One Sustainable Block

How to survive summer without air conditioning...

2009-02-02T16:17:00.004+11:00

Our house is pretty well designed for passive cooling - so it does
well until temperatures rise over 38 degrees. Then we're stuffed. Or rather
par boiled.

But we don't have air con - so in the heat wave of the past few days

I've been looking around for ideas to keep cool when you could fry
eggs on the footpath outside. Heres some of the ideas we tried:

1. Pin up a bed sheet or blankets outside your windows. The key is to
do it outside rather than inside - you want to stop the heat before it
enters the your house - not afterwards. Also try to leave a gap
between the barrier (sheet, blanket etc) and the wall or glass of your
home - that way you'll get less heat transfer. Here's a guy who used
$5 reflective blankets to keep his home cool (just make sure you don't
position the blanket so that it bounces the heat somewhere you don't
want it - you might end up frying your garden).

2. Put a wet blanket over the top of the car and cover all the windows
(this didn't harm my duco at all - but try it at your own risk).

3. Cut the bottoms off water bottles, dig them neck down in the soil
beside sensitive plants and fill with water - this should drain into
the soil gradually throughout the day. You can cover plants likely to
burn with bed sheets too - pick a light colour to reflect heat. Of
course you can always take the attitude of my friend Tim, and see days
like Friday as a form of natural selection - let the heat kill of the
tender ones, and replace them with some tougher plants.

and the best one of all...

4. Run away. Go stay in a 5 star hotel with a pool and air con. We did
this on Friday night, and it was fantastic. I figure that the hotel is
cooling the whole building anyway - and for the 5-6 nights of the year
that are so ridiculously hot that good passive design and fans can't
cope - it's a better option than shelling out for an air conditioning
system which is just going to contribute to pushing up peak demand and
blackouts.

The problem with Christmas

2008-12-17T14:51:00.011+11:00

our eco-friendly & australian, but not yet decorated Christmas tree
click image to see larger

As I've said before in an earlier post - the problem with being Australian is that the seasons are all wrong. Or rather, the problem with being Australian we're all wrong for the seasons.

This is never more obvious than when you find yourself slaving over a hot stove producing roasted turkey and root vegetables on a swelteringly hot 25th of December, and then follow it with steamed christmas pudding and brandy sauce (except maybe when you find yourself wearing a fake beard and a bikini).

How about the way we ignore all the beautiful asparagus, salad greens, strawberries and summer fruits in season in favour of nutmeg, oranges, sultana's and nuts. Or decorate our houses in tinsel and sparkly lights, which just end up looking kind of bedraggled and sweaty in the heat.

And then there's the problem of the Christmas tree. There's really not anything much more incongruous than a Germanic pine tree covered in sparkly lights in the middle of Australian summer. I always think they look a little sad. And worse they make me feel like I'm having a pretend, lets-make-do-since-we're-here-and-not-there Christmas. And that's not how I feel at all.

I love Australian Christmas, and I love the traditions we have which suit our climate and culture. I love the family game of cricket after lunch out in the back yard, or outside on the street. I love the massive bowls of cherries, and the pavlova, and I especially love the prawns. I just think we have to do a better job of translating the other Christmas traditions so that they move beyond threadbare nostalgia to something that celebrates who we are, where we are, and our connection with our environment.

So this is my attempt to have an eco-friendly Australian Christmas tree. I thought about getting a Wollemi Pine, which is a pretty elegant solution. It not only looks like a traditional Christmas tree - but by planting it you're helping to conserve a native endangered species, you can feel even better about yourself by buying one from here and donating funds to cancer research.

But I didn't go that way because, well, lets face it, you've got to be satisfied with a pretty small tree until it has a chance to grow a little.

So this was my solution - it's on the wall because floor space is a bit of a premium at my place. We collected some eucalyptus branches from a road side reserve (so I figure the council would have cleared them out anyway, and I wasn't impacting on the the habitat value of fallen wood too much). And I sprayed them with a little silver paint. I figure this is a more sustainable option than a plastic or farmed tree (even with the silver paint).

our undecorated Christmas tree
click image to see larger

I haven't decorated it yet - I'd like to do that closer to Christmas Eve and then leave the tree up for the 12 days of Christmas until January 6th.

Will post photos of the tree later when it's dressed.

Buying Nothing Much Day

2008-12-02T14:16:00.007+11:00

Queue outside Nike on Buy Nothing Day
click image to see larger

So I did the Buy Nothing Day on Saturday - and I'd love to say I had an epiphany - but really I didn't - not even a little one.

Maybe it's because we didn't really go far from home, and we certainly didn't go shopping (why would you if you can't buy anything?); so we weren't exposed to much in the way of impulse-buying temptation or marketing.

Although I did pass a little festival of consumerism outside the Nike outlet on the way home - they must have been having some kind of sale because the queue to get in was all the way down the block. Apologies for the crappy photos, I used the phone camera, and I couldn't take a better shot because Adrian kept saying "Come on Kate, they're all looking at us".

I also cheated a bit - we didn't have any food in the house, so we went out for breakfast to our local cafe. And then we bought ingredients for dinner at the supermarket later (but strictly food items only).

I'm not sure whether food counts. And I also was talking to a friend who was getting her car serviced and buying a second hand sideboard on Saturday. Is it against the Buy Nothing Day rules to pay for recycled goods, or for services?

Is it 'buy nothing' day - as in spend no money at all? Or is it more like a buy 'no things' day?

I guess it also depends on what's motivating you to do it. In my case I'm less concerned about the social or moral implications of consumerism than I am with environmental impact (although I acknowledge that they're related).

If you're concerned about the ecological 'footprint' of your consumption - then it's arguable that eating out in a cafe is more sustainable than cooking at home. You have all the economies of scale, and the possibility of minimising waste (although whether that actually happens is another thing...).

Paying for services and buying recycled goods is pretty good in terms of sustainability too - certainly much better than a shopping spree at Nike.

Buy Nothing Day

2008-11-25T19:44:00.011+11:00

Buy Nothing Day poster - click to see larger

Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good.

Hannah Arendt

So I've decided to take part in Buy Nothing Day this Saturday the 29th.

At least I'll try. It will be interesting to see just how often I have to restrict myself. And it will be interesting too to pay attention to the kinds of things I want/need to purchase, and find out just how much my lifestyle is driven by, or structured around, what I consume.

I guess with the current financial crisis and downturns in the retail sector a lot of community minded people might see this as a good time to be out there spending. And they're right. The problem is that that spending money today is a only ever going to serve as a quick fix to the current downturn, and does nothing to address the underlying fact that our current economic models are fundamentally unsustainable.

Because, of course, our financial markets, not to mention our lifestyles, rely on constant growth and expansion. The definition of a recession, or depression for that matter, is a lack of growth. In order to survive in our current economic structure; a business has to expand. Children are expected to have a better standard of living than their parents, and this usually translates into a larger house, and more consumer goods. The developed world needs to be able to access the markets of the developing world in order to maintain expansion, and when people in countries like India and China access those markets, they are also obliged to embrace the associated behaviors of growth, expansion and consumption.

The problem of course is that infinite growth is not sustainable. It just can't happen. If everyone in the world lived like I do we would need 4 planets to live on. Which means I use up the resources of three other people. Clearly my current lifestyle is not sustainable, or at least it's only sustainable if I can make sure that the other three guys aren't going to ever want more (or take more). And even that's impossible, because in order to maintain my current lifestyle, we need to expand our markets, which means trying to get those three other guys to buy the stuff we make. The more I do that, the more they're going to become like me... and... it's a vicious cycle.

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

Edward O. Wilson

So what do we do?

I wish I had an answer.

I especially wish I had an answer which I'd want to hear if I was working in the retail sector.

I think we could start the process of change by..

thinking about the problem and admitting that things are not working...that they're really really not working.
not letting the urgent always take precedent over the important (I think Leo said something like this in the West Wing episode '365 days').
growing to understand ourselves; paying attention to our behavior, and recognising the cultural forces which drive us to behave in certain ways. We need to learn to see the paradigms we operate within which function to make some aspects of our lives visible (this deodorant looks cool, I'll buy it), and render other aspects invisible (the product will last a month but it's packaging will last an aeon in landfill).
recognising that if we continue to trust in a kind of laissez-faire-capitalism style of philosophy that suggests that if we leave things to their own devices everything will work itself out, we just might end up with a world we don't want to live in...or worse.
seeing that the economic system as we know it (with the underlying requirement of constant growth) isn't inevitable. It is a relatively new idea historically (200 years or so) and that there are lots of other existing models for barter and exchange of goods which might be more sustainable.

Buy nothing day isn't about fixing the problem by not buying things for one day. I know that's not going to change anything much. But it might be a way to make some changes in myself.

Maybe after Saturday I'll understand more about how I operate; what's driving my needs, desires and behaviors? What and who am I now, and what I want to become...

Maybe. Anyway - will let you know how I go.

Are you doing it? Let me know if you're doing an event (especially in Melbourne) or otherwise tell me how your BND goes!

Earthrise

2008-11-25T07:54:00.010+11:00

We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.

— William Anders

William Anders left Texas faster than any human had ever traveled before - rockets launched him into space and he and the other crew of the Apollo 8 traveled for three days before reaching the moon and becoming the first people ever to see its hidden side.

On Christmas Eve 1968, while on the dark side of the moon William Anders took this photograph of the distant earth rising over the horizon. Originally labeled image AS8-14-2383, as it captured the public imagination it became known simply as 'Earthrise'.

This photograph triggered a fundamental paradigm shift; it changed the way we thought about ourselves and our relationships to each other and the environment. This image allowed us to conceive of 'the planet' as opposed to 'the world', and seeing the earth floating; beautiful, tiny and fragile in the void of space inspired a movement of environmental consciousness which is still active today. This Christmas Eve will be the fortieth anniversary of breaking of that old gestalt - which is worth a little reflection perhaps.

