When I started writing this blog I was planning to focus on small interventions on a scale just slightly larger than a single household. I wanted to look at the possibility of getting together with the people next door and sharing resources; like for example having a solar hot water system which is shared between five houses, or organising an organic food buying co-op, or maybe a car club.

What I've discovered is that a lot of the sustainability improvements which would be most effective as a way of reducing our carbon emissions or water usage either work on the scale of the individual house - or else on the scale of a neighbourhood (150-250 houses).


Because small decentralised systems tend to have a smaller ecological 'footprint', are more efficient and just generally more sustainable than large scale centrally organised systems, it makes sense to start thinking about providing as much of our energy, food, water and social/cultural resources locally.

But how do we make that work? How can we organise ourselves on a neighborhood scale to enable the implementation of local sustainable systems?

I'm trying to think of some useful models. Here in Melbourne I can't think of many organisations which work on that scale: Our local government functions on a much larger scale - the City of Yarra, our local council, manages something like the equivalent of more than 100 neighbourhoods. Too big.

Maybe a local school is a useful model? A lot of schools would have 200 or more families enrolled, and they would be managed locally by a school board with some key decisions or design processes being carried out on a regional or state level.

Come to think of it - the toy library we go to in Clifton Hill would have 200 or so families involved. They have one or two full time paid staff hired by the council and these staff manage the library, gather fees and organise the families to volunteer their time two to three times a year.

Perhaps it could work similarly here, council could hire a someone to manage or facilitate local neighbourhood-scale groups. This person could provide advice and some financial support while allowing the impetus, and most of the key decisions to come from the residents. Large scale, expensive or potentially hazardous interventions - like black water treatment, could be handled by council in the same way they would deal with proposals from any developer.

In 1994 our then premier Jeff Kennett merged three local councils (Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy) and parts of the City of Melbourne and City of Northcote into the City of Yarra, forming one big mega-council. I believe the idea was to improve efficiency and reduce costs, and maybe increase quality of decision making & outcomes - and I imagine that in some areas it was probably effective in doing so. The downside is that government on this scale makes it difficult for the individual voice to be heard. It becomes difficult for small scale neighborhood lead interventions to be handled effectively. And the anonymity and professionalising of local government on a larger scale tends to discourage citizen participation.

I don't know how many people lived in the old City of Collingwood, but there are almost 70 000 people living in the City of Yarra now. Thats almost ten times larger than Christopher Alexander's ideal of the 'Community of 7000'. And ten times larger than Jefferson's 'ward republics'.

What we need is new models to enable us to control our energy, our water, our waste and other resources on a neighbourhood scale. But what are they? Anyone have any ideas?

So they've been talking about creating a temporary beach on the banks of the Yarra for summer... the idea is to dump a bit of sand, supply deck chairs and beach umbrella's and perhaps a couple of ice cream carts.

Apparently it's inspired by the Paris Plage - an annual artificial beach along the Seine, complete with palm trees. I've never seen the Paris Plage, but I have been to Blijburg beach outside Amsterdam, which is fantastic. Blijburg is a temporary artificial beach located on a housing development site on IJburg, (the new islands in the east of Amsterdam). Eventually it will all be high density housing - but in the meantime it's a beach with a little bar and restaurant. It's not flash - all very make-do-provisional-aesthetic... but that just makes it even more fun. And Amsterdam has three other urban beaches as well - four if you count the 'beach' on the top of the Nemo building.

The great thing about sandy beaches is that they're 'smooth' as Deleuze would say; they're not programmed, the water and people's footprints rewrite them continually - they're open spaces, free spaces - spaces for play - places of becoming. Cities are the opposite, they're highly 'striated' spaces, clearly programmed, places for work, defined places, known spaces. Which is what I like about the idea of a beach in the CBD - it's exciting because it would crash together two completely different types of space - a collision which can't help but change the way we experience the city.

But from the articles I've read about our proposed urban beach - people seem to be canning it, which is a bit of a shame I reckon.


What do you think? I've set up a poll so that we can all vote (on the top right of the page). I've read a few different arguments against the beach so far...

Argument 1: We already have perfectly good beaches close to the city including Port Melbourne & St Kilda etc. so a 'fake' beach in the CBD would just be a white elephant.

Well - I grew up in Wollongong, and so it's hard for me to get too excited about Melbourne's bayside beaches at the best of times. To me a 'real' beach has to have surf. Maybe this prejudice is making me miss the point - but I reckon a city beach is just as useful as a Bayside one. After all, a beach in the CBD will do a totally different job to a beach on the coast; no-one is going to go to visit the beach on the Yarra for a 'day at the beach', but they will go there during their lunch hour, or for an brief relaxation during a full-on day of Christmas shopping - or as a chance to allow the kids to let off a bit of steam.

