Identify Key City Stakeholders There is a long list of potential stakeholders for the plan within a city context, for example:• The Local Authority • Higher Education Establishments • Private Business • NHS Establishments• Local communityIdentifying which of the above will be key to your project is crucial at an early stage so that you can plan their involvement and take account of their views, knowledge and experience.It is also important to clearly define the physical boundaries of the programme:During their city-wide carbon reduction plan Bristol settled on the city limits as the limit, but this could equally be a ring road. Manchester included the 10 local authorities that make up the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities AGMA.This decision defines the scope of the work required and it is important to establish this from the outset.The stakeholder mapping tool is designed to help you identify the key stakeholders and begin to plan their involvement in the process. In practice, you will probably build an understanding of the importance and influence of individual stakeholders iteratively throughout the life of the programme. For this reason it is important to revisit periodically your initial impressions and update them with new information.Bristol held a city wide kick off meeting to which a broad range of stakeholder were invited. They found this useful in gauging interest and generating ideas.

via Identify Key City stakeholders.

Mapping the mood: average negative blue map, top and positive red map, bottom feelings for each country Image: Science/AAASTwitter users who post messages such as “Yay, its the weekend!” might not be engaged in the most stimulating of conversations. But these kinds of tweets can provide sociologists with a map of peoples moods around the world.Scott Golder and Michael Macy at Cornell University in New York gathered 509 million tweets from 2.4 million users in 84 different countries. They and analysed the messages using linguistic software that looks for positive or negative emotions within the text. They found that people tend to wake up in a good mood, which deteriorates as the day wears on. People tend to also be happier at the weekend, when the morning good-mood peak tends to be delayed by two hours, suggesting a lie-in. People are less positive during the winter, when the hours of daylight are shorter.None of these results are particularly surprising, but Golder and Macy suggest that using global tweets allows them to confirm previous studies that only looked at small samples of American undergraduates who were not necessarily representative of the wider world. Traditional studies also require participants to recall their past emotions, whereas tweets can be gathered in real time.The Twitter approach has also been tried before, but this is the first time researchers have gathered data on a global scale. While peoples moods seem to be consistent across countries and cultures, Golder and Macy did identify a shift in weekend moods in the United Arab Emirates, where the work week runs from Sunday to Thursday. Their results were published today in the journal Science.

via One Per Cent: Twitter mood map reveals the worlds emotions.

Imagine other people paying you to use your things when you don’t need them. That’s the genius of collaborative consumption.

You might own some tools that you never use, or perhaps you have a backyard that you just don’t have the time to do anything interesting with. Until recently, those pieces of property mostly served as nagging reminders that you didn’t have enough time to do everything you wanted to do. Today, they can look like revenue streams, not wastes of money.

Ideas about ownership of property are slowly starting to change in this country. The success of Zip Car and of bike sharing programs in a few major cities are the vanguard of a host of different “collaborative consumption” services and businesses that allow people to monetize their own unused resources, or to find ways to get goods and services without purchasing them. This infographic shows some of the stuff that might be lying around your house that are just profits waiting to happen — and all the start-ups trying to help you along:

Collaborative Home

This infographic was made by the venture fund Collaborative—which invests in collaborative consumption businesses—and the Startup America Partnership in order to help illustrate the economic benefits of this idea. (Full disclosure: I used to work with the founder of Collaborative.)

Your house, it turns out, is full of things that could be making you some cash. Your car can be shared with your neighbors via RelayRides. Your driveway itself can be rented out as a parking spot through Park At My House. Your tools, video games, sports equipment, even clothes, are all monetizeable. How much can you get?

That’s right, the average New York-based user of Airbnb (a site which lets users rent out their house like a hotel) makes $21,000 annually. That’s a nice supplement to any income. You can also make $200 a month just by renting your video games out. And you thought that was a useless habit. Even if all you have is time, you can monetize that, too.

via Infographic: The Collaborative Home – Collaborative Consumption Blog Posts.

On the 25th July 2011 the draft National Planning Policy Framework was published by Government. After the release of the Natural Environment White Paper in June this year conservation organisations have been highly anticipating the publication of the Framework, which represents the next step in terms of implementing the declarations of the White Paper.

The document, which integrates the Government’s economic, environmental and social planning policies for England, was issued alongside a statement from the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, who said “It will give local communities the power to protect green spaces that mean so much to them, while still giving the highest protection to our treasured landscapes such as national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It will also ensure that development needed to grow the economy is carried out in a sustainable way.”

The Government’s objective as stated in the Framework is that planning should help to deliver a healthy natural environment for the benefit of everyone and safe places which promote wellbeing. To achieve this objective, the document states that the planning system should aim to conserve and enhance the natural and local environment by protecting valued landscapes, minimise impacts on biodiversity and provide net gains where possible. The report also makes the statement that planning permission should be refused if significant harm resulting from a development cannot be avoided, adequately mitigated, or as a last resort, compensated for.

The Framework goes on to support the Lawton Review and the White Paper with its goals to minimise impacts on biodiversity by stating that planning policy should take into account the need to plan for biodiversity at a landscape-scale as well as identify and map components of the local ecological networks, including international, national and local sites. In line with EU targets the Framework states that planning will promote the preservation, restoration and re-creation of priority habitats, ecological networks and the recovery of priority species populations.

In terms of climate change the Government’s objective is that planning should fully support the transition to a low carbon economy in a changing climate, taking full account of flood risk and coastal change. To achieve this objective, the planning system should aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support energy efficiency improvements to existing buildings, deliver renewable and low-carbon energy infrastructure and provide resilience to impacts arising from climate change.

The Planning Framework is now open for consultation until the 17th of October 2011 and followed by a series of events taking place across the UK. Read the full document here.

via UK Proposes National Planning Policy Framework | Sustainable Cities Collective.

What are the links between business and development? And what is the business role and opportunity in addressing sustainability challenges of developing countries and emerging economies?As an engine of growth and development, and to underpin its license to innovate, operate and grow, business has a critical role to play in accelerating progress towards development.Companies can most notably develop inclusive business ventures, that is, sustainable business solutions that expand access to goods, services, and livelihood opportunities for low-income communities in commercially viable ways. The notion of inclusive business calls for additional focus and innovation in the way companies do business. It involves creating new forms of employment, new markets, and affordable products and services. This spurs economic growth and encourages entrepreneurship.This article highlights the concept of inclusive business in the current global context, provides a few examples of its application in practice, highlights the foundations for its success, and briefly presents an interactive tool, the “Inclusive Business Challenge”. The latter, designed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, aims at helping companies and stakeholders identify and implement inclusive business in practice.

via Inclusive business for sustainable livelihoods.