No one, it has been said, will ever look at the Moon in the same way again. More significantly can one say that no one will ever look at the earth in the same way. Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both its diminutive place in a solar system and its inestimable value as a life -fostering planet. As earthmen, we may have taken another step into adulthood. We can see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love.

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 'Earth Shine,' 1969.

Let's use the all that water falling on our roads...

2008-10-23T08:30:00.011+11:00

click to see larger

There's a lot that can be done on a neighbourhood level to clean up stormwater before it enters the stormwater pits and ends up in the Yarra. And one of the bonuses of treating and capturing stormwater is that one of the best ways to do it is to create nice lush green garden beds.

A lot of developers building new subdivisions out in Doreen or on the dry Western Plains, love treating stormwater because it's pretty much the only way they can create green public landscapes with current water restrictions. And really, it is crazy to let all that water drain directly into the Yarra when we could have it soaking into our soil right here.

The image above shows a section of Charlotte Street showing the existing road profile, and stormwater treatment. So basically the water runs over the road, picking up pollutants on the way, and then falls directly into the drain, where it flows on into the Yarra and does significant damage.

There's lots of ways to introduce stormwater treatment, and some of them require very little changes to the existing kerb and road layout - but the solution I've drawn up here is a little more elaborate.

click to see larger

What we could do is remove the kerbs altogether and allow the road and footpath surface to slope gently down to a vegetated swale (or mini wetland) on one side of the road . The green strappy leaved plants in the swale act to clean and filter the water before it reaches the drains (click here to see plan showing possible location of swale). We could store our stormwater in underground tanks so that we can use it for watering public landscapes. And the whole system can be designed so that in a storm event any overflow will be carried away by the existing stormwater infrastructure.

image of a stormwater treatment swale in the docklands from WSUD an organisation dealing with water sensitive urban design in Sydney, which provides lots of useful practical information.

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most... (Joesph Wood)

2008-10-22T15:03:00.012+11:00

I was sitting at home working a moment ago when I heard the sound of what I thought was a tennis ball hitting the window high up on the side of our house.

I looked up as a bird fell into the court yard, and I watched it as it lay on the ground where it landed and twitched a little before lying still. A indigenous Little Wattlebird, dead.

And I feel faintly ridiculous about this, but the bird dying has upset me a little. I'm not used to watching a creature die. And I'm not used to being confronted by my impact on the natural world as directly as this.

This whole blog is supposed to be about how to make my neighbourhood more ecologically sustainable, but for this bird the fact my house existed at all, with it's unnatural glass surfaces, was enough. And right now, faced with the reality of this little prone body, the life of even one wild bird seems like a high price to pay.

I'm feeling a little guilty.

Just don't touch my car space

2008-09-22T22:00:00.012+10:00

I stumbled across this car parking stand-off in Calton. The cars are parked behind an apartment block. The laminated note attached to the toy car reads:

"DO NOT REMOVE. This is the property of unit one. We pay rent for this carpark and thus shall utilize it for whatever vehicle we see fit".

Classic.

Mind you, when it comes to sustainability I guess the space occupied by car parking is often hotly contested. The battle lines are drawn a little like this:

Trees + bikes + pedestrian friendliness & walkability + safety
vs
car parking spaces

Sometimes we have to choose between a street tree or a car parking space. Of course trees provide obvious environmental benefits; they reduce green house gases, filter pollution in the air, and reduce the amount of heating in summer. A car parking space on the other hand is probably never going to contribute much to sustainable suburbs - although whether providing a car park is actively 'bad' depends on how many of them are available. If you provide 'enough' car parking spaces, then by definition you're facilitating the use of the private cars; the easier it is to get a park, the more likely you are to drive and the less likely you are to use public transport. But by strictly limiting the amount of parking available then you can begin to tip the balance the other way.

At other times we have to choose between having a row of parking or a dedicated bike lane. You can guess which one of those two options wins out in the green stakes.

Christopher Alexander suggests that no more than 9% of any neighbourhood or development should be given over to parking. He recommends this partly to reduce the amount of traffic (and encourage pedestrian life and public transport use), but also because higher concentrations of parking (on ground level) tend to have a negative affect on the urban fabric. Walking through big expanses of parking is nowhere near as pleasant an urban experience as walking past a row of shops, or along a leafy footpath. And it's no coincidence that on TV the bad guy is always shown kidnapping innocents in the car park as they're walking to their car...big car parks feel exposed, dangerous, and alienating.

Lets recycle our Greywater...

2008-09-14T08:24:00.015+10:00

At the moment all the fresh drinking water we use to shower in and to do our laundry is going straight down the drain after a single use. On top of that, most of us are using more fresh drinking water to water our gardens.

This is a shame - because treating greywater on a neighbourhood scale is pretty straightforward - in principle at least.

Possible 'footprint' of an integrated water treatment system. The vertical green line is a stormwater treatment swale. The green rectangle marks a possible location for a grey water treatment system, while the larger pinkish square shows where a blackwater system (and wormfarm) could go.

Click to see images larger

Here's a plan showing a possible integrated blackwater, greywater and stormwater treatment system. I’ll run over the possibilities for greywater now, and cover blackwater and stormwater in later posts.

There's a lot of greywater capturing & storage devices out there which individual households can use for their own gardens. Because the greywater isn't processed, each household would have to manage their choice of laundry and toiletry products so that the water was suitable for their garden, or else use the unprocessed greywater on ornament plants which are tolerant of the salts and chemicals it contains. Subsurface delivery systems are recommended (less health risk).

But if we think on a larger scale we can do a lot more with our greywater. We could divert the water we use for washing from entering the main sewerage system and have it carried from our laundry and showers by underground pipes to a series of reed beds housed in a greenhouse located in the existing community garden area.

This reed bed will be capable of processing our greywater, regardless of products used in it, to a level where it is safe for use on all plants (including edible plants). Strictly speaking it would be potable, but the recommendation is that you use this kind of water for everything except drinking.

This wouldn't be a cheap intervention, and I imagine the main cost would be in upgrading the existing sewage infrastructure. Of course it depends on who is paying the bill. If we cover the cost as residents, then it will probably take a long time before it pays for itself (assuming water stays as cheap as it is) - but if state government decided to invest in the local treatment and recycling of our water then it would have the benefit of helping to relieve the pressure and cost of maintaining and upgrading our major centralised infrastructure, and maybe then it's not such a bad deal.

In terms of infrastucture the most complicated aspect would probably be setting up the plumbing to capture the greywater in individual houses - some houses in our neighbourhood have suspended timber floors and would be pretty straightforward, but others would be quite difficult. Digging down to the existing sewage and running an greywater pipe alongside wouldn't be technically difficult, but would require a significant amount of earth works.

So what are the benefits of having a greywater treatment system? Well, we'd reduce the amount of drinking water we use for watering the garden (and possibly, for flushing our toilets) which would in turn reduce the pressure on the existing infrastructure, and it would be easier to keep our gardens and street tree's alive in summer. And we'd also reduce the amount of water entering the sewage system, with flow on benefits to existing treatment systems, and the amount of water entering the bay.

Possible location of greenhouse housing reed beds

Precedent: Image below is of a 'Living machines'; a type of biological treatment systems based on the processes of wetlands which are housed in greenhouses, and can be used in small urban areas.

Outside view, and reed beds inside a 'Living machine'

Public Enemy Number One

2008-09-11T08:40:00.019+10:00

Do you ever wonder if it might be easier to generate the sort of massive changes we need to make to our lifestyles if we were engaged in some kind of war or a pitched battle?

The problem is that when it comes to environmental issues there really is no enemy. We can direct our aggression to a few amorphous corporate entities, and maybe people who drive massive 4x4 SUV’s if you're so inclined. But really, the actual enemy is ourselves.

This poses a dilemma because we’re really not good at coping with the ‘enemy within’. The enemy which is us.

Improving our sustainability is more like going on a diet than it is like going to war, and we all know how successful the average diet is.

We’re simply better at initiating changes to our attitudes and lifestyles when we’re at war – which is probably why we try to cast problems into that mould even when it’s completely counter productive to do so, perhaps we create the war against drugs, or attack Iran and Afghanistan as part of a war against ‘terrorism’ because that's the only way we know how to respond.

So anyway. Good news. I think I found someone who can be our scapegoat...our environmental bogey-man.

I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” – fascinating and entertaining in equal measures – and he recounts the story of an engineer come chemist called Thomas Midgley Jr.

Thomas Midgley Jr. is the devil. Except he's not really. He's just a scientist with few scruples who was well respected by many in his day, and that is what makes this sorry tale so scary.

If you ever get a chance to borrow a time-machine to travel backwards in history in order to ensure someone is never born, consider visiting Mr and Mrs Thomas Midgley Sr.

Thomas Midgley Sr. was an inventor, and his son Thomas Midgley Jr. initially trained as an engineer, but eventually took after his father to become an inventor as well.

The first problem Midgley turned his attention to was engine knock and associated fuel efficiency. His unfortunate solution was to add a lead solution to the fuel (tetra-ethyl lead or TEL). There were less toxic solutions available which he discovered at the same time, but lead was the cheapest, had the least offensive odour and was the most efficient, so Midgley ran with it. And the evidence indicates that he ran with it while being fully aware of the toxic affects of lead in the atmosphere and in the human body.

People started dying almost immediately from the affects of his innovation. By the mid 1920’s more than 40 factory workers who produced the lead fortified fuel for Ethyl (the corporation who produced the product) were dead or deranged. The Ethyl factory in Deepwater was nicknamed the 'House of Butterflies’ by the workers because of the hallucinations they experienced while working there.

Midgley’s crime is that he knowingly introduced a "creeping and malicious poison" into the environment, and also that he then deliberately assisted in the large scale corporate cover up which followed for the next 50-60 years.

TEL is still being produced, although we stopped adding it to fuel in the 1980’s. Of course we’re stuck with the lead; which is now in the atmosphere forever.

So just in case you think that’s not enough to earn Midgley some kind of serious enemy-of-the-planet status – just wait, there’s more...

The second problem Midgley addressed was the serious one of poisonous gases leaking from early refrigerators.