And on those hot summers nights it will be fantastic, people can hang out between festival events, or before a big night out clubbing in the city.

Argument 2: Other cities with Urban Beaches are all landlocked, and that's why their beaches are successful.

See above - I don't think the beaches on the Bay would 'compete' with the city beach. A city beach is just a way of extending Melbourne's beach culture to the city. Mixin' it up a bit. It's about making the city more exciting, more varied.

It's probably a good way of promoting Melbourne's coastal attractions to visitors too. When people think of Sydney - they automatically think of Bondi and golden beaches, but I don't think they do the same for Melbourne. Being from NSW, I certainly never associated Melbourne with 'beach' before I came here.

Argument 3: Beaches don't 'belong' beside rivers - they should only be found by the bay or the sea. A 'faux foreshore' would ruin the 'natural beauty' of the river as it is.

Well, rivers quite often have little beaches. In Australia it's certainly much more natural to find a sandy bank along a river's edge than mounds of green grass planted with English Elm trees, let alone hard bluestone paving. In fact a fake beach won't be any more faux than any other element of the landscape along the city's river edge.

Argument 4: To make a beach you have to take away something that's already there.

That's probably the most convincing argument for not having a beach that I've heard. I can't think of any place along the river in the CBD that 'needs' a beach. I love the rivers edge just the way it is.

The only thing I would say is that the beach would be temporary - so it's really more like putting out a slip n' slide on your front lawn in summer than digging it up and installing a swimming pool. We wouldn't be losing anything for good, just having a temporary change of decor.

Argument 5: It's too expensive, and a waste of money

Well that's out of my league. I have no idea how much it will cost, or what the budget for providing that kind of amenity is. But is it a waste of money? If you see the city-beach as an attempt at an imitation of the 'real thing' then of course it's bound fail, and so yes it's got to be a waste of money. But if you see the beach as an attempt to create a different kind of city space - as some kind of freer more relaxed urban square, then maybe it's not.

and finally...

Argument 6: People can't swim in the Yarra, so why have a beach?

There's two responses to this - the first is that people can't swim in the Seine either - it doesn't have to be about swimming, it's about lounging, building sand castles and wearing as little as possible (and all in your lunch break).

The second response is the only argument I've heard in the public debate so far which is in favour the Yarra beach concept - and it's my favourite argument because it brings the idea of a beach back to what this blog is about...

Apparently the Yarra Riverkeeper Association has welcomed the idea of a beach precisely because we can't swim in the Yarra. The beach, they argue, will bring Melbournians to the water's edge in a new way and in doing so increase their awareness of the health of the waterways. They'll be on the beach, they'll think about how nice it would be to be able to take a dip, and that will increase the pressure on improving the way we manage pollution and stormwater along our river.



So, what do you think? A city beach ... Stupid? Possibly good, but risky? Or just straight up fantastic?

It's a rainy Sunday morning and it's pouring down outside as I write this - everything is getting a really good soaking.

This is great news for our gardens and street trees - but not so good for the poor old Yarra River. Tomorrow, when Yarra Watch measure the contamination in the river, they'll find higher levels of toxins and bacteria than before the rain.

Everyone knows that the Yarra is sick, we've all heard about the kayakers with leptospirosis and the dead eels, but why? No doubt part of the problem is fertilizers and animal poo from farms in the Upper Yarra, or more disturbingly; businesses like Amcor Packaging in Abbotsford who illegally wash toxins into the river, but I can't just blame other people for the problem. The sad fact is that a large part of the pollution is from neighbourhoods like ours, on nice wet days like today.

As I write this, all that rainwater is running over the road, and the footpaths, and down the gutter to the stormwater pits. On the way the rainwater is picking up pollutants from the surface - including petrochemicals, oils, rubbish, dog poo, detergents and organic matter, which are washed into the drains by the water. By this afternoon, all of that water and pollution is going to end up in the Yarra River. (For a more comprehensive listof pollutants and their effects click here).

So what can we do? On an individual level - not a hell of a lot. We can pick up litter, wash the car in a carwash, and report anyone putting anything nasty where it will end up in the drains. As a neighbourhood however, we can do a lot.

Basically, the best thing we can do is retain and use as much of the water here in our neighbourhood as possible, and then make sure the water that ends up in the stormwater system is clean before it gets to the Yarra.

