Tag Archives: City deals

Green liberalism: a local approach to the low carbon economy

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Green liberalism_coverGreen Alliance associate Duncan Brack, introduces our recently published collection of essays, Green liberalism: a local approach to the low carbon economy. There are similar collections under ‘Green social democracy’ and ‘Green conservatism’ projects as part of Green Alliance’s Green Roots programme, which aims to stimulate green thinking within the three dominant political traditions in the UK. This piece has also been posted on Liberal Democrat Voice.

This collection of essays builds on two Liberal Democrat core beliefs: environmentalism and localism.

As David Howarth argued in The green book: new directions for Liberals in government (Biteback, March 2013), liberalism is not only compatible with environmentalism, it requires an environmental approach. In the UK, the Liberal Party, and then the Liberal Democrats, have consistently shown themselves to be the greenest of the three major political parties. Read more

Will City Deals promote sustainable transport?

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Railroad Lines in downtown Birmingham, AlabamaThis post is by Stephen Joseph, CEO of the Campaign for Better Transport.

Launched to some fanfare last July by Nick Clegg, the City Deal programme is supposed to free larger urban areas from the dead hand of Whitehall, allowing local decisions on issues like infrastructure. So what will this mean for sustainable transport?

Getting transport right is essential to growing city economies. An overly centralised system under previous governments has been blamed for holding up decision making and restricting the availability of funding. Read more

How to make City Deals greener

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14560341_sThis is a guest post by Andy Nolan, Director of Sustainable Development at Sheffield City Council.

Eight core English cities including my own have now signed City Deals to boost their economies[1]. Work is already underway on putting the deals into practice, but there are many ways we can strengthen and build on what has been achieved so far.

The low carbon emphasis of the deals, for example, would be be much stronger if a number of things were to change: Read more

Three green politics predictions for 2013

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cAnticipating significant trends is a compulsive but risky habit. Last year I forecasted three, and whilst two did come good, one was spectacularly wrong.  The Conservative Party did not follow a centrist strategy and did not reassert its support for a green economy. The challenge to the UK’s low carbon leadership which this reflects makes prediction harder than usual but, undaunted, I offer three more for the coming year: Read more

City deals are an opportunity for green growth

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liverpool windfarmsIn its bid to unlock growth around the country, the government is turning to cities for help. The UK’s major urban hubs have been given decision-making powers, devolved funding and new financing models in return for drawing up growth plans. Eight of these ‘city deals’ were agreed in July 2012 with Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. And a further 20 cities now have the opportunity to do the same in a second wave of deals. Read more

Cities are moving faster to a low carbon future

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Salford Quays ManchesterThis post by Green Alliance’s Alastair Harper first appeared on the New Statesman’s Current Account blog.

Our cities are the R&D facility for the country. From 4G rollout to community energy, they let us experiment with what’s possible. This is useful, because we’ve just agreed to change everything. The recent Energy Bill accepts how inevitable a low carbon future is for the UK. It also guarantees the money to deliver it on time – all we have to do now is actually do it. Read more