“Midgley set out to create a gas that was stable, nonflammable, noncorrosive, and safe to breathe. With an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny, he invented chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.”

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

So first he flooded the atmosphere with lead, then created the ultimate ozone annihilator. The man was a planet killer!

A postscipt: In case you'd prefer a hero to inspire rather than someone to revile - there's no shortage of those, and we could do worse than to look to a man called Clair Patterson. Patterson discovered a method of measuring lead in the atmosphere and then sacrificed his career by carrying out a courageous long term campaign against Ethyl and other large lead producing corporations. It is largely due to his efforts that lead was finally banned from food containers and fuel in the 70's and 80's.

...

2008-09-07T21:27:00.008+10:00

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light—our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

Ulf Merbold
German astronaut

Melbourne: Six seasons in one day?

2008-09-04T12:29:00.012+10:00

Monday was the first day of spring here.

I celebrated by biking around in the sunshine with my daughter, doing an informal playground tour, and chatting happily to people we met about the weather.

And today is another beautiful spring day. Walking around in a t-shirt (maybe being a little over confident of the sun) I found myself thinking about how today was the perfect day to go hunting for Easter eggs. But of course we don't do Easter in spring here - we do it in Autumn just as the weather is getting grimmer and the winter winds are starting.

It's crazy stuff, after all Eostre was the goddess of spring, and the Christian celebration is supposed to be about rebirth. On the first warm spring days like today I feel like celebrating all those things - but in March/April - it's all academic.

And our Christmas is even more ridiculous. Christmas is a profoundly wintery event: It’s holly, puddings, candles, yule logs and all those reworkings of pre-Christian Winter solstice celebrations (Yule, Natalis Solis Invicti, Saturnalia).

And all these things are beautiful on the coldest, shortest, darkest day of the year…Christmas is supposed to be a little twinkling light in a dark cold place.

But we celebrate it right in the middle of summer. Hot turkey dinners, sweaty tinsel and fake snow in the heat and dust. It’s a little sad...we should be dancing around maypoles instead.

Melbournes seasons, based on writing of Dr. Beth Gott of the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University.

Click image to see larger

I'm not saying we should do the whole Christmas in July thing- but I think it's a shame. It's a shame because when we have a beautiful spring day like today - we have no way of celebrating it.

And I also wonder whether this serves to increase our sense of disconnection from the landscape and the ecological systems that we exist within.

When the people who established the city of Melbourne arrived, they bought with them the Roman calendar, their northern celebrations, and a year which is divided into four seasons - along with their ideas about the landscape and how it works. Those of us who still live here have inherited all of these things.

How many of us still think of winter as a time of dormancy, and summer as a time of growth and life, rather than something closer to the opposite? Or else think of wild fire as a purely destructive force, rather than a process which brings life and regeneration, without which many fragile ecosystems would die?

The Wurundjeri people certainly didn't have a 4 season calendar; they based their seasons on the local weather conditions, and the behaviour of plants and animals. I've drawn up a (possible/approximate) Wurundjeri calendar above, alongside the traditional Roman seasons, and a seasonal calendar created by researches looking at the climate and ecosystem of the Upper Yarra. Makes for interesting comparison.

Would we be less disconnected from our environment if we had seasons that were more responsive to the local ecosystem? What would happen if we didn't think about the seasons as Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter - but as something like Pre-spring, True Spring, High Summer, Dry Summer (Old man summer), Autumn and Winter?

And if, instead of being fixed to the climatic conditions of far off European landscapes, those six seasons were linked to the markers of actual seasonal changes as they happen here - like summer grasses flowering, the appearance of kangaroo apples or of tadpoles spawning in the Yarra?

(images on right: Chocolate bilby (the local easter bunny), and Christmas on Bondi Beach)

So how connected are you to your eco-system? Test yourself...

2008-09-03T11:04:00.012+10:00

I've been reading about these bioregional thinking questions – adapted by Bill Devall and George Sessions in their book Deep Ecology. It's an interesting test to do on yourself - I can't answer more than half - which is a bit depressing. I tested Adrian (my partner), and he did quite well actually. Anyway, good luck, let me know how you go...

1. Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.

2. How many days till the moon is full? (Plus or minus a couple of days.)

3. Describe the soil around your home

4. From what direction do winter storms generally come in your region?

5. Where does your garbage go?

6. How long is the growing season where you live?

7. Name five resident birds and any migratory birds in your area.

8. What primary geological event process influenced the land form where you live?

9. From where you are reading this, point north.

10. Were the stars out last night?

Maybe these questions (and the answers) could be turned into a billboard, or artwork in our neighbourhood.

Act local. Ok...but how?

2008-08-22T12:43:00.008+10:00

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?

2008-08-21T13:53:00.005+10:00

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Buckminster Fuller
from blurb on Dave Pollard's book 'The Sweet Spot'

Is a beach on the Yarra a stupid idea?

2008-08-18T17:51:00.023+10:00

The Paris Plage on the Seine

click to see image larger

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.

"There are so many beaches in close proximity to the CBD that the concept of an artificial beach seems frivolous and wasteful of resources."

Graeme Gunn (RMIT university architecture, as quoted in The Age 14/08)

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.

"The closer people connect to the river … the more they'll understand its problems and the more they'll influence government and themselves to take better care of the river."

Riverkeeper Ian Penrose quoted in The Age 14/8

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

Lets keep our stormwater here...

2008-08-11T12:14:00.010+10:00

Image of stormwater outlet on the Yarra in Toorak by stewiedonn
click image to see larger

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

Green renters..

2008-08-11T11:23:00.000+10:00

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...

Water news...

2008-08-10T19:47:00.005+10:00

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.

The answer is blowing in the wind?

2008-08-08T22:33:00.013+10:00

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.

Urban forests...our green infrastructure

2008-08-08T21:10:00.013+10:00

Apparently Canada has a massive network of urban forests - and 24 million Canadians live in them.
This is an image of Toronto's urban forest from Spacing Toronto which covers local architecture, urban design, landscape and community issues.

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.

"the discussion about urban environments is not just about the hard elements ... but if you like ... our cities are soft wired with vegetation as well"

Dr Peter Fisher

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

Designer Sustainability...

2008-08-06T14:26:00.013+10:00

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.

Lets use our own rainwater

2008-08-06T07:43:00.017+10:00

Possible location of underground rain water tanks

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.

Where our water comes from...
Click to see larger

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!

The infrastructure needed to transport water is massive - at 2.1m dia, you could walk upright inside the water conduits that carry our water from the hills

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.

Looking at our Neighbourhood in 3 dimensions...

2008-08-05T11:14:00.002+10:00

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...

A Neighbourhood Wind Farm?

2008-08-04T11:38:00.011+10:00

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.

26m tall turbine, shown at 10:30am mid winter (20th June)
Click image to see larger

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.

Lets get free power from the roads

2008-08-03T08:25:00.009+10:00

Plan showing possible location of Road Energy System in our neighourhood Click to see image larger

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.

Feed the worms...

2008-08-03T07:59:00.011+10:00

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

What Poo Can Do...

2008-08-02T19:38:00.020+10:00

Schematic overview of the of blackwater treatment plant. Left: Section, and right: Basement Plan
Click image for larger view

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.

Their proposed treatment centre will treat the neighbourhood effluent, green household waste and some garden waste. The treatment process produces garden compost; clean water that can be used for anything except drinking water; and bio-gas that can be used for energy production and heating.

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.

Click image for larger view

Diagram mapping the process, inputs and outputs of the waste management plant
For more information download the PDF of the full paper by Dr. Ir. A. van Timmeren

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.

Plan showing possible location of blackwater treatment facility
Click image for larger view

If we encourage higher density, where should it go?

2008-08-02T14:35:00.009+10:00

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).

Every Neighbourhood Needs a ‘Centre’

2008-08-02T13:49:00.011+10:00

Plan showing possible location of various 'program' and density in our neighbourhood
Click image to see larger

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.

Urban Sprawl is not Sustainable. High Density is.

2008-08-02T11:37:00.014+10:00

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.

Houses, aka ‘earthships’ built with recycled materials.

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.

Turn a Street to a Park? Good Design Ideas Don't Date

2008-08-01T16:12:00.012+10:00

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

“We came from the water; our bodies are largely water; and water plays a fundamental roles in our psychology. We need constant access to water...but everywhere in cities water is out of reach.”

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

“People need green open places to go to; when they are close they use them. But if the greens are more than three minutes away, the distance overwhelms the need.”

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.”

image of ground & leaves by by Sameli, the rill in National Botanical Garden of Wales by Dave JG

Lets Create a Neighbourhood Green

2008-08-01T14:24:00.020+10:00

Tree planting plan for our neighbourhood
click image to see larger

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.

The rainbow lorikeet in the image is munching on a Eucalyptus leucoxylon, a species indigenous to our neighbourhood. Photo taken by ianmichaelthomas here in Melbourne.

Ok, planting trees is good, but what kind?

2008-08-01T11:50:00.015+10:00

If you want a clean & green sustainable neighbourhood, then planting more trees & plants is a no brainer. But what should we plant?

When it comes to tree planting, there are different sustainable outcomes, which are sometimes at odds with each other, I'll run each strategy and the pros and cons of each, and I’ll leave you to make your own decision about what's best:

Plant indigenous trees: Create a strong urban ecology
The benefits of this are pretty obvious, indigenous trees can make a significant difference to the local urban ecology by supporting insect, frog and bird populations.

A single large tree can act to double the habitat of a bird of prey, like a Powerful Owl for example, by providing a ‘stop-over’ in the city on-route from one hunting area in, lets say; the Grampians, to another one, like Wilson’s Prom.

Two local streets are a good contrasting example of this: Most afternoons I ride south down Dight Street (on the right, with the orange line) to pick up my daughter from childcare. Dight Street is planted with an avenue of an exotic tree, Chinese Elm I think. On the way home I travel north up Campbell Street (green line), which is planted with a native species (C. ficifolia I think).

