From wikipedia: 

New urbanism is an urban design movement whose popularity increased beginning in the 1980s and early 1990s.

There are some common elements of new urbanist design. New urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs. New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce the time people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl.

For the first time in its 14-year history, the Congress for the New Urbanism is shifting the focus from those who plan and design to those who implement.

The CNU XIV Multimedia Toolkit is a collection of materials from sessions and events at the Congress. A short description from the program and a list of speakers is posted for each session.

Slides, audio. video and other online resources for many of the presentations given at the conference. There are slides and audio for The Post-Carbon Society: An Overview with James Howard Kunstler and Julian Darley (Post-Carbon Institute).

[ hmm... aside from the Kunstler/Darley session, I'm actually finding it hard to get excited about many of the topics on offer here. despite the claim of focussing on implementers, it still seems a little on the academic side. but I'm sure there's some worthwhile stuff there too -ad ]

An earlier paper "established a basic method for assessing oil vulnerability via a spatial index that measured a combination of car dependence and socio-economic status at the level of the Census Collection District. We termed our original index the ‘vulnerability index for petroleum expense rises’ (VIPER). "

The latest paper "examines the spatial vulnerability of Australian urban areas to fuel price and mortgage interest rate rises."

"The report maps the extent of mortgage and oil vulnerability at the local scale. We note that outer and fringe suburban areas where there are higher proportions of households with mortgages, where car dependence is greater and where incomes are more modest are the most vulnerable to rising fuel price and interest rate impacts."

"To assess how the impact of these three factors is likely to be distributed across Australian cities we have created a new index, the ‘vulnerability assessment for mortgage, petrol and inflation risks and expenditure’ (VAMPIRE)." 

The report is available for free download [PDF]. 

That's taken from an article by the Rocky Mountain Institute's Greg Franta based on IEA data.  Franta writes:

Just how important are buildings in the big scheme of things?

The built environment, with its broad diversity of sites and buildings, offers a huge opportunity to sustain a desirable quality of life on this planet. Buildings use most of our energy and deplete vast quantities of natural resources. They rely on non-sustainable material harvesting, extracting, and mining. And once built, they pollute water, earth, and air, and can harbor wholly unhealthy indoor environments.

On the contrary, "green" developments typically demonstrate sustainable practices of elegant design, offer responsible stewardship of the natural environment, and make wise investments.

Traditional sources of energy production and use are major culprits of atmospheric pollution. Buildings gobble close to 40 percent of the energy used annually in the United States to heat, cool, ventilate, light, and support other operations.1 This operational energy, plus the energy used to extract, harvest, and manufacture products, transport materials, and construct buildings means the building industry chews through more than half of all the energy used in the United States each year.
 
Integrated design leads to healthful and productive interiors, reduced operating costs, fewer environmental impacts, and restorative landscapes.

David Holmgren has mentioned that his family's passive solar house in Hepburn Springs, a showcase of sustainable architecture, would not be allowed to be built today because it does not meet the established environmental building code, which doesn't take into proper consideration thermal mass, or the embodied energy in the materials.  

Still a lot can be done with elegant solutions which work with the elements and seasons rather than against them.

Greenhouse.gov.au has some good building and design tips.

Ceres have a retrofitted an old weatherboard house which you can check out on Saturdays in East Brunswick.

It has a small greenhouse attached on the north (sun facing) side which can be used to both heat and draw cool air through the house, depending on which vents are opened.  The black rectangle on the right picture which looks like a door is a actually solar heat collector too.  Deciduous trees close to the house provide shade in summer and let light through in the winter.   The house also has working examples of a:

• Grid interactive PV power system
• Passive solar extension and additions
• Displays of insulation
• Energy efficient appliances
• Low embodied energy construction
• Natural floor coverings and finishes
• Urban rainwater harvesting
• Wattworks greywater system
• Solar hotwater & hydronic heating system
• Permaculture garden with low water tolerant plants
• And much more 

An extra step for builders would be to consider natural local materials such as stawbale or cob.  And if you think mud can't be stylish, check out the mud mosques of Mali…

Rob Hopkins at Transition Culture writes:

Great book, terrible title. Andre Viljoen has put together a book of the most profound importance at this point in history. How will we feed our cities beyond the age of cheap oil? Does the old concept that the cities are for people to live in and the countryside is for growing food in still have any relevance when our cheap transport system is no longer able to function? Viljon argues not. We should view our cities as much in terms of being productive spaces as we view our rural areas.

