Broadland project team announced

Beyond Green Developments is pleased to announce the team for its latest project in Broadland. In-house experts will be joined by an international and local team of professionals to help create an authentically sustainable new community to the north of Norwich. The project team is as follows:

Beyond Green Strategy – Lead Consultant
Paul Murrain – Urban Design
iCube – Urban Design
Gehl Architects (Copenhagen)– Public Realm Strategy
Bidwells (Norwich)– Planning
Colin Buchanan – Sustainable Movement
Peter Brett Associates – Resource Efficiency
Environmental Perspectives – Environmental Impact Assessment
Ecology Consultancy (Norwich) – Ecology


Shaken but not stirred: Regenerating Christchurch

Following September’s devastating earthquake, Christchurch’s city centre is missing many of the teeth from its smile. But Christchurch City Council and others are committed to continuing their ambitious plans to regenerate Christchurch and attract residents to back to inner city living. Like many cities, the edges of Christchurch have expanded over time with many people now living in the suburbs. The Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy aims to see urban expansion slowing and regeneration ramping up.

In a collaborative effort between Beyond Green in New Zealand and the UK, we’ve been working with the Council for over a year to help them plan how they might conceive, design and deliver regeneration in Christchurch.  This strong connection with Christchurch continues, with Viv Heslop and Martin Udale working alongside the Council to advise them on how to develop and deliver an integrated sustainable regeneration framework for the city. We’re continuing to advise the Council on Central City South regeneration.  And now they’re at the beginning of a project to regenerate Sydenham, an area particularly hard hit by the earthquake.  We’re working with them to design the project through to actual development on the ground.

So watch this space and follow our journey as we work in partnership with the Council to plan, design and do regeneration in Christchurch.


Setting the scene for the Better Buildings Partnership

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Opening the Better Building Partnership’s Annual Forum, Joanna gave a keynote speech to some of London’s most prominent landlords and occupiers. Her brief was to set the scene on sustainability in the built environment, and inspire the group to work together to develop sustainability solutions in the commercial property market. Let’s hope inspiration was duly received…  More about the event


“Common sense is no longer common”

Despite being highly educated and financially literate, we have inadvertently created a powerful class that ‘are more dangerous than a half educated’ one; deskilled to the extent that we can no longer ‘grow food, make clothes or build houses’. ‘Common sense is no longer common’ to our species, and we have become nothing more than ‘instruments of making profit’. ‘What is our education for?’ asked Satish Kumar to a small but attentive audience at the LSE on Tuesday evening.

The lecture that Celia attended was entitled ‘Sustainability living in practise’, yet the first thing Kumar did was denounce the term as ‘overused, misused and abused’. He suggested instead that ‘resilience’ might more useful to describe what we are collectively working towards at the moment; resilience as a whole species in the face of peak resource use, environmental harm and climate change.  He emphasised that humans are as much nature as anything else, and that ‘what we do to nature we do to ourselves’. Whilst the economy is traditionally seen as separate from ecology, Kumar argued that we must fundamentally redefine this in recognition of our position and relationship with the ecological system in which we are a part. First and foremost, he suggested, we should get back to the land (whilst 61m people eat food in this country, only 2% work on the land), start producing our own food and the LSE should change its name to the London School of Ecology and Economics!

A podcast of Satish Kumar’s lecture is available to download here


Around the world with Ed Gillespie

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On the first Friday of each month Beyond Green Living organises a candlelit dinner at Wilderness Wood . Over a delicious 3-course seasonal meal we invite a guest speaker to inspire us about a particular area of sustainable living. This month global slow traveller, Guardian writer and Co-Founder of Futerra, Ed Gillespie took us on an inspirational and irreverent journey through the pleasures of slow and sustainable travel. Having circumnavigated the planet without getting on a plane Ed shared insights, anecdotes, tips and advice on how to avoid getting arrested by Chinese border guards, riding Mongolian camels and entertaining yourself for 40 days at sea on a cargo ship. And more prosaically gave us some practical tips on how to plan lower carbon holidays. It’s about time…


“We’re on the brink of a new industrial era”

Yesterday the Beyond Green Living team went to hear Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for the Department of Energy & Climate Change address an audience at the London School of Economics, where he set out the government’s ambition for “a low-carbon future, with cleaner energy and greener growth”. Naturally we were all ears.

We were glad to hear him emphasise that energy security must be progressed in tandem with economic growth to achieve a prosperous low carbon future, but there’s clearly an awful lot more meat needed on the bones of the government’s proposals to really change tangent when it comes to steering the economy…  

On a practical note, we were interested to hear more details about the government’s The Green Deal – “a radical programme to bring our houses out of the dark ages”. About time!

You can read the full text of Chris Huhne’s speech here, and for more information on what the Green Deal could mean for you, read Joanna Yarrow’s article written for the Independent on Monday 1 November.


Richard speaks at ‘Sustainable Developments Explored’

On Wednesday Richard Kendall spoke at an event organised by the South East Development Agency and SusCon and delivered to a selection of Architects, Surveyors, Builders, Developers, Renewable Installers, Plumbers, Electricians and students.

The session covered a range of topics, from best practise in micro-renewables  to sustainable construction.

Richard gave them a glimpse of the future of Community Projects, arguing that the scale of large community-led developments enables us to influence the overall lifestyle and therefore environmental impacts of residents’ far more than focusing on individual buildings.

Sustainable Developments Explored November 2010


Sandleford Park raises questions for forthcoming EIP

In recent weeks we’ve asked a series of questions about West Berkshire’s apparently politically-motivated decision to allocate Sandleford Park as a strategic housing site for 2000 homes, in spite of its being ranked bottom of 12 sites in the council’s own sustainability appraisal of possible sites. These have been widely reported and others too have raised similar concerns in advance of the council’s Examination in Public of its Core including other landowners and elected representatives of those living near the Sandleford Park site, who have had no opportunity to give their views about possible development of the site. The Examination in Public runs from 2nd November for two weeks and takes place at Shaw House, Newbury. Links to some recent articles in the local press can be found below.

Inspection Begins, interview on Newbury Sound, 1 Nov 2010
Developer demands mini-town answers, Reading Chronicle, 28 Oct 2010More questions posed over Sandleford site, Newbury News 27 Oct 2010
‘Bias’ claims by developer, Reading Chronicle, 21 Oct 2010Developer’s information bid, Newbury News, 21 Oct 2010‘Pincents Hill was decided by politics’, Reading Post, 20 Oct 2010


What’s the deal with the Green Deal?

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Continuing her series of articles in the Independent, Joanna explores the government’s new Green Deal scheme and what it might mean for households wanting to cut their bills and carbon emissions.

Read Joanna’s article here