The value of ‘green infrastructure’ in urban landscapes is becoming increasingly recognised by health professionals, water managers, planners, policy makers and designers around the world. The rapid expansion of towns and cities contains the real risk of creating unliveable, unhealthy environments.

The Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities were developed by Robin Chase, Zipcar co-Founder, and a consortium of leading city and transport organizations including: the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, Natural Resources Defense Council, Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (S

Ensuring that distribution capacity is available to meet South Australia’s few days of extreme peak electricity demand each year, plus the rate at which that peak demand is continuing to grow, leads to a necessity for on-going and increased investment in the State’s distribution network.

A report commissioned by the NSW Architects Registration Board examines "the areas where architects add value to the economy beyond typical construction sector analysis" and defines "where value lies in the work of architects beyond the bricks-and-mortar value of the construction industry." 

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the costs and benefits of applying a set of smart surface solutions1 , including cool roofs, green roofs, solar PV, and permeable and reflective pavements and road surfaces across three cities: El Paso, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Cities today absorb the bulk of the world’s natural resources, and their solid, liquid and gaseous wastes are often carelessly dumped somewhere in nature. But ‘environmental boomerangs’ are increasingly in evidence: In their own self-interest, cities urgently need to reduce their environmental impacts and ecological footprints, and to contribute towards regenerating damaged ecosystems. 

Cities must address climate change. More than half of the world’s population is urban, and cities emit 75% of all carbon dioxide from energy use1. Meeting the target of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to keep warming well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels requires staying within a ‘carbon budget’ and emitting no more than around 800 gigatonnes of CO2 in total after 2017.

Important research is looking at counteractive measures to urban heat island effect from the best materials to reflect urban heat to the best technology and urban design to keep us cool. What we can do now is make our cities, where the majority live, smarter, healthier and increasingly more liveable.

Regional scale collaboration on climate change adaptation is an important consideration for governments. This report is based on a project that explored the relationship between legal and policy frameworks and cross-border collaboration on climate change adaptation in the Australian Capital Region (ACR).

Addressing energy use in the built environment is just one aspect of the carbon reduction challenge, according to The Footprint Company chief executive Dr Caroline Noller. Addressing the embodied carbon in building materials is also vital.