‘The city as a farm’ may appear a fanciful notion in our 21st century industrialised society, yet if we look to the only country thus far to have experienced peak oil, Cuba, we can gain some insight into how we too will have to rethink some basic assumptions. This book contains some of the best literature on the Cuban experience I have yet read. In essence, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba’s oil imports were reduced practically to zero almost overnight. It had, up to that point, developed a Western style intensive agriculture model, which became rapidly unworkable. Agriculture was redesigned, and is now more than 80% organic. What is perhaps more exciting was the explosion in urban agriculture. Havana now produces half of its fresh vegetables within the city, from a series of community gardens, as well as on balconies and rooftops.

Debra Solomon at CuniBlog writes:

CPULs is a compelling vision for urban planners and (landscape) architects. The book is loaded with truly useful facts and case studies yet somehow remains a rivetting read for layfolk, comme moi.

CPULs’ authors articulate the benefits and obstacles to their proposal and offer cogent strategies for creating city land use policy in which urban green and brown are treated as productive space, considering the unbuilt as an event of equal intensity as the built. A vision of a thriving CPULs in London 2045 provides a powerful scenario that I can imagine myself being a part of at any stage in my life. This is something I would not characterise as a common feature in most urban planning. In CPULs city planning the well-being of people is a central and distinguishing factor. In fact, its completely seductive.

Her post also includes the following photo taken from the book which you have to see:

Oil drum lids used as markers in Havana organiponicos. Photos by Tom Phillips from CPULs used entirely without permission

Here's Debra's links too which are quite useful (and include a link to Eat the Suburbs, thanks Debra.) 

• Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes. Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities. Andre Viljoen (ed) 2005. Architectural Press
• Biography of Andre Viljoen at the Royal Institute of British Architects website
• Robert Hopkins’ brilliant Transition Culture review of CPULs. The review also questions why Viljoen doesn’t use the term permaculture when the ideas in this book are so clearly informed by it. Hopkins points out that THIS book is exactly where permaculture needs to be. Although CPULs author Graeme Sherriff addresses permaculture rather thoroughly in Chapter 22 (Permaculture and Prodcutive Urban Landscapes) I can imagine that editor Viljoen felt a need for a new definition (and therefore produced that unfortunate acronym) because the notion of permaculture does not specifically address urban planning and land use policy.
• Permaculture according to Wikipedia
• Permaculture according to CPULs authors – quoting Robert Hopkins!: ‘Permaculture has evolved into a system for the conscious design of sustainable productive systems which integrate housing, people, plants, energy and water with sustainable financial and political structures.’ (Robert Hopkins, 2000, p.203)
• CPULs according to wikipedia. Oh how odd, there is as of yet no entry.
• Energy descent
• James Howard Kunstler, author of the Long Emergency
• Eat the suburbs – an Energy Descent Primer
• Some of the more positive aspects of peak oil:
  Healthier food
  More active lifestyles
  Greater self-reliance
  A sense of connection to place and products
  The re-emergence of local identity
  An emphasis on quality over quantity
  A means of overcoming addictive behaviours such as over-consumption
• Permaculture Activist, the magazine – excellent read!
• An MP3 of permaculture ‘proponent’ David Holmgren lecturing on permaculture and peak oil
• Robert Newman’s History of Oil (stand-up comedy) on Google Video. Hilarious and not-so-hilarious at the same time.