Anyway, Dight Street is always silent, with some pigeons and doves flying around – while a few meters away Campbell Street is fabulously full of activity and birdsong.

Indigenous trees are adapted to local soil, are drought tolerant and are naturally disease resistant. They also help to give us a better emotional connection to and understanding of the natural environment we live in.

Here's a list of trees indigenous to Collingwood (and the City of Yarra)

Plant Deciduous Exotic trees: Reduce green house emissions
Most Australian trees are evergreen, with a couple of exceptions – like the Illawarra Flame tree, which is not much good because it looses its leaves in summer, or the White Cedar (Melia azedarach) which is another beautiful street tree. Anyway, neither is indigenous.

The benefit of planting deciduous trees, is that they provide shade in summer, but let warm sunshine through in winter. This makes a big difference to the heating load in our neighbourhood in winter, and in turn to our energy use, and green house emissions.

We could try to minimise the effect by planting indigenous trees with nice open canopies – but they’re still going to cast shade.

It is possible to select exotic deciduous trees with are relatively drought tolerant, but of course they’re never going to be quite so well adapted to the soil conditions.

Plant Fruit Trees: Food without food miles
The argument here is that locally planted food crops can provide us all with fresh fruit and veg that can supplement our store bought food to decrease the overall food miles of our diets, and in turn reduce green house gas emissions.

It’s a nice concept too, I like the idea of wandering out onto the street in the afternoon to pick a fresh apple straight off the tree, or maybe a nice ripe lemon for my gin and tonic in summer.

Like planting indigenous trees, there is an argument that growing and harvesting our own food can help our understand of natural systems. It would certainly be great for the kids.

On the downside - few fruit trees are drought tolerate, and they're often susceptible to disease. I'm not sure how organic farming practices would work in an urban environments? Although we could reduce water use from mains by using harvested rainwater and storm water.

Also, and maybe this is a little alarmist, but plants can very efficiently extract toxins from the soil by phytoextraction, these contaminants are then present in the plant material. So if you don't want a Sleeping Beauty experience, you'd want to make sure there was no serious contaminates in the soil before eating your apples.

Fruit trees tend to be small, so they won't have have as much visual impact as other trees, and they also require a lot more maintenance - of the trees themselves, picking the fruit and/or cleaning rotting fruit off the pavement.

Ideally you would have a local community group, like the people who have plots in the community garden, to manage the trees and other plants. We could have a neighbourhood orchard! The success of the 'orchard' would probably also depend on how popular the actual fruit produced was; how good it tasted.

Let the earth beneath our feet give us free heating & cooling

2008-08-01T07:16:00.018+10:00

Preliminary plan showing possible location of underground pipes in our neighbourhood

Earth (or labyrinth) heating and cooling is one of the oldest climate control systems in existence. The ancient Athenians used it, as did lots of old buildings that were built before the invention of air conditioning (like Melbourne’s Parliament Building). And of course, there's a massive contemporary labyrinth cooling system under Federation Square (shown on the right).

The idea is that you make use of the fact the underground temperatures are fairly consistent all year round (fluctuating less than 10˚C) by building a series of underground pipes which carry air under the surface to be warmed or cooled.

In summer fresh night air is taken into the underground labyrinth and cooled to earth temperature, controllable vents allow the air into surrounding buildings at floor level, and warm air is released through high vents.

In winter the process is reversed, and cool air in your house is replaced by warm air.

Very little energy is used as electric pumps are only needed to boost the natural convention system when required.

In summer the system might work well enough not to require any additional air conditioning (at least not for most of the houses in this neighbourhood), in winter conventional heating systems would probably have to top up the 'free' warmth coming from the earth.

Option B: Ground Source Heat Pumps
The principle can be used for a ground source heat pump as well. You can set up a hydronic heating system (which means that you have lovely radiant heat and coolth, instead of warm or cool air) by filling the underground pipes with water. This means that your heating system doesn’t have to work as hard. Lets say you were cooling your house in summer to about 22˚C inside, while the outside temperature was 38˚C – a conventional cooling system would have work to produce a 16˚C change of temperature – the ground source heat (coolth) pump would only have to produce a 7˚C difference.

Diagram as shown in the very useful article in ReNew magazine.
Click image to enlarge

These systems cut about 50% of the energy used for heating and cooling – with a similar reduction in green house gas emissions. These systems are common in Europe, but not widely used here in Australia – which is one of the reasons they’re generally too expensive to apply on the scale of an individual house – but as a neighbourhood it would become quite cost effective. In the plan above I’ve proposed that we run a network of horizontal pipes underneath the footpaths and laneways which would service each individual house or apartment.

A system of underground pipes would carry air or water underground so they could be cooled or warmed to the temperature of the earth below our houses

The water in the system could be provided by harvesting storm water (which I'll deal with in more depth later), this had the added advantage of reducing the load on storm water systems in the event of extreme weather events - which depressingly, are bound to get more frequent.

Secondly, these systems reduce peak load use, which helps to reduce the likelihood of citywide power failures that occur the grid can't deal with thousands of people cranking up their air conditioners on those 40˚C summer days.

Note: Like the earlier posts, the plan shown above is the ideal layout, and doesn't take into account the location of other underground systems. Once I've 'crashed' it together, or considered it, with the other aspects of the design, we should get a more realistic picture.

Lets Build a Community Energy Plant

2008-07-31T15:21:00.007+10:00

click to see plan larger

Free energy is being beamed down to us every day from the sun – and all we have to do is harvest it.

We could build a community energy plant on our roof space. Nobody is using it for anything much – so why not? We can make use of north facing or flat roof areas by mounting photo voltaic arrays (PVA) or solar hot water systems, or even panels to capture heat for hydronic underfloor heating.

Of course we could each install solar technology individually, but some houses don’t have any suitable roof space, while others have more than they can use – so it makes sense to pool together and invest in the infrastructure as a neighbourhood. I imagine it would be much cheaper to do it on-mass too. After we’ve paid off the initial investment, we could all have clean free energy, and use the profits we make from selling power back to the grid to use for ongoing maintenance and upgrades.

The layout design above is the ideal layout, and doesn't take into account shadows from higher density or tree planting. Once I've 'crashed' it together, or considered it, with the other aspects of the design, we should get a more realistic picture.

Take your bike for a ride?

2008-07-31T15:09:00.005+10:00

Bike rack on Brisbane Bus

Sometimes you just don’t feel like riding home, or there’s a howling head wind, or your public transport route involves a 20 minute walk at the end. We need to be able to take bikes on all our buses and trains. They’re working on it in Brisbane, we can’t we make it easier here?

Bike rack on Danish train (read more here)

More places to keep our bikes

2008-07-31T11:34:00.006+10:00

A lot of people live in small houses in my neighbourhood, and as densities increase living areas will probably get even smaller. Providing secure bike lockers on the street would make it easier for people to own bikes, especially those not living on the ground floor.

It's also a nice visible "sustainable living marker" - a lot of sustainable design features are not really visible, so it's good to have something which.. I don't know.. declares a sustainable intention.

Hopefully, if we work on it, we can create a bike parking problem too.

Bike lanes that go somewhere & lovely Woonerven

2008-07-30T16:17:00.043+10:00

Click on image to enlarge

There are a few things which could be done to improve the sustainability of transport within our neighbourhood.

Firstly, we can try to increase the amount of people cycling instead of driving. To start with, we could set up a fine network of bike paths, bike lockers, and a woonerf system:

Bike Lanes: Improve safety and linkages
On the main roads (Wellington & Gold Street & Alexander Parade) we could replace the existing on-road bike lanes with off road paths in the style which are common in Denmark and the Netherlands.

This would improve safety for cyclists by protecting them from turning or swerving traffic, parking cars and opening car doors, and overtaking motorbikes. It also makes it safer for kids to ride, who are sometimes too unpredictable to ride on the road.

If we want to increase rates of cycling – it’s also important to improve the linkages or connections across the city wide bike network. A bike lane is no good if it doesn't go anywhere, or stops existing for 200m right at a busy intersection. In one sense, this is difficult to address on a local level, on the other hand, if everyone tried to improve their own local bike networks, the larger system would look after itself.

The plan above is the 'ideal' design (as per the approach discussed earlier), when other considerations are included it may not be able to be this extensive.

Before & After Slideshow - showing possible configuration of Wellington Street with bike paths on the same level as pedestrians

Bike lanes in Copenhagen are commonly configured so that they run alongside the footpath, rather than between parked cars and the traffic. The images in this post are from the great blog Copenhagenize the Planet, which also has this cycle-cam video of a ride through the city: it really shows what a difference it makes to have good consistent, uninterrupted, bike paths to travel on.

Woonerf: Streets are for Playing On
On the local streets (Charlotte, Hotham and Keele) we could implement a series of Woonerven. The Woonerf is another dutch concept (which translates as something like ‘recreation yard' or maybe 'living street') ; the idea is that you create a zone where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists. Vehicles entering the area are restricted to ‘walking pace’ (about 7-10km per hour). Pedestrians, including children, use the entire street and kids are encouraged to play in the street. Yay!

It has the other advantage of encouraging people to keep off 'local traffic' roads unless they are actually local traffic. The City of Yarra (our local council) are looking at putting in a bunch of speed bumps around our neighbourhood to stop drivers taking short cuts through the back streets at peak hour. A property developer who worked for Central Equity once told me that a speed bump outside your house knocks $20 000 off the value the property because of the annoying 'bump-scrape-bump' noise each time a car goes over the hump - I bet nobody ever lost money on their house because the traffic outside passes slowly enough for the local kids to play a game of hopscotch on the street.

Design Process: Crashing Together Little Utopias

2008-07-30T11:14:00.014+10:00

Click on image to see larger

At last I’ve starting to put together specific sustainability proposals for my neighbourhood.

At this stage I’m focusing on the ‘spatial’ elements of the design, that is, those things which require specific spatial configurations (so, for example, at this point bike paths are spatial, but a food buying co-op isn’t).