I've got a couple of ideas on how we could apply some water sensitive urban design measure here in our neighbourhood, I'll draw them up and post them shortly.

The photo above left is one of the stormwater pits in our neighbourhood, taken today during a brief hiatus in the rainfall. Click image to see larger

I've been looking at an interesting blog called GreenRenters...

They say they're trying to fill a gap in the 'conversation' about sustainable living - because most information and marketing is addressed at homeowners, who are able to make structural changes to their property, and are less transient in their address.

As renters ourselves I can certainly relate. As energy prices rise it will be interesting to see if government start to mandate the provision of things like insulation and draft proofing in rental houses. Because there's no doubt that living in a badly designed/fitted home can cost you a packet in energy each quarter.

GreenRenters has got some nice vegetable recipes too, they even look delicious enough to maybe convert a meat lover like me...

I've been writing a post on possible strategies for dealing with stormwater in our neighbourhood (inspired by the wet wet day we've had today). But I thought I might post a quick roundup on the weeks water news...

Water costs tipped to more than double
Because of the cost of new infrastructure, and the fact that the water supplies are at 30.6%, down about 5% from this time last year. So maybe, contrary to my earlier suggestion, an investment in water infrastructure could end up paying for itself afterall...

and...

Bizarre solutions to water crisis
Apparently someone in the Queenland government said something about shipping water from Japan.

and...

Rainwater tanks could save public $600m
Taxpayers could save big money if all new houses installed tanks and raingardens - apparently a lot of that saving is from reducing the amount of water which enters the stormwater system.

Thanks to snap for putting me onto 'quietrevolution' in the uk. These guys are making a commercial turbine designed for urban areas, where wind speeds are lower and tend to change direction more frequently. Apparently the helix design significantly reduces vibration and noise, which would certainly make them easier to live next to.

There's no doubt this one is elegant as well. And as you can see in the image below - has significantly less visual impact than a traditional wind turbine, and less problems with shadows too I'd imagine.

Still it's 5m tall plus mast, and not cheap - you wont get much change from $90 000, and that doesn't include footings (foundations), although I imagine it does take into account all the sparky work.

Not sure what the payoff period would be for one - of course that would depend on the amount of energy it could generate, which in turn would depend on the specific wind conditions of your site.

I'm not sure how windy our neighbourhood is. Alexander Parade would probably be our best bet for picking up a few gusts, but I imagine we would have to measure the specific location we wanted to use for a period of time before we'd have useful figures on productivity.

The quietrevolution mob are working on smaller and cheaper turbine for residential use - but it's not due to be released until 2009.

I was listening to the replay of By Design on Wednesday - the host of the program Alan Saunders, was interviewing Dr Peter Fisher about the idea of 'Urban Forests'.

Fisher is a physicist and climate change consultant, and on the show he argued for the value of trees in urban areas as a way of making our cities more ecologically sustainable. If you'd like to, you can listen to the whole program here.

Saunders and Fisher discussed the fact that during the last few dry summers, local councils have allowed large trees in urban areas throughout Australia to die, and Fisher estimated that up to 15% of large trees have died in some areas.

Handling 'green assets' (as our trees are known) in a water crisis presents some real dilemmas for councils. And I do understand the reasoning behind the application of strict water restrictions in public parks and gardens: It shows local government acting as a role model - and also makes those of us who live in the city and suburbs aware of something of the real scale of the water problem. It also saves a significant amount of water. But I also think that there is an argument for protecting a few green public areas in each part of the city and suburbs for people to enjoy; people who have little enough exposure to nature already.

And it's a very high price to pay if we lose our avenues or stands of established trees permanently. Disturbingly, Fisher believes that we will not be able to grow really big tree's again in our urban areas because of ongoing drought conditions and water restrictions and so, he argues, we need to protect the ones we have.




Fisher called himself a proponent of "old fashioned shade," he points out the role mature trees play in our urban areas:

• Trees work to reduce the impact of greenhouse gases by carbon sequestration
• By shading houses, footpaths and roads, Trees reduce the 'heat island affect' caused by heat from the sun being absorbed by hard surfaces and later released as radiated heat. This extra heat can make our cites 3-4 degrees warmer than surrounding areas.
  
• By absorbing water in their root system, trees reduce the problem of overloaded storm water systems in heavy rains, and so reduce the likelihood of flooding.
• Each shade tree over a house saves 30kwh per year in air conditioning, (Fisher argues that this power reduction then saves water used in the powerplant - so keeping the tree's alive actually saves water).
• Trees filter and absorb toxins and particles from vehicular traffic and industry which cause asthma, respiratory illness and other serious health issues.
  

