Blue Living was formed after many years of helping clients, including local authorities, housing associations and developers, understand the principles of sustainable development and integrate them into their businesses. We wanted to apply this experience to the design and delivery of high quality and authentically sustainable developments - places which are a pleasure to live in and visit, and where living a more sustainable lifestyle is made easier.
In early 2008, Blue Living formed a joint venture with Development Securities PLC, a property development and investment company whose activities are focused solely within the UK, to pursue opportunities for authentically sustainable, residential-led, mixed-use development projects in the UK.
As a commercial, for-profit entity, we believe that it is vital to demonstrate to the rest of the development industry that authentic sustainable development can be delivered profitably. Sustainability is not an 'add-on' to our work and nor do we do it simply to meet the requirements of the planning system. Sustainability outcomes are central to our corporate values and mission and are enshrined in agreements with our financing and land-owning partners. Our partners and collaborators understand that delivering an authentic sustainable development is as important as delivering a profitable development.
Blue Living intends to assemble a portfolio of seven or eight projects of different scales and in different contexts - including both urban extensions and urban intensification schemes.
"Government has for some time implored and steered land owners, local authorities and developers to deliver a better quality of scheme - proper places, good homes, environmentally sustainable everything. While this is worthy and seems obvious it is not as easy as it sounds; in our view it requires everything in the development process to be done differently: from the financial model to the process of engagement, masterplanning to energy and carbon strategies, access and movement to green infrastructure.It's time to translate the idealism and rhetoric of policy into superb places and spaces that create opportunities for truly sustainable 21st Century living" - Jonathan Smales, CEO, Blue Living.