The approach I’m taking is borrowed in part from the design process used by Bernard Tschumi for Parc de la Villette in Paris (shown on the right), by thinking about the design in discrete layers.

I've broken down the design proposals into the following layers:

Road Energy System®
Rainwater Tanks
Bike Network
Earth (or Labyrinth) Cooling
Planting
Program
Solar Hot water heating and PV Array
Worm Farm & Black Water

Then I've gone ahead and designed each one of these layers in a utopian way, without reference to the other layers. So, for example, I’ve put solar panels in every possible location without considering where I might want to plant trees whose shadows would compromise the panels effectiveness, I’ve laid down the ideal bike path without considering traffic or other uses.

The next step is to ‘crash’ all these layers together. Once I've done that I can decide to either remove conflicts, or else use the conflicts created to generate interesting design solutions. So for example – if I want a PV array in the same location as an area of open space – I could chose one instead of the other – or perhaps I could make them co-exist - a PVA as a sculptural element within a park perhaps, or as part of the roof of a picnic shelter.

I'll follow this up with a post for each layer - giving more details.

My Neighbourhood as part of a Networks City

2008-07-30T10:22:00.006+10:00

After doing a design for a networks city for the surrounding area which I posted earlier, if we zoom in on my neighbourhood – it looks like this.

So we have higher density on Wellington and Alexander Parade, and to a lessor degree on Hotham and Gold Streets. Lower density areas are enclosed within, and we have a green link running down Gold and Charlotte streets, and the area in between. And green combined with high density along Hotham Street.

Now my job is to interpret this drawing into a series of specific design recommendations... stay tuned.

Do we want a tunnel on Alexander Parade?

2008-07-30T09:16:00.011+10:00

So an interesting development which affects this project and my neighbourhood, is the proposal to divert additional east-west cross city traffic down Alexander Parade, and build a tunnel to accommodate it.

Local community groups are protesting, and calling for improvements to public transport instead. This makes a lot of sense, the plan I've posted here is from the link on the YCAT site, so it's maybe a little partisan - the dark smoke coming from the stack for example, is perhaps exaggerating the visual impact of the smoke a little (although, probably not the air quality impact). Also, I'm not sure, but the location shown suggests that maybe they are planning to reuse the existing heritage shot tower rather than building a new exhaust stack.

I don't know enough about the tunnel proposal to comment on it specifically. But there's no doubt that catering for and allowing increases in personal car use in the city is incredibly short sighted.

There is just no future for increased car use in the city - logistically as well as environmentally. Every major city in the world has the same problem. Sooner or later you just run out of room for roads. After a critical tipping point, each additional car that passes through the city contributes nothing except to add to congestion, and does it's bit to destroy the qualities of the inner urban area's which we love.

Time to learn from Paris, London, New York and build a decent public transport network which is efficient and well-distributed enough so that every Melbourne resident can choose to use it if they want to (not just those in urban areas, or who are heading into the city).

Smooth Space/Striated Space

2008-07-30T08:30:00.013+10:00

In the last post I discussed the idea of "smooth programming", based on Deleuze & Guattari's writings in Mille Plateaus where they distinguish between two types of space: smooth space and striated space.

I came across the website of architect Christian Hubert, where he has this great image of smooth v's striated space, as well as a nice list of oppositions:

felt / woven fabric
non-metric / metric multiplicities ( Pierre Boulez)
primacy of the line (vector) / primacy of the point
Riemann space / Euclidean space
becoming / progress
"free action"(or play?) / work
haptic / optic ( is perspective a model of striation?)
local / global (?)
reading / writing? (De Certeau)
quality / quantity?

According to Deleuze and Guattari, smooth space is occupied by intensities and events. It is haptic rather than optic, a vectorial space rather than a metrical one. Smooth space is characteristic of sea, steppe, ice and desert. It is occupied by packs and nomads.

For more of Hubert's writings and 'note takings' (on, it looks like, just about any theoretic topic of interest to artists or architects) visit his site.

Creating Networks, Emergence & "Smooth Programming"

2008-07-29T16:35:00.017+10:00

click on image to see larger

I’m still working towards a specific sustainable design for my local neighbourhood, but before I can do that, I feel like I need to do some more thinking about how this neighbourhood could potentially fit into the surrounding urban fabric.

So for the plan you see above I’ve applied Steve Whitford’s Networks Cities principles in my design in a similar way to the approach used by BAU in some of their projects in China.

BAU’s approach is illustrated in the diagrams below, (taken from page 94 of Networks Cities). In the first diagram, program has been separated into three alternating bands –residential (yellow), commercial (red) and parkland (green).

From Networks Cities (pg. 94)

click on image to see larger

It should be noted that the separate bands are not intended to be exclusive – that is to say – they are not zones like you would see in the “Ghetto City”; they’re closer to what planners would call ‘mixed use’. Whitford calls this approach “smooth programming” rather than zoning. And he uses the term 'smooth' in the Deleuzian sense, meaning something along the lines of 'full of potential'. The idea is that each of these bands would contain a concentration of one particular program (or culture or activity), but without excluding any other activity (except ‘dirty’ industry).

From Networks Cities (pg. 94)
click on image to see larger

In the diagram above you can see that the east/west bands have been overlapped with north/south bands. As a result; instead of just getting three distinct bands of residential, commercial and open space - you now get these interesting areas where different programs are combined, or programs are doubled up or intensified.

Open space x residential
Commercial x commercial
Commercial x open space
Commercial x residential
Residential x residential
Open space x open space

One of the things I like about this design strategy is that by using a simple process with relatively few inputs - you can end up with very complex results. It’s making use of the natural phenomenon of emergence, where “complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions”. The designers job becomes to set up the interactions, observe their development, and then decide what to keep and what to discard. Like in film-making; a critical part of the creating the work is the editing process.

At the top of the post below is my attempt at a networks design for the Local Transport Area (the area shaded yellow here), like the BAU example I’ve broken up the programming into three bands:

Low Density (mainly residential)
Medium Density (commercial, retail, residential, industrial etc)
Green Space (parks, street planting, eco-corridors etc)

And like the BAU example I've ended up with some interesting and/or areas, where seeming conflicting forms or programs are combined. What do you do if you get open space (green) and highest density (dark orange) 'crashed' together in the same place? Green facades? Roof gardens? High rise green houses?

I've located the bands according to existing conditions, for example, higher density along major road, green networks joining existing open spaces and low density in existing residential areas.

In the next post I'll look at what this process has turned up for my neighbourhood.

click on image to see larger

Reading Networks Cities

2008-07-28T11:16:00.023+10:00

I’ve been reading Networks Cities (and their Chinese Application) draft edition edited by James Brearley. The book looks at new urban design and architectural projects in China which have been conceptually driven by using the idea and the form of networks to design how the city should be laid out, especially to decide how program and density should work.

The idea of Networks Cities as it appears in this book, is largely influenced by the work of Steve Whitford; an architect, urban designer and academic at The University of Melbourne. Steve has written an essay in the book where he gives a history of the development of city form/design and a sense of how his networks city fits in:

“No Zone City”
Whitford describes this as the city as it was before the introduction of planning – some of the urban spaces most loved by tourists and locals would fall into this category – all those old medieval fortress cities. But they tend to only work on a small scale, they can’t cope with contemporary traffic and other hazards, and Whitford points out - the only way to sort out programming conflicts (i.e someone has built an abattoir next to my second bedroom) is to take it to court after the fact.

“Ghetto City”target="new"
This is the zoned city popular in the middle of last century. The kind of city planning which Jane Jacobs rallied against, which separates city activities into discrete enclaves: Industry separated from offices, culture centres separated from retail, retail separated from restaurants. And residential apart from everything else. Besides creating cities which have little pedestrian life, and feel ‘dead’ or ‘boring’ (see Canberra, Brasilia, Chandigarh) – these cities privilege the motor vehicle, and require huge amounts of travel from one program to the other – so they’re not a good solution for sustainability.

“Mixed Use City”
A response to the problems of what Steve refers to as the “ghetto city”, this is a bit of a return towards the “No Zone City”. You get the juxtaposition of program again, and the diversity – but on a city wide level it tends to be homogenous. That is to say – one part of the city tends to look and feel like another.

“Mosaic City”
This is where Whitford places Alexander’s response to the “Mixed Use City” where he calls for a city made up of little distinct clusters of program or culture or form; which can start as small as 4-6 houses. Whitford calls this a “both/and solution which would no doubt please Robert Venturi.”

These clusters are still mixed use (meaning they mix different programs, for example, retail, open space, residential, together) - but instead of the program being distributed evenly throughout the city, it’s focused in various points throughout the city, creating diversity and a sense of place.

“Banded City”
The “banded city” takes Alexander’s clusters and turns them into bands –allowing someone who walks through the city to have a continuous experience, they could choose to have “a green experience, a high culture experience, or a commercial experience”.

Whitford points to Rem Koolhaas’ proposal for the La Villette competition as a precedent – in the proposal a visitor experiences continuous program as long as they walk along a band, if they walk across them “they experience a variety of programs compressed within a short space-time.”

And finally we get to Steve Whitford’s idea of the “Networks City”:

“Networks City”
The idea is that you copy the long continuous strips of program that you might find in a “Banded city” and rotate them around and overlay over the original bands to create a lattice.

This way you can travel across the city within one continuous experience – so you could have a “green city experience” or a “retail experience” across the whole city. The city is continuous and connected – while at the same time being diverse. Programs are distributed all through the city without creating homogeneity, or a sense of sameness.

“Surprisingly the answer to the question: Where is the housing, the commerce, the (clean) industry? Is everywhere. Importantly the answer to the question: are there ghettos of housing, commerce or (clean) industry? Is no.”

Steve Whitford "Sharpening Blunt Instruments for Better Cities" Networks Cities

I've used this theory as a way to think about how my neighbourhood could fit into a series of sustainable networks. Shortly I'll post a design which is an attempt to think about how density, program and open space could work in my neighbourhood, and in the larger Local Transport Area defined earlier.

