Our country needs more and better housing. That means improving older properties and, crucially, building new homes in well-connected, carbon-efficient communities with a range of facilities such as schools, health centres, shops, pubs and parks.

Such neighbourhoods – what we call sustainable communities – don’t happen by chance. Some, in towns and cities, have taken years to develop. Others, more recent in origin, were born out of a strong partnership between planners, developers, local authorities and community groups.

Yet too many places are neither cohesive, connected, well-designed nor well-planned. Some, for various reasons, have lost the essential glue that binds them together. Newer areas, often big estates, are sometimes soulless places, disconnected and car dependent, wasteful of energy and built with little recognition of the wider environment where planning seems to have been an afterthought and public transport connections are poor.

We need a radical reappraisal both to reinvigorate older neighbourhoods and to create new places where people want to live – carbon-efficient, socially cohesive and well-connected.

We were created because there are huge gaps in the skills and knowledge required to create these sustainable communities across the country.

» Use the films on the right to find out more about sustainable communities - the history, the concept and what it means to local people.