Local Code

"Local Code is a prescription for urban health."-Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Architectural Record

With three billion more humans projected to be living in cities by 2050, all design is increasingly urban design. And with as much data now produced every day as was produced in all of human history to the year 2007, all architecture is increasingly information architecture. Praised in the New York Times for its "intelligent enquiry and actionable theorizing," Local Code is a collection of data-driven tools and design prototypes for understanding and transforming the physical, social, and ecological resilience of cities. The book's data-driven layout arranges drawings of 3,659 digitally-tailored interventions for vacant public land in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Venice, Italy. Between these illustrated case studies, critical essays present surprising and essential links between such designs and the seminal work of urbanist Jane Jacobs, artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and digital mapping pioneer Howard Fisher, along with the developing science of urban nature and complexity. In text and image, Local Code presents a digitally prolific, open-ended approach to urban resilience and social and environmental justice; At once analytic and visionary, it pioneers a new field of enquiry and action at the meeting of big data and the expanding city.

The draft Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity is intended to give effect to the Coalition agreement commitment "to impose tougher rules to stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers", particularly by restricting the permitted number of issues to four a year. Local authorities, though, are required to account to local residents for how they take decisions and how they spend council tax revenues. They have a duty to communicate effectively enough with local residents that they have adequate awareness of how to access and use local services. The Committee found little hard evidence to support the view of the commercial newspaper industry that council publications are, to any significant extent, competing unfairly with independent newspapers at present. It believes that the provisions in the proposed Code relating to cost effectiveness, content and appearance are sufficient to deal with the excesses of certain council papers, which are in any case confined to only a very few examples. The report also considers the provision of the proposed Code which sets out to prevent local authorities from hiring 'lobbyists'. The issue of the use of public money on political lobbying is an important one which the Government should address, and the Committee recommends that the Government work with representative organisations for all tiers of local government, with the UK Public Affairs Council and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Local Public Services Group to develop a Code of Practice for local authorities on the use of lobbyists.

These regional books cover electrical wiring in single family houses. They simplify the stated requirements for inspection in each province so that homeowners can safely, easily and confidently make their own electrical installations.