Network Thinking & Sustainability

2008-07-26T15:46:00.016+10:00

“Networks are permeable and open spatial and social structures that facilitate flows of people, ideas, products, information and capital.”

Kim Dovey, Networks Cities (draft)

Today I was riding my bike home from Fairfield for the first time. I checked out my route first on google maps, and was pleased to note that 80% or more of the ride was along an off-road bike trail along the Yarra River (the Capital City bike trail) which goes all the way into the city. All I had to do was roll down the hill from the shopping strip in Fairfield and after a few moments I’d be on the trail which would take me most of the way home.

As I left Fairfield shops and rode along the merrily south along the on-road bike lane approaching a major intersection when the bike lane just... disappeared.

View Larger Map

After a bit of illegal and potentially dangerous manoeuvring I managed to make it to the off-road trail. But the experience made me think about networks, and how important holistic thinking is for thinking about ways to make my neighbourhood more sustainable

In a way, holistic thinking, or thinking about the ways in which elements inter-relate to each other, is central to sustainable design.

At the risk of gross overgeneralisation; traditional design processes tend to focus on discrete objects or design elements, rather than the relationships or dynamics between elements and objects.

So, in this example, I imagine that council would have a range of design professionals who contribute to the location of bike paths: A landscape architect (or open-space/recreation person) probably designed a cycling master plan, linking as many existing bike tracks together as possible. As part of this hypothetical master plan, an on-road bike path was recommended to link the shops & train station with the Yarra River and the off-road trail. I know it once existed, because you can still see the faint marking of it carrying through the intersection.

At a later date, let’s speculate, a traffic engineer has come along. This persons job is to try to speed up the traffic and reduce the likelihood of car crashes, in other words – their job is to think about the network that services cars. They don’t have to worry about bikes, or transport in general, or carbon in the atmosphere – they just have to think about cars, that one intersection and the immediate surrounding area of traffic.

So, it’s a no brainer: Take out the bike path, and the intersection is safer, and more efficient. That is to say; it’s safer, and more efficient for cars. It’s certainly not safer or more efficient for bicycles.

Of course; I’m just guessing here, perhaps the traffic engineers and the open space planners and the landscape architects got together and workshopped all the different variables and needs of different stakeholders and this was the best solution. But I’ve got to say – I doubt it.

If we want to see more sustainable design outcomes, the first step is to change our design processes. Our design professionals, that is to say; our engineers, planners, landscape architects, resource managers, architects and urban designers have to find ways to collaborate, early and often on design projects. And as designers we also need to find more holistic ways to approach design within our own areas of expertise. We need to think and design more rhizomatically, we need to do more network thinking, we need to consider whole systems rather than focus on discrete elements.

The reason cars dominate our cities and neighbourhoods so much, or rather, the means by which they are able to do so is because they make use of a strong and unbroken network. A good way to make our cities more sustainable is to create strong unbroken networks which will allow the flow of alternative means of transportation, energy and ideas.

$2000, a trip to beautiful Melbourne, and the warm inner glow that comes from helping to save the planet...

2008-07-24T21:05:00.004+10:00

All this can be yours if you take part in this international student design competition being held as part of SB08 World Sustainable Building Conference

The aim of this competition is to transform an existing historic waste transfer station in Melbourne, Australia using symbiotic and ecological design principles to create a no-waste housing development. Approximately 45 houses need to be accommodated on the site which can vary from single to four stories.

Shortlisted submissions will be displayed at the SB08 World Sustainable Building Conference in Melbourne, Australia

September 21st - 27th 2008

Key Dates:
Submission Deadline: 20th August, 2008
Charette and Decisions: 20th September, 2008

More info here.

2013: The end of life as we know it?

2008-07-23T18:07:00.010+10:00

from flickr

I've just been listening to a podcast of the Science Show on Radio National, which went to air in June. Chilling stuff (no pun intended).

Tim Flannery has been tracking the accelerating rate of ice melt in the poles, and concludes that if the ice melt continues at the rate which has been recorded in the last three years; we could lose "half the remaining sea ice by the end of this northern summer".

Half.

This made me think of another Bertrand Russell quote:

"Most people would die sooner than think — in fact they do so."

I've been wondering how radical I should be with my design, and what people will accept. Trying to find ways to 'insert' sustainability without affecting the aspects of living in this part of Melbourne which people enjoy. Asking myself how to change people's habits, and more to the point, asking myself how I can change my own habits. But if Tim Flannery is right, we might not have time to make changes, it might already be too late to turn ourselves around. Five years!

Excerpt from the transcript of the program:

Tim Flannery: Up to 2005 it looked as if there'd still be some sea ice by the end of this century in the Arctic. But in 2005 the sea ice started to melt away at about four times the rate of previous years, and that's now continued. And this year, the start of this summer has been just terrifying. The sea ice is melting away at about 6,000 square kilometres greater rate per week than last year. And if this summer follows the trajectory of the last few summers, we stand to lose about half the remaining sea ice by the end of this northern summer. And that is putting us on a trajectory to an ice-free Arctic within five years or so.
Alexandra de Blas: And what are the implications of that?
Tim Flannery: Well, the implications are profound because once the ice is gone the surface levels of the Arctic Ocean will start warming quite rapidly, because it's a dark surface and it absorbs light energy and turns it into heat energy. So the thermal balance of the area around Greenland will change, we'll start getting warming, so we can expect an accelerated rate of melt in Greenland. And that ice cap has enough water frozen in it, were it all to melt, to raise sea levels by six or seven metres. So that's one thing.
The second thing is of course that the entire climatic zonation of the northern hemisphere is held in place by the thermal gradient between the pole and the equator. That's why we have deserts where we have them in the northern hemisphere, and we have forested areas where we have them and tundra where we have them. And when I look at the melting tundra, the advance of the forest northwards...Greece and its forest fires that look like that area's becoming hostile to the sort of vegetation. I think we're seeing the early stages of a shift in that zonation. Once the ice melts away entirely and we get a rapid warming of the Arctic Ocean, that's when you'll see those sorts of changes potentially start shifting much more quickly.
Alexandra de Blas: If the sea ice is gone, say, within five years, how rapidly will we expect the Greenland ice cap to start melting?
Tim Flannery: Again, it's just not possible to answer that question, principally because ice doesn't just melt away as you might imagine an ice cube sitting on a bench would. It melts away, in part at least, by large-scale collapse. So ice shelves tend to collapse into the ocean and then fragment and then melt much more rapidly than they may otherwise do. And that sort of collapse is just impossible to model. We've seen it occur in the Antarctic Peninsula with the Larsen B ice shelf, but it is just impossible to model so we don't know. But people are now I think quite realistically talking about sea level rise, if nothing's done, of several metres this century.
Alexandra de Blas: Which will be astounding.
Tim Flannery: That will mean probably hundreds of millions of people displaced, a lot of the world's best agricultural land lost, some of the world's great cities threatened or under water, places like Shanghai and Amsterdam and London and so forth. Amsterdam's about two-and-a-half metres under water as it is, just held up by the dykes. And Singapore and so forth. So the changes, if you want to sum them up, that's the end of our global civilisation. The stresses that would be placed upon the global political system and economic system would be such that it simply couldn't endure them.

2008-07-21T23:45:00.004+10:00

"Humankind has become so much
one family that we cannot insure our
own prosperity except by insuring
that of everyone else."

Bertrand Russell

Be like a butterfly: the power of group purchasing

2008-07-21T23:37:00.003+10:00

A few families in India got together to combine their group purchasing power. It's now a large scale purchasing and distribution organisation (Mumbai Grahak Panchayat (MGP)) which caters for 21000 families. The consumers are rewarded with cheaper groceries, and because they order their shopping and have it delivered, they avoid impulse buying.

They're helping the planet by reducing emissions from transportation (estimated at 52000km pa), by only supplying healthy foods, and by demanding less & more sustainable packaging.

There's no reason that this wouldn't work here in Melbourne. An organisation like this could source food which is organic/seasonal or has low food miles & provide it at affordable prices that could compete with supermarket rates

I love that this group started at back-yard get together scale, and now turns over 6 million a year.

Read more here in Choice magazine.

Defining my neighbourhood

2008-07-21T18:33:00.007+10:00

After doing some additional reading – I’ve redefined the neighbourhood boundaries. Initially I just centred the ‘block’ or neighbourhood around our house, besides being, well, a little egocentric, this created problems because it leaves a little area to the north stranded between our neighbourhood and Alexander Parade. Alexander Parade is a major road and too much of a social & physical barrier to have running thought the middle of a community. So, as there are not really enough houses to consider treating as a separate community, for the purposes of this project, I’ve merged them into ours.

Below I’ve worked out six ‘neighbourhoods’ based on Alexander’s principles. I’ve also decided to work on this scale because it makes sense practically – it’s large enough to sustain some fairly large scale sustainable interventions, but small enough to be managed locally and have effective individual involvement.

It would make sense to break this down again if people started putting this design into action, into smaller “housing clusters” or “action groups” (8-12 households, 20-50 people)

So ‘my neighbourhood’ becomes the area defined by Alexander Pde, Gold Street, Wellington Street and Hotham Street. The area highlighted on the plan below; it has about 400 residents, and is roughly 220x200m.

Learning from Sophocles: A Community of 7000

2008-07-21T17:56:00.012+10:00

As discussed in earlier posts, I've been reading "A Pattern Language" to get some theoretical guidance for sustainable urban design decisions. Alexander recommended that as much local control as possible should be given over to small communities of 7000 (max. 10 000). His argument is that in communities larger than 10 000 the individual has no effective voice, he also points out the historical precedents for this model: Sophocles ideas & Athenian democracy, Jefferson's ward republic and Confucian principles.

As it happens the suburb of Collingwood is already pretty much a Community of 7000 in terms of population - there's about 5500 residents plus many more business owners and other stakeholders.

The area shown is bounded by Alexander Pde to the north, and Hoddle, Victoria Parade and Smith Street (going clockwise).

Alexander's pattern:

As nearly as possible; use natural geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities.