Fisher and Saunders went on to discuss the problem I looked into in an earlier post about weighing up the benefits of deciduous trees (mainly exotic) versus those of evergreen indigenous/native trees. They focused on the problem of shade from trees reducing the effectiveness of solar panels. All trees will reduce the effectiveness of solar panels in summer, but trees which lose their leaves in winter allow higher levels of productivity from solar panels than trees which keep their leaves all year round (like most native species).

This argument plays out differently depending on which state or rather, which climate you're in. Here in Melbourne, most of our energy use, and therefore carbon emissions, is from heating in winter - so maybe we're better off with deciduous exotics (although I hate to admit that - because personally I'm a big fan of indigenous planting). Fisher is from Queensland, and common sense suggest that most of their energy use would be cooling - so it might make sense to plant indigenous trees which can also support birdlife and local urban ecosystems. Especially if summer shade from trees significantly reduces energy use anyway.

Of course, it's important to remember than here in Melbourne, even deciduous trees can cause problems in terms of reducing carbon emissions. A deciduous tree planted to shade your living area, will significantly reduce the solar gain (warmth from the sun) inside your house during spring and autumn, which means you're more likely to need to turn on the heater. Operable shade systems which allow you to keep sun out in summer and let it in when it gets cooler are more effective. I'm not sure how the carbon impact of extra energy use weighs up against the carbon stored by the tree. And I certainly don't know which is the best solution once you take in to account the other benefits of trees, like cleaner air, better soil, bird life... and so on.

The other possible conflict with trees v's solar panels is that it's difficult to map tree growth, or predict it. If you've just installed $12 000 PV array, you can usually do something about your next door neighbour putting up an extra floor and blocking out your sun, but it's harder to prevent the Corymbia maculata they planted from shooting up 5 meters in as many years and causing the same problem.

Image of tree in bag from New Stiletto

I said earlier that I thought wind turbines could look like elegant kinetic sculptures, well interestingly, Philippe Starck, better know for his juicers, plastic chairs and other coveted homewares, has recently produced a designer wind turbine.

Apparently one of these can supply 20-60% of the average households needs, and it will cost about $AU700 (I imagine you would need to shell out for installation and grid link-up and other bit's and pieces, which could push the price up considerably). The design was on display in March as part of Milan Design Week and according to inhabitat is due to go on sale next month.

I don't know how noisy it is, but it's 'invisible' (or transparent anyway), so you won't have the flickering-shadow issues, it's small, and it's pretty - so maybe the neighbors won't mind looking at it.

And good on Starck for showing us that sustainability doesn't have to be all lentils, woolly jumpers and brown bread - it can be sexy too.

One of the key jobs to do if we to make our neighbourhood sustainable, or our home, is to reduce our reliance on large scale centralised infrastructure and maximise our use of local resources. In other words; become more 'self-sufficient'. And harvesting our own rainwater is a relatively easy place for us to start.

Each time we turn on the tap, fresh clean water is there for us to drink, wash our clothes in or rinse out the left-over weet-bix from breakfast. It's so easy, and so available, that it's easy to forget the massive engineering feat, and ongoing maintenance, that makes it possible. And easy to forget that each drop of water in my kitchen tap has traveled about 80 odd km from the to top of the Yarra River to reach it.


I've been reading a little about Melbourne's water system - and it really is a massive piece of infrastructure. The system as it stands really started in the 1920's, and eight or nine new reservoirs have been created through the decades to supply Melbourne's increasing demands up until the completion of Sugarloaf Reservoir in the early 80's. Along with new reservoirs, huge systems of pipes have been constructed to transport the water from the hills to the city. Areas of the conduit have diameters of 2.1m - you could walk upright inside!

So it makes sense to harvest water locally to reduce the pressure on all that infrastructure.

If self-sufficiency is our goal, does that mean we need to go all the way and sever ourselves from the existing water infrastructure? I don't think so. Surely there's a good point of balance between total self-sufficiency and a centralised system? If we do everything we can to reduce our demands on the existing water system, then we can use still it as a 'back-up' or booster for our local water harvesting systems, but because we're relying on local water supplies we could relieve the water crisis without expanding the centralised system, which we could only really do by finding new valleys to flood and turn into reservoirs.

The other reason it might be better to remain connected to the system is that it may not be such good idea to try and produce our own drinking water. I'm going to look into that further, but my feeling is that responsibility for ensuring the quality of our drinking water is probably a good thing to centralise, which probably also means centralised harvesting and treatment.

