Product category:
Building Trade Associations and Institutes
News Release from: The Town and Country Planning Association | Subject: Biodiversity by Design
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 23 September 2004
Development Better For Wildlife Than
Countryside?
The nation's back gardens often support far higher levels of wildlife than intensively farmed arable fields, creating new communities should go hand-in-hand with enhancing biodiversity, say TCPA.
The nation's back gardens often support far higher levels of wildlife than intensively farmed arable fields, and so, creating new communities should go hand-in-hand with enhancing biodiversity, the TCPA has said In Launching "Biodiversity by Design: A guide for sustainable communities", the first in a series of guides from the TCPA, at a conference in Milton Keynes, TCPA Director Gideon Amos will argue that: "The challenge we face today is how to deliver homes, jobs and communities in a way that is genuinely sustainable
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 14 Oct 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Planning And The Building Regs Must Be Overhauled
A new report from the Sustainable Housing Forum (SHF) states that the UK's building regulations and the planning system must be reformed to help bring sustainable housing into the mainstream.
Move Treasury And Bank Of England say TCPA
Government should proceed with comprehensive relocation of its functions to the regions of England, the TCPA has said in its response to the Lyons Public Sector Relocation Review.
For too long traditional assumptions have been that the needs of people and wildlife compete and that development must always have a negative impact on the surrounding environment." "Academic studies have demonstrated the high levels of biodiversity that residential gardens and other urban green spaces can support compared with the desolation of intensive agricultural farming," he continued.
"We have to recognise that urban development can provide opportunities for enhanced wildlife habitats, while also bringing social and environmental benefits, if planners, architects and house builders recognise the importance of biodiversity." The guide, supported by a range of leading environmental organisations, spans the boundaries between urban design, architecture and planning on the one hand, and ecology on the other and provides practical, design led examples of how enhancing biodiversity can and should be 'designed in' to a new development from the earliest stages.
Mr Amos will go on to say that: "Of course urban gardens will not suit all species and so some rural areas will always need to be protected to preserve wildlife that does not integrate well with human settlements." The guide is particularly aimed at all those involved in the delivery of sustainable communities, as envisioned by the Government in its Sustainable Communities Plan, as the case studies illustrated in the guide respond to the scale and form of development being brought forward as a result of the Plan.
It includes a number of in-progress schemes being promoted by the Communities Plan, demonstrating the opportunities presented for enhanced biodiversity.
• The Town and Country Planning Association: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Buildingtalk email newsletter
• Buildingtalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