Give each community the power to initiate, decide, and execute the affairs that concern it closely; land use, housing, maintenance, streets, parks, police, schooling, welfare, neighbourhood services.

Collingwood as a 'Community of 7000' shown in red, our neighbourhood outlined in orange

Defining a Local Transport Area

2008-07-21T17:26:00.007+10:00

If I apply Alexander's concept of a Local Transport Area to this part of Melbourne then I end up with an area 3.2km across bounded by Hoddle Street to the east, Brunswick Road to the north, Royal Parade to the east and Victoria Parade to the south.

It takes in Fitzroy, Collingwood, Carlton and most of Princes Hill, Clifton Hill, Parkville, Princes Hill, Carlton North and Fitzroy North. The squiggly line to the east is the Yarra River.

The area is squarer than what Alexander proposes; he prefers long sausage like developments. But it is bounded by major roads, which together could act as a ring road.

If you were to apply Alexander's theories here (not that I’m necessarily proposing to) then you would make travel on the ring road fast and efficient, and make motor vehicular transport within it slow, inconvenient and expensive.

You would have few cross streets within the ring roads bounding the LTA and privilege bikes and pedestrian traffic. Local Transport Areas would be well serviced within by public transport and well connected to each other. Each LTA would have a distinct identity and be well defined physically (a massive ring road would do that I guess).

Local Transport Area, with our neighbourhood outlined in orange

To Hell and back again

2008-07-21T16:22:00.007+10:00

According the great blog Copenhagenize (the planet), in Denmark you can now borrow a bike and trailer at Ikea to get your stuff home. Apparently 20% of customers in Copenhagen ride to the store, even though both stores are located in a 'box industrial' area 10km & 20km outside of town.

We went to 'Hell' lately (as my partner has christened ikea, in response to the labyrinthine- daylight-depriving- endurance sport which is shopping there) and we bought a whole bunch of stuff including a black board, table and chair set, bibs and cushions etc - and we managed to get it all (and us) into the Christiania.

Of course Ikea is really not far us, 3-4km maybe, so I reckon a lot of people would ride if they could.

Key Dimensions & Spatial Relationships for Sustainability

2008-07-21T14:35:00.017+10:00

Below is a kind of check list of dimensions which are useful for urban design and planning projects.

These numbers & areas could be used to layout a sustainable township from scratch, but they're also useful for me for this project because it gives me a set of principles to work with. For example - if I want to propose that Charlotte Street be transformed into a linear park I need to be able to justify open space amenity in that location in relation to the rest of the city.

I will also use these principles to work out where the boundaries of 'my neighbourhood' should be.

Some of the figures below come from principles of New Urbanism, some from Superbia, some from Christopher Alexander.

From a Pattern Language - Alexander:

Metropolis
Ideal downtown area which can provide "magic of the city" without over-population and urban sprawl issues.

Max 1.6km wide (but can be long)
300 000 people within 5-23km of each other
Shopping streets – one for every 10 000 people; 2.9km apart
Markets of many shops - one for every 4000 people; 1.8km
Corner groceries one for every 1 000 people; 0.8km apart

Local Transport Area
Urban area should be broken down into local transport areas connected by efficient road transport (ring roads), however traveling within these areas should be slow and inconvenient for motor vehicles.

1.6 to 3.2 km across
Surrounded by a ring road
Slow moving local traffic and bikes within ring road
One way parallel streets for connecting traffic (very few cross streets)

Communities of 7000
Communities of 5000 to 10,000 persons with local government control.

400m to 3.2km across
About 30 HA
Maximum 10 0000 people
Densities of 125 people per HA will support a promenade within 5-10 minute walk (460m) (Collingwood density is 50 people per HA)

Mosaic of Subculture
Small urban areas with distinct character, lifestyle and culture.

50-400m across

Neighbourhoods
Identifiable neighbourhood with some local control

90 - 275m across with about 400-500 residents

Housing Cluster

8-12 households (about 30-50 people)
can be as few as 3 households

Work Community
Workplaces organised as communities

10-20 work places

Commute

People should commute a maximum 20-30 minutes

General:

Grassroots

500-1500 amount of people who can ‘rally together’

Ped sheds

5 minute walk (400m radius) based on new urbanist ‘walkability’ principle

From "Superbia":

25-40 houses – optimal number of houses where occupants can get to know each other well and share facilities

14m – the distance where you can recognise an individual

2008-07-20T18:01:00.005+10:00

"You have to love the area you're trying to change"

Jane Jacobs
(possibly paraphrased a little)

A Pattern Language: Christopher Alexander

2008-07-20T15:14:00.007+10:00

I've been reading "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander (in collaboration with Sarah Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein) to get a sense of what, theoretically, should be included in a sustainable neighbourhood, and how on could create a 'mental framework' for a neighbourhood.

At the same time I'm reading about PVA arrays and black water mining, but first I want to get my head around ideas like: How big should the neighbourhood be? What building heights are better? What is the ideal density, or ideal combination of densities? And so on...

"A Pattern Language" is almost 30 years old, but, perhaps surprisingly, is still an extremely useful and relevant text. The book provides 253 'patterns' for developing neighbourhoods, towns and cities. It's a little like a repertory cookbook; and each patterns is like a recipe which can be used to guide design decisions from the grand scale of laying out a city, all the way down to the best arrangement of chairs in your kitchen.

The other thing that is interesting about Alexander, and which makes him a useful reference for people interesting in improving 'their own backyard', is that he believes in bottom up change which responds to specific local conditions.

“We do not believe that these large patterns, which give so much structure to a town or of a neighborhood, can be created by centralised authority, or by laws, or by master plans. We believe instead that they can emerge gradually and organically almost of their own accord, if every act of building, large or small, takes on the responsibility for gradually shaping it’s small corner of the world to make these larger patterns appear there.”

Listed below are the 'recipes' which I am planning to try and apply (theoretically) to my neighbourhood:

8. Mosaic of Subcultures **
9. Scattered Work **
10. Magic of the City
11. Local Transport Areas **
12. Community of 7000 *
13. Subculture Boundary *
14. Identifiable Neighborhood **
15. Neighborhood Boundary *
16. Web of Public Transportation *
17. Ring Roads
18. Network of Learning
19. Web of Shopping *
20. Mini-Buses *
21. Four-Story Limit **
22. Nine Percent Parking **
23. Parallel Roads
24. Sacred Sites *
25. Access to Water *
26. Life Cycle *
27. Men and Women
28. Eccentric Nucleus *
29. Density Rings *
30. Activity Nodes **
31. Promenade **
32. Shopping Street
33. Night Life *
34. Interchange
37. House Cluster **
41. Work Community **
42. Industrial Ribbon *
43. University as a marketplace
44. Local Town Hall *
47. Health Center *
48. Housing In Between **
63. Dancing in the Street *
64. Pools and Streams *
65. Birth Places
67. Common Land **
68. Connected Play *
69. Public Outdoor Room **
70. Grave Sites *
71. Still Water *
72. Local Sports *
73. Adventure Playground
74. Animals
84. Teenage Society
85. Shopfront Schools
87. Individually Owned Shops **
88. Street Café **
89. Corner Grocery *
90. Beer Hall
91. Traveler's Inn *
92. Bus Stop *
93. Food Stands *
94. Sleeping in Public
120. Paths and goals *

The * markers are Alexander's. He recognises that some of the patterns are "more true, more profound, more certain, than others". Those marked with two asterisks ** are patterns which the authors believe are essential to all good design solutions for the particular problem/situation they pertain to; while the patterns marked with one * are likely to reflect characteristics present in most good design solutions, and those with no asterisks more in the way of suggestions or possiblities.

Summaries of each of Alexander's patterns can be found here. And I will return to some of these if necessary to give some background on design decisions.

Christiania is ours. The family cargo bike.

2008-06-04T21:38:00.023+10:00

This is the last week of the semester's teaching - and the pace of life has slowed enough for me to spend time on some more personal interests, including this blog. Maybe the most exciting news is that we bought the Christiania bike!

We hesitated a little, because well... they're not cheap, and certainly much too expensive for us to justify as a 'weekend toy'. Too big for a toy as well; you certainly can't hang them up in the hall the way you can with a regular bike.

But as it's turned out; it's become the family work horse. I've driven the car twice in last three months, and the pram almost as rarely. We use the trike for multiple trips each day - to drop the little one off at childcare & pick her up, shopping, cafe trips and the commute to work.

In fact we're thinking about selling our second car (which is an old bomb anyway), if we do maybe we can join flexicar so that we have a car available when we need it; they have a car located just around the corner from our house.

We saved a bit of money by buying the heavier steel framed version, and by just getting the frame without the box. We made our own box, and for the time being we're just strapping our daughters car seat in to carry her around, when she's a little bigger we'll make a bench and seat belts.

Steel frame with no box

The box in progress

The finished bike, our friends used it as their 'wedding car', here they are on route from their wedding to the reception. Crossing Punt Road was hilarious - honking and cheers.

Our daughter has become very possessive of the bike, and has been known to defend it vigorously against any other poor child who gets too close.

We did the Colac to Beech Forest rail trail. Beautiful, but bloody hard work. And the Christiania bike is really not designed for off-road riding.

We looked at getting a cheaper knockoff. And they really do look very similar to the Christiania bike, they've even used the same font in their marketing graphics. Bit cheeky really.

These bikes are much much cheaper than the Christiania (30-50% of the price), but I really don't know if they could stand up to the workout a cargo bike gets. The Christiania can carry 100kg whereas the knockoff can carry 80kg, but besides the frame, the main difference to me seems to be that the Christiania has Shimano disk brakes, and internal gears whereas the other has external gears and drum brakes. Having internal gears means you can change gears immediately, which makes a massive difference when you're trying to go up a hill with a load, or even over a small bump from a stop. And of course, when you're scooting down a hill with 190kgs on board (including rider), disk brakes provide a certain comfort.

In fact when I think about the trouble I have with the external gears of my two wheeler, I think buying the cheaper bike would have been an very expensive mistake. Yes we do love you Christiania.