But drinking water is only a small percentage of our water needs. We can certainly collect rain-water from our roofs and use it for gardens, dishwashers, washing machines and maybe showers. For everything really, except drinking.

The easiest way to do this is to install water tanks. There's an ever growing choice of water tanks suitable for individual residences, some of them are surprisingly attractive. But many people who live in our neighborhood with our tiny back yards (if any) don't have a lot of room to spare for a water tank...

If you're trying to make your own individual house sustainable, you would look at 'small space' tank solutions - skinny wall tanks, under deck tanks, underground tanks or under house 'bladders'. But for this hypothetical design project, I'm thinking on a neighbourhood scale, so if the water tanks become part of the 'public' or communal infrastructure why not put them under the roads? Of course I haven't done any kind of detailed costing on this proposal, but it seems likely that the cost may be comparable to the expense of installing individual tanks in each house in the neighbourhood.

Of course one of the 'problems' with installing water sustainability measures is the current artificial cheapness of water. So it takes a long time (if ever) for you to recoup your money. Of course; it does mean you can have nice green plants in summer.

I've starting modeling the neighbourhood in 3D (using Sketchup and Google Earth - both free and easy to use software) - here's a shot of our little piece of Collingwood, before, and after...

I've been considering the possibility of using energy from wind as part of our 'community power plant'. A lot of people don't like wind turbines, they object to the noise, the flickering and the visual impact issues.

I can't really speak about the first two objections, but personally I really like the way they look. We were driving home from coastal Gippsland the other day, and passed some turbines on the way - and they looked amazing - like elegant white kinetic sculptures.

Anyway, one of the reasons I drew up a 3D model was to get a clearer understanding of the possible impact of turbines if we used them in our neighbourhood. I really liked the idea of them being a kind a entry feature, and a public declaration of a green neighbourhood (because a lot of sustainable features are invisible). So I modeled up a whole line of them along Alexander Parade, with each turbine 26m tall (about a third of the height of the shot tower)


But it's a no-go I think. We could probably live with the noise, located as they are between six lanes of traffic - but the problem is the shadows they would cast on surrounding buildings and private space. Nobody wants a strobe affect all day long. Actually, the shadows would only be a problem in mid winter - but that's bad enough.

Assuming 26m tall is viable - we could locate one or more here on the expressway median, but it probably doesn't make sense for us to do that as part of our neighbourhood project. I imagine that it would also be a massive job to get anything like this past the road and traffic authority - who'd probably have concerns about cars hitting the turbines, or being distracted by them.

Anyway - big wind turbines are not the only solution, and there are better options for urban, or individual household application. I'm currently researching 'mini-turbines' including these little numbers produced by Swift. They reckon they're next to silent, don't need maintenance for 20 years and save 1.2 Tonnes of CO2 a year going into the atmosphere. Pretty good.

Early this year the South Australian government initiated a scheme to trial 60 swift turbines on state buildings, so hopefully we'll be seeing more of them.

I've included this idea in the design because I've fallen in love with the idea of being able to use all those miles of black asphalt on the roads in our cities to get free heating and cooling from the sun.

All that asphalt is already a great solar energy collector, it absorbs and radiates solar energy; creating a 'heat island' affect which makes our cities significantly warmer than the surrounding areas. Arian de Bondt from Ooms Engineering in the Netherlands has come up with a way of harnessing that energy to heat and cool our buildings.

I've copied a summary of the system from the great site Flex Your Power:

The system, part of the Road Energy Systems, consists of a layer of asphalt concrete containing a closed network of pipes that are connected to underground aquifers. In summer, the sun heats the asphalt concrete pavement, which in turn raises the temperature of the water in the pipes. The water is pumped to a natural aquifer 100 meters down where heat exchangers wait to transfer heat from the pipes to the groundwater. Here, the heated water is stored for several months.

In winter, water is again pumped through the heat exchangers, but this time to pick up heat stored during the summer. This warm water is sent first to Ooms’ buildings, where it’s used for heating, and, second, under the adjacent road where the residual heat helps keep the road surface free of snow and ice. The now-chilled water is then sent deep underground, in a separate pipe, to a second aquifer. Here, heat exchangers use the chilled water to cool waiting groundwater, which is stored until summer and used to cool the Ooms campus.

The result, Ooms says, is cheap heating in winter, cheap cooling in summer and CO₂ emissions 50% lower than conventional heating systems.

