionality. Key highlights of the partnership are: that it would form a long term agreement beyond Habitat III, that there is a new aim to target and influence decision makers, and that there is an aim to create people-centered cities.

The conference begins with the premise that the world is at a crossroads, we have a choice: cities can continue to grow haphazardly, without regard to human social needs and environmental consequences, or we can embrace a sustainable and equitable process that builds community, enhances quality of life, and creates safe and prosperous neighborhoods. We are convinced that in the future, the cities that utilize the social capital-building potential of their public spaces to the fullest will be the ones with the most dynamic local economies. The Future of Places will survey the field, and map out a path to a more people-centered urban development model for the globalized future.

Habitat III, the third United Nations (UN) conference to be held on Human Settlements, will
bring together actors from across the globe, including local governments, national
governments, the private sector, international organizations, and many others. This gathering, the largest of its kind in the world, will build on the first Habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976 and the Habitat II conference in Istanbul in 1996. The conference will re-evaluate the Habitat agenda and look at the role of UN-Habitat and sustainable urban development in the upcoming decade. It is therefore vital that the dialogue that will influence the Habitat III outcomes—and thus the future global urban agenda—commences today.

The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) has also become a UN Habitat Partner University with the ABE – School of Architecture and the Built Environment as its nexus of future activities. Contact Persons for this important partnership and collaboration are Professor Alexis Pontvik and Dr. Tigran Haas from the same school. For more information on the Stockholm Placemaking Conferences please contact Dr. Tigran Haas at: tigran@kth.se

“Consider Climate Change in every action”~Climate Change Centre Reading

More information:
PPS: http://www.pps.org/blog/announcing-the-future-of-places-conference-series/
http://www.pps.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/PPS-Placemaking-and-the-Future-of-Cities.pdf
KTH: FUTURE OF PLACES

In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit

By Brian Merchant

1897

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1897, a wealthy American businessman named Horace Dobbins began construction on a private, for-profit bicycle superhighway that would stretch from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles. It may seem like a preposterous notion now—everyone knows Angelenos don’t get out of their cars—but at the time, amidst the height of a pre-automobile worldwide cycling boom, the idea attracted the attention of some hugely powerful players. And it almost got built…

via In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit | Motherboard.

Study: Walkable Infill Development a Goldmine for City Governments

By Angie Schmitt

A study out of Nashville by Smart Growth America provides more evidence that building walkable development in existing communities is best for a city’s bottom line.

Nashville’s “The Gulch” — a mixed-use development downtown — generates a much greater public return than more suburban developments in the same city. Image: Cumberland Region Tomorrow

SGA recently examined three different developments in the Music City. One was a large-lot, traditional suburban-style development called Bradford Hills built on greenfield site. Another was a “new urban”-style, mixed-use, walkable development also built on a greenfield, called Lennox Village. The third — known as The Gulch — was a mixed-use, compact housing and office development with retail and dining, built on a brownfield between Nashville’s Music Row and downtown…

via Study: Walkable Infill Development a Goldmine for City Governments | Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

The Power of 10

The Power of 10 is a concept PPS uses to start off a Placemaking process.  The idea is that it’s not enough to have just one great place in a neighborhood- you need a number of them to create a truly lively city or town.  It’s not enough to have only one superior neighborhood in a city- you need to provide people all over town with close-to-home opportunities to take pleasure in public life.  And, it’s not enough to have one livable city or town in a region- you need a collection of interesting communities.

via Project for Public Spaces | The Power of 10.

Tele2arena – Bike racks for 1000 bikes!

There are bright spots in life, new modern (safe) bike racks are regularly being installed in places like underground- train, bus stations.

But newly constructed venues seem to be an exception. It is not cyclist friendly; there is not a bike rack in sight. In a recent press release came from the large Småland furniture manufacturer (IKEA) regarding a trading post built at the southern city of Stockholm in the old slaughterhouse area. Quote from IKEA’s press release. “Its central location also makes the market place becomes easy to reach by public transport ? and in the next breath will notify you that the planned number of parking places is 4000 ?.

The message is: Going by public transport is great, but we are creating up to 4,000 car parking spaces, and have not considered cyclists and their needs.

But there is hope. This is a message in the subway close to IKEA, a new sports arena taking place:

Tele2-Cykelparkering2 = TELE2

The Tele2 arena have made 1000 bike parking places available from start. Hopefully this is the modern way of planning / thinking, and thus less room for “the bewildered cyclist ?” looking desperately for a space to park his bike – nice.

Src: U&We http://uandwe.se/den-forvirrade-cyklisten/

Coal’s unpaid health bill – Health and Environment Alliance

How is coal pollution making us sick?

A new report launched on 7 March 2013 by the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) aims to provide an overview of the scientific evidence of how air pollution impacts health and how emissions from coal power plants are implicated in this. It presents the first-ever economic assessment of the health costs associated with air pollution from coal power plants in Europe as well as testimonies from leading health advocates, medical experts and policy makers on why they are concerned about coal.

The-unpaid-health-bill

The report develops recommendations for policy-makers and the health community on how to address the unpaid health bill and ensure that it is taken into account in future energy decisions.

Download the report here (45 pages):
http://www.env-health.org/IMG/pdf/heal_report_the_unpaid_health_bill_how_coal_power_plants_make_us_sick_final.pdf

Margaret Thatcher: an unlikely green hero? | John Vidal

The former prime minister helped put climate change, acid rain and pollution onto the mainstream political map

Artist Lambert paints Britain's former Prime Minister Thatcher at his studio in Brighton

An artist paints a portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Her 11 years in power coincided with a decade of profound national and global environmental change. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/REUTERS

Margaret Thatcher will be remembered for her short lived “green period” in the late 1980s when she helped put climate change (or global warming as it was then known), acid rain and pollution on to the mainstream political map. Tutored by Sir Crispin Tickell, British ambassador to the UN in New York, she made several dramatic environment speeches..

Jonathon Porritt, head of Friends of the Earth in the late 1980s,

via Margaret Thatcher: an unlikely green hero? | John Vidal | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Greening Fast Food Packaging: A Roadmap to Best Practices

Over the past decade, ever-growing customer demand for green products along with pressure from local community and environmental stakeholders has made sustainability a new corporate imperative.

Across all sectors of the economy, major companies have taken steps to reduce their environmental impact and enhance their green image. With competing brands working to address these concerns, the fast food industry has been no exception.

In the complicated world of corporate sustainability, progress takes work. In some cases, efforts within the fast food industry have resulted in significantly improved environmental outcomes. While in other cases, changes have amounted to little more than greenwashing. This report takes aim at one key area that must be addressed to improve sustainability in the fast food industry: packaging. Special emphasis is placed upon issues surrounding the predominant material for fast food packaging: paper.

CCC-Rdg and “The Greenhouse Gas Protocol” Corporate Standard

Calculation and reporting within the CCC-Rdg will take place according to the GHG Protocol guidelines.

The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard provides standards and guidance for companies and other organizations preparing a GHG emissions inventory. It covers the accounting and reporting of the six greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol — carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

Want to know more about the GHG Protocol, see below;

The-Greenhouse-Gas-Protocol

Download the report here (116 pages):
http://www.ghgprotocol.org/files/ghgp/public/ghg-protocol-revised.pdf