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?