So I fell in love with the concept, but to be honest, it's not entirely practical for our neighbourhood in a number of ways:

• If we increase tree planting along the roads they may not capture enough sun (maybe Alexander Parade would?)
• The technology is new, has not been used in Australia (as far as I know), and there is no information about it's effectiveness in our context
• It relies on having an underground aquifer in the right location, although you could probably use insulated underground water tanks instead
• It would be quite expensive to install as a retrofit (certainly too expensive without reliable figures about cost & energy savings), although it would be worthwhile considering in new developments, or if major roadworks are being undertaken anyway.
  

I've drawn it up for consideration, the water tanks marked on the plan are for rainwater collection (I'll deal with them in a later post about rainwater, storm water and grey water harvesting and treatment)

To read more check out this article in The Economist. Or visit the Ooms site.

The best solution for compost is individual worm farms in peoples back yards, but a lot of people in our nieghbourhood either have back yards about the size of the average handkerchief, or none at all.

The blackwater treatment plant discussed in the last post can process most garden waste and the compostable food waste from our kitchens. In earlier plans I'd drawn up a series of collection points around the nieghbourhood, but I think the best solution is a probably 3rd bin - we already have rubbish, and recycling, we could add a composting bin.

Crewe & Nantwich Borough Council offer their residents a 'brown bin' for their garden waste, which is taken to a local farm, shredded, composted and used on site.

Unlike C&N Borough Council, we wouldn't have to worry about pollution caused by trucks picking up the waste, because it's all being treated in locally, the waste could be picked up and delivered monthly using the old shank pony. And if you filled it more quickly, you could run it down the street yourself.

Councillor J Hammond with brown bins

Earlier this week I went to talk about this project to Dominique Hes who gave me some useful feedback, which included pointing me in a new direction in terms of treating and reusing waste.

In earlier plans I had drawn a distributed system of blackwater treatment facilities, but Dominque pointed out that maintenance of several small scale plants would be a major problem, and I mean, you really don’t want your blackwater treatment system to go wrong!

For some more ideas Dominique referred me to a project called EVA Lanxmeer in the Netherlands which she has used as a case study in her recent paper: “Opportunities for Semi-Decentralised Water Reuse and Power Production in High Density Areas.”

EVA Lanxmeer is a small community in Culemborg. In some ways it’s comparable in size to our neighbourhood; there's about 250 homes with a small commercial/education area.


It is designed to not produce dust, odour or noise. And it’s estimated that the system as a whole will save 194 kg/home/yr of CO2 emissions. Not bad.

This system is not completely detached from existing infrastructure for waste treatment, water and energy – it’s not completely self sufficient, but it promises a workable balance between localised management and production and the inefficient centralised systems we use now.

This plant needs a sizeable space, but we do have the room to do this in our neighbourhood! The warehouse on the corner of Wellington and Hotham is currently vacant; developers were trying to turn it into apartments but the proposal appears to have either failed to make it through VCAT (our system for dealing with planning/development conflicts), or lost momentum in some other way.

The warehouse has a large floor area and is located in our proposed neighbourhood activity centre. It would be a great site for a environmentally sustainable six star (or equivalent) mixed use development. And this development could house our community black water treatment plant in its basement. Perfect.

Ok, so I’ve put forward an argument for increasing density in our neighbourhood as an critical aspect of sustainability – although I’m sure many of my neighbours would beg to differ on that score. Which is understandable...

After all, increasing density is always going to be a hard sell if you happen to be the one living next door to a new multi-storey development, and you’ve just been told someone is going to build their balcony overlooking your bedroom window. I know I wouldn't like it. When it comes to helping the planet, most of us would much rather stick to recycling instead.

But even if we put the environmental concerns aside for the moment, the fact is that with rising land prices increasing density is inevitable in inner urban areas. So the problem becomes making sure we get the ‘right’ kind of density, in the ‘right’ place.

Where should we locate higher densities:
In the plan to the left (click to see larger) I’ve shown higher densities along the major roads (Wellington, Alexander and to a lessor extent Gold and Hotham). This doesn’t mean that I’m proposing that these areas should be exclusively high density, or that density should not be increased outside these areas. Rather, the areas indicated are those where we should encourage a concentration of higher density.

Why there?
The reasoning behind the location of density is a combination of New Urbanism and Christopher Alexander’s ideas.

We want to keep higher density housing on busy roads, and away from Charlotte Street, so that we can maintain the ‘quiet back’ of our nieghbourhood, which might include a peaceful common green area in the centre of our neighbourhood.

And we want to 'reward density with amenity' by locating higher densities adjacent to shops and café’s, workplaces and activity centres (see previous post).

More design notes:

• High density residential should be located where possible to reuse existing building envelopes, and adjacent to amenities.
• In order for residents to maintain a ‘relationship’ with the street, high density buildings should not be more than four stories in height (rare exceptions are fine).

Building a more sustainable neighbourhood is also about creating sustainable community. The more we talk to each other, and the stronger our relationships are; the stronger our community is. Our neighbourhood already has a few locations for us to cross paths; including the two pubs, the café and the corner store.


As densities increase, it’s important for us to maintain and strengthen the local centers in our neighbourhoods. The plan above shows two mixed use ‘centres’, located adjacent to the existing amenities (pubs, café, childcare facility) and providing additional work spaces, offices, shops or cafes. The one on the corner of Wellington and Hotham is meant to service our neighbourhood primarily, the one on Gold Street is intended to service the area further south (the street layout means that it has to lie a little closer to ours than is ideal).


The diagonal pattern on the street in the 'centres' indicates the ideal location for some kind of public square. Somewhere for café tables, and a community noticeboard – maybe for local activities, like a farmers market, or the occasional white elephant stall. The 'design job' now is to work out if cars and a public square can share the same space, or if there is room for both.




Why not put the centre in the centre?
New Urbanists tend to propose neighbourhoods which look like the image on the left: the activity centre with the shops and cafes and bus stop is in the middle of the ped shed (5 minute walk), with the infrastructure around the outside.

Alexander argues that activity naturally happens along the edges of communities. And that the roads required to service those centres located in the middle of neighbourhoods only act to divide the community in half. Alexander recommends what he calls “‘eccentric’ nucleus”; centres placed on the edges of communities, but allowed to bulge towards the centre. He suggests that the actual centre of a neighbourhood should be occupied by a quiet community green and/or leafy footpaths.

More design notes:

• Small scale retail and office should share residential building envelopes.
• Children should be able to play in all minor streets (woonerf system), but a specific play area for young children & toddlers to be provided where indicated (yellow area). Play area should not be fenced off, or have a defined perimeter.

Plan showing location of 'eccentric nuclei' oriented towards the city.

Which image shows the most sustainable lifestyle? A terrace house in Fitzroy? Or an 'earthship' in New Mexico?

That urban sprawl is not sustainable seems pretty self evident – the growing sprawl of suburbs and ever growing McMansions is chewing through natural resources. In outer Melbourne, green field development is eating into remnant grass lands and red gum stands. Heating & cooling those big houses with their multiple bathrooms and lack of eaves is a problem, as is the fuelling the ever growing daily commute, as well as catering for the increasing congestion in the city.

And there’s not much in the way of alternative transport for these people because of there are so few residents over a large area, it’s difficult for outer suburban areas to support effective public transport networks.

And sprawling suburbs, bereft as they are of their own town centres, except the ubiquitous shopping malls, tend to lack community, lack identity, lack a ‘sense of place’.

So, if the endless sprawling of our cities is a social and environmental problem, then there is only one solution: higher density housing.

I think it’s funny that people who are otherwise into sustainability are always quick to have a go at “greedy developers” building apartment buildings, or townhouses in their neighbourhood. The developers who are building higher density housing may well be greedy, but they’re also helping the planet.

Perhaps it’s a NIMBY thing (not-in-my-backyard), or maybe it’s an understandable concern about an erosion, or change in neighbourhood character. And of course, there are problems attached increasing densities including increase pressure on infrastructure, noise and privacy concerns, and impact the solar access of homes surrounding new developments.

Of course there are good things about increasing density too. Neighbourhoods with higher densities can support higher levels of infrastructure, which means more choice: more schools, more doctors, more public transport, more shops (especially more specialty shops) and more cafes with decent coffee.

More units and apartments mean more mixed communities – more old people, more students and lower income residents, which is good for social diversity.

A lot of people seem to have an idea about sustainable living that it’s something like this self declared sustainable community in New Mexico. That is, being truly sustainable requires leaving the city and setting up a self-sufficient house somewhere in the desert or the bush.

I’d argue that living is a city is the only viable sustainable solution for the majority of people. Building a house for ourselves in the middle of the desert is not ecologically sustainable living.

Of course it’s good that they’ve used recycled building materials, and they’re attempting to grow their own food. But I guarantee that they’re regularly piling into their pickup trucks to head all the way into town and buy their toothpaste, donuts and sugar and shampoo like everyone else. Hell, they’re probably commuting into town to work.

After all, many of us live in 'recycled' houses already, mine was built in about 1920, so it's embodied energy is pretty low. The only difference to the way most of us live in the city, and this community, is that our food and other supplies have less ‘food miles’, and we haven’t messed up a pristine desert ecosystem by building a house on it.

