ON COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT.

Foreword by Peter Hall. Aldershot: Cower 2000. [pounds]35

Here is an anonymously edited abridgement of 16 lectures given under various auspices at the Royal Society of Arts in London. Most of them have implications for architects, not always on the criteria that first come to mind. Sue Clifford, for example, stresses the obligation to respect local distinctiveness, and Richard Best shows that the housing standards involved in the concept of Lifetime Homes are a long-term economy. In his foreword, Peter Hall points to the message that, 'We've got our economics upside down, and need to turn it the right way up: instead of economizing on people and putting them on the unemployment scrapheap, we need to economize on resources'. Illustrating this point in his contribution, Amory Lovins cites the Queen's Building at De Montfort University, 'made of brick -- partly because there were a lot of highly skilled, out-of-work bricklayers in Leicester'. He also cites its merits in daylighting and passive air movement and cooling. But of course the same virtue of using people as a resource with low-energy technology is true of Segal-type self-build.

Paul Ekins, as an environmental economist, warns us that 'we can't be serious about sustainable development in a market economy like ours until it is financially rational as well as environmentally beneficial and morally right.' Discuss.