People, Places and Planet

For those of you who may not be familiar with Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS) we are the Scottish Government’s ‘watchdog’ for quality design in the built environment.

Yesterday we were in the Scottish Parliament to launch our latest publication, entitled ‘People, Places and Planet’ (as we attempt to reclaim PPP as an acronym!). We were hosted by Robin Harper MSP and the Cross-Party Group on Architecture and the Built Environment.

PPP is our position paper on sustainable development and it seeks to promote debate and to set out a clear basis for understanding how the principles of sustainability, applied to the process of place-making, can deliver improvements to our built environment.

We know that climate change is arguably the biggest problem facing our world today and if it is to be tackled it requires all of us to play our part. PPP aims to provide useful information for both place-makers and policy-makers on the steps that they can take to help make Scotland a sustainable nation.

The publication makes clear that creating sustainable places is about much more that creating greener buildings. It outlines the challenges that the public and private sectors must face to deliver real sustainable development. We also highlight in the publication the steps A+DS itself is taking in play our part in realising a better future for Scotland.

A+DS will also be seeking the views of place-makers and policy-makers on the contents of ‘People, Places and Planet’. A+DS will be looking to receive responses by the end of June 2009.

If you fancy a wee read of the publication you can get it here, and for those of you too busy to read the whole thing we’ve even made a wee briefing paper on it that you can get here. Don`t say we’re not good to you.