I visited the earthship site recently and was appalled the find the following comments:

From: scotty o (Tue 15 Jul 2008 04:38:17 AM EDT)
cool, we need something like this in aust (downunder)

From: GMB (Sun 20 Jul 2008 07:02:12 AM EDT)
It would be good if you could "homestead" land on either side of the desert roads in Australia for this purpose. We have heaps of this land that is going unused and is more or less useless for any other purpose.

Useless? Not being used? How many people still believe that a piece of land which filters water, and supports ecosystems and plant life which in turn reduce greenhouse gases – is useless unless we build a house on it! Makes me cranky...

So we can forget the dream of running away from the city to be green. The answer is not to turn our backs on the city, in fact it’s the opposite. We need to make our inner urban areas more city-like by increasing density.

One of the best things we can do here in our neighbourhood to help the planet is support higher density: Each extra person living here in Collingwood is one less person driving past us on Alexander Parade to their home in the outer suburbs, and producing carbon emissions all the way home.

The idea of turning Charlotte Street into a green (or a woonerf green) is a response from a series of Christopher Alexander's ideas. Ideas which I think are so compelling that I’m going to summarise them here – (for more information follow the links).

Excuse the male pronoun – the book was written in the 70’s, his ideas might not date, but modes of expression do.

Pattern 59: Quiet Backs
People in busy environments “needs to be able to pause and refresh himself with quiet in a more natural situation".

So we should “give the buildings in the busy parts of town a quiet "back" behind them and away from the noise. Build a walk along this quiet back, and connect it up with other walks, to form a long ribbon of quiet alleyways which converge on the local pools and streams and the local greens”.

Pattern 64: Pools and Streams

So we should “preserve natural pools and streams and allow them to run through the city; make paths for people to walk along them and footbridges to cross them.”

“Whenever possible, collect rainwater in open gutters and allow it to flow above ground, along pedestrian paths and in front of houses.”

Pattern 60: Accessible Green
Pattern 171: Tree Places
“If you are planting trees, plant them according to their nature, to form enclosures, avenues, squares, groves and single spreading trees toward the middle of open spaces. And shape the nearby buildings in response to trees, so that the trees themselves, and the trees and buildings together, form places which people can use.”

Lets make a linear park
In the centre of our neighbourhood is quiet Charlotte Street. At least it's supposed to be quiet. Council is looking at installing some traffic-calming devices to try and discourage commuters from taking shortcuts onto Alexander Parade. But most of the time, it's only used by people who live on it or adjacent to it.

Alexander has a theory that neighbourhoods need "quiet backs", that is, nice quiet leafy places to walk which link up neighbourhood greens but are a little away from the hustle and bustle. Charlotte street is already a "quiet back" and I reckon we could turn part of it into a green, or at least a woonerf-style play and relaxation area.

We could use the majority of the street area for denser tree planting, and provide sitting areas and play areas. We could allow enough space for strictly local traffic to weave through at a maximum speed of 7km/h.

In this kind of arrangement people could still drive outside their houses to drop off and pick up groceries etc, and park their car clustered parking at either end of the street. The inconvenience of not being able to park outside your house would be offset by having a leafy well treed 'green' outside your front door.

The plan above shows additional planting in Charlotte Street and a storm water treatment swale, which I'll deal with in more detail in another post - this is a preliminary design, once I've 'crashed' it together, or considered it alongside other aspects of the design, we should get a more realistic picture.

Lets Plant Trees
We can supplement the existing street planting with more trees, both in the Charlotte St 'green' and the surrounding areas.

Regardless of what type or species of trees we plant (see earlier post), it makes a lot of sense to for us to maximise the amount of vegetation in our neighbourhood.

There a number of good reasons to do this; one is visual amenity: Street trees look nice, people feel more relaxed and happy around trees, they're good for property prices, people like them (not all people I guess, but a lot).

Trees provide shade in summer. A lot of the heat we experience inside our houses is generated by the hard surfaces outside which absorb the heat and then radiate it all day and night. This is a great thing in winter, not so good in summer.

Plants provide habitat, and help strengthen the urban ecology. They reduce the amount of ozone gases, and the amount of water in the storm water system.

Importantly for us, surrounded as we are by major roads, trees and other plants significantly improve air quality. Plants reduce the harm from carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) in car exhaust. The more trees between us and the cars and trucks on the street, the less exposure we’ll have to harmful gases and particulates, which increase incidence of asthma and other nasty heath issues.

So lets plant more trees.