Christiania we love you

2008-02-23T17:25:00.009+11:00

Sorry it's been a while since my last post - it's been the first week of teaching so I've been busy, and besides that... I've fallen in love.

Peter Santos from ps bikes has given us a one week trial on one of his Christiania bikes from Denmark. And we all love it.

Does this mean we can get rid of one of our cars? We have a work vehicle, and a family car; the bike is capacious, but it's not quite going to replace the ute... perhaps the family car?

Hmmm...

We were looking at buying one of those sexy new Fiat Puntos, but the advantage of this is that I'll get exercise as well! Goodbye baby curves! But of course; they're not cheap, in fact I reckon it's worth more than the car we have now.

It comes with a little rain cover and a shade cloth. Have ridden baby and her Dad around in it. Hilarious, but effective. Anyway - if you want to find out more, here is the Christiania site, and p s bikes in Melbourne. The photo albums on each site are fantastic.

About our neighbourhood

2008-02-13T23:31:00.011+11:00

So we have a great little neighbourhood – in some ways it’s like something out of a New Urbanism lifestyle brochure: Two good pubs (one good, the other great – I’ll let you decide which way the dice fall), a odd little café that sells kitchenware & sharpens your knives, and from which I’m am drinking a very decent takeaway café latte as I write this. And a corner store which seems to always be open and sells the staples plus a random assortment of items including fresh(ish) veg and baking powder, toothpaste and cat food.
We have interesting and active footpaths; there’s always someone walking along the street, and as a result the streets & and our houses feel safe. There's a little pocket park with play equipment a block away, across the road from a childcare centre.

It's a pretty typical Melbourne inner urban suburb. It's not green suburbia, and it's not the inner city; it's a fairly densely built combination of terraces, flats, older warehouse buildings with the occasional freestanding house.

It's already doing comparitively well in terms of sustainability: there are no McMansions, few driveways for people to water, and hardly any lawn. According to 2006 Australian Census Data, there's 1.1 person per bedroom and I calculate that the density is about 50 people per hectare. Ok, so that is only about 10% of the density of the centre of Paris - so it's no metropolis, but it's not sprawling suburbia either.
This part of Collingwood is well provided for in terms of public transport, and judging from the cars left parked on the street, and ABS, only about 40-50% travel to work by car. Most people on public transport probably don't use the train - but catch the bus on Johnston or the tram on Smith.

It's about a 10 minute walk to the shops and the supermarket on Smith Street, 10 minutes to a decent sized park, and about 20-30 minutes to the city on public transport in peak hour (door-to-door), and maybe about 15-20 minutes on a bike.

About 320-350 people live 'the block' (if you include the area from Mater to Alexander Pde) most of us are Australian citizens and speak English at home. The most common languages apart from English spoken at home are Greek, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin and Macedonian. About 10 residents are aboriginal or Torres Strait islanders, and 90 are born overseas (a pretty even mix of people from Viet Nam, New Zealand, China, England, Greece).

There are about 20 kids under 12 living in the neighbourhood, 60 or so teenagers or young adults, 25 families with children and about 24 retirees.

About half of us have university qualifications, 20% are high income ($2500 or more a week), about 15% are low income (less than $500 a week) and general we earn about $650 a week each, and $1500 per family - which is more than the average Australian, but I imagine pretty typical for the inner northern suburbs.

(click on images for larger view)

Public Transport & Traffic & Pedestrian Movement

Landmarks & Amenities:

Planning info:

Lets experiment! Ask stupid questions.

2008-02-13T15:17:00.009+11:00

I was reading Dave Pollards addictive blog "How to Change the World" again just now, and he writes; "We don't need 'leadership' or 'leaders'. What we need is experimenters".

I think what he suggests makes sense - a leader is supposed to know the answers, they're expected to be wiser and more experienced than the rest of us - whereas an experimenter doesn't need to know anything, an experimenter can be anyone, an experimenter can focus on questions; and it's only by asking questions that we can grow, and that we can achieve real change.

As Bruce Mau exhorts in "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth":

Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
Bruce Mau: An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

And here's an excerpt from Dave Pollard's Blog post where he discusses 'experimenters' and viral, bottom-up change:

The way to create working models that work better than the dysfunctional ones we have now, in a complex system where no one is in control and no one has the answers, is to try things. A lot of small-scale experiments, bold, different, even wacky. And then compare notes with each other about what works (and why) and what doesn't (and why not).

That will allow the successful experiments to spread, virally, and be adapted and improved. Eventually, bottom-up, it will allow us to create decentralized community-based self-managed political, economic, educational, and social systems that actually work well, for each community.

Unlike most 'leaders', experimenters are:

collaborators: they don't do anything alone
facilitators and coaches: they help others to learn and discover how to do things better
demonstrators: more than just communicators, they show how it works and what it means
ideators: they imagine what's possible, and tell stories to bring those ideas to life
innovators: they take those good ideas and realize them, make them real
researchers: they study what's been done, in nature, by other cultures and communities, and what's needed, and spread that knowledge
connectors: they bring people together who were meant to work together
model-builders: they design and build something that can be understood, replicated and adapted by others
founders: they start new things -- enterprises, communities, different ways to do important things; they build something new rather than criticizing what exists

That's what we need. We won't find it in one or a few people. We have to find it within all of us. To do that we have to give up on 'leaders' and take charge of our own lives, collaboratively, as peers. Who's 'leading' in government, in business, in religious and educational and social organizations doesn't matter.

The power is in all of us.

Thanks Dave!

Where Do We Want to Be? (Urban design Objectives)

2008-02-12T14:48:00.009+11:00

As I write this I am sitting alone at my desk in my studio. This is not ideal! The work I’m doing in this blog is still useful; as a case study – and as a way of answering my four research questions, but really these objectives should be generated by discussions between a group of people.

At the very least by a group of professionals (urban designers, architects, planners, ecologists, environmental scientists and engineers) but ideally the work should be done by a group of residents, workers and other stakeholders.

Seeing as though it’s only me, we can’t go through the process of workshopping these ideas; we can’t argue and discuss their merits and then reach an agreement together. So instead I will post some interim ‘Urban Design Objectives’ – to operate in lieu of a ‘Neighbourhood Vision Statement’

A Neighbourhood Vision Statement could be generated from discussing the following questions:

1. Where are we now? (the current situations, issues & values, background and features of the neighbourhood)

2. Where are we going? (What the neighbourhood might look like in the future if we follow the current course)

3. Where do we want to be? (Develop a preferred scenario, what Chiras et al call a “realistic-idealistic” picture)

4. How do we get there? Neighbours formulate an Action Plan, delegate responsibilities, and agree on timetables for action and ‘benchmarks’ for progress.

...

Ok, so - the realistic/idealistic picture in question 3 forms the basis of the Neighbourhood Vision Statement, and is what I am attempting to create now in this post.

(for more information about this process, have a look at Chapter 3 of “Superbia!: 31 ways to create sustainable neighborhoods”)

I’ve divided the following Urban Design guidelines into 10 categories based on those of the Guiding Principles of One Planet Living.

1. Zero Carbon
Our climate is changing because of human-induced build up of CO2 in the atmosphere

Reduce the block’s carbon emissions to zero by 2020;
Maximise the block’s ability to generate its own power;
Minimise the energy needs of each dwelling, and of the neighbourhood in general;
Maximise use of passive heating and systems;
Seek relationships with individuals, communities and service providers which extend and strengthen practices of ecologically sustainable design, construction and behaviours;
Ensure all sustainable interventions are designed and maintained so that they function as intended and within budget;
Ensure ongoing ESD information, education and support is available for new and existing residents;
Maximise the ability for both the local and global community to access to the knowledge and experience of the blocks residents, and also to the successes and failures of the project; &
Examine & modify unsustainable lifestyles, consumption and behaviours.

2. Zero Waste

Waste from discarded products and packaging creates disposal problems and squanders valuable resources

Reduce waste to zero by 2020;
Maximise waste treated on-site;
Allow adequate space to store and facilitate waste recycling;
Reuse existing facades and structures when building new buildings or renovating; &
Select recycled materials, or materials which can be reused or which reduce waste.

3. Sustainable Transport & Urban Form
Travel by car and airplane is contributing to climate change, air and noise pollution, and congestion

Increase access to and use of public transport;
Increase use of bicycles & walking (& other sustainable transport);
Minimise private car ownership and use;
Provide pleasant and convenient movement, seating and bicycle parking/storage for cyclists and pedestrians; &
Increase density where possible without destruction of the existing urban and community fabric, in order to reduce ‘urban sprawl’ and maximise use of sustainable transport.

4. Local & Sustainable Materials
Destructive resources exploitation (eg in construction and manufacturing) increases environmental damage and reduces benefit to local community

Maximise use of existing built form;
Use recycled low VOC materials, and avoid materials which have a negative impact on air quality or emit chemicals and pollutants harmful to people or the ecosystem. Consider the whole lifecycle of the material and toxic affects during manufacture, during construction, during the materials intended use and maintenance, and during disposal or recycling;
Maximise use of recycled, locally produced and sustainable materials; &
Design and build to minimise the use of chemical cleaning agents and to discourage mould growth.

5. Local & Sustainable Food
Industrial agriculture produces food of uncertain quality, harms local ecosystems, and may have high transport impacts

Encourage consumption of locally produced and sustainable food; &
Ensure a range of fresh locally produced food is available within a 5 minute walk.

6. Sustainable Water
Local supplies of freshwater are often insufficient to meet human needs, due to pollution, disruption of hydrological cycles, and depletion

Reduce the blocks use of ‘mains water’ to zero by 2020;
Consider ways in which the block may become a net producer of potable water;
Minimise rainwater & pollution runoff into stormwater;
Retrofit houses to maximise water efficiency;
Modify behaviour to reduce water usage; &
Reduce the water consumption of gardens and outdoor areas.

7. Habitats & Wildlife
Loss of biodiversity due to development in natural areas and over-exploitation of natural resources

Maximise the quality of the habitat provided for indigenous ