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Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute’s Sustainable Communities Initiative and the concept and work of their Sustainability Lab are high-level, valuable summaries of the state of sustainability planning. They are well worth a few minutes of reading.

The Initiative covers the topics of climate change, design, public health and planning, sustainability planning, transportation, and urban regeneration. Of particular interest is the topic of sustainability planning, the introduction of which provides a good summary of the topic and their approach, including their take on eco-cities.

The work of the Sustainability Lab is contained on another website, and appears to be a rich resource.It has

See post in Sustainbility 2030 Clips. A recent Sage column written by an climate studies undergraduate summarize the key challenges and points and provides citations to supporting recent studies.

See post in Sustainability 2030 Clips.

The Case of Freiburg, Germany, cross post from Planetizen.

See a regional ecological-economic design proposal for Appalachia.

Email Promotion of 8-4-11. Web Registration and further info: click here. Greetings Scott, What could an understanding of the Living Building Challenge lead to in your community? Green leaders with varied backgrounds and hometowns all over the world are making use of the information offered in our 6-hour workshop to spark new conversations, create some

Follow the tour via this blog site. Sustainable Cities of Northern Europe is a UC Davis Summer Abroad class. University students from the U.S. and Canada travel, learn and plan/design their way across Europe exploring how cities, neighborhoods and projects can be planned, designed, built and experienced in a more sustainable manner.  The course is

TNS Canada has pioneered a quick start approach to Integrated Community Sustainability Planning. In 6-8 months smaller to medium sized communities can complete an initial planning process and plan to begin implementation. The link to a new QuickStart course is at the bottom of the program description below. I participated in the regular ICSP course last year and there is a lot of transferable value for application in the U.S. It’s followed by a useful comment as well.

A recent link in Sightline highlighted an article on Writing Sustainable Neighborhood Code in CrossCut (seattle/norwest-based public media), illuminated not only an innovative community stakeholder “roundtable” initiatve that is blazing a trail in implementing new sustainable neighborhood code and regulation reform, but a larger initiative to transform land use in Seattle. As such it’s worth watching. Highlights follow:

The California Planning Roundtable’s (CPR’s) Reinventing the General Plan project, shows highly innovative, transformational potential. From a quick review of the site and their impressive work to date, featuring Ontario, San Diego, Sacramento, Marin County, and Truckee, they are off to a good start. Although the theme of sustainability is present, it is not as