Green linkage

Phew. Its been a busy week and so my sunday blogging is really just a way of clearing my virtual desktop of links for the week ahead. And yes, some of these links are more than a week old...

DCLG's new big idea is 'eco-towns' and David Lock is doing a study. These are effectively 21st-century garden cities but smaller - satellite towns of 5-10,000 homes, with good transport links to larger centres, as part of the New Growth Points plan. Precisely what the 'eco' bit means here isn't made explicit but I'm sure Lock will come up with some interesting ideas.

David Miliband gave a speech that sounded interesting but didn't have much concrete in it, about changing land use and farming patterns.

A city law firm (RPC) has come up with the idea that architects face lawsuits if they don't take account of climate change in their designs, through injury claims. Sounds like they are looking for an excuse to rake in millions more in fees, but we'll see.

The Church of England is planning a carbon audit of all its bishops residences as part of its ongoing reviews of its estate, and after initiating a wider carbon audit of its buildings last year.

In the rather dull world of Whitehall, the sustainable procurement action plan has been launched, while it was well-reported that the government has failed to meet its own targets for cutting emissions and waste, wuite spectacularly given that the targets were pretty low already. And Phil Clark has a useful policy round-up that saves me from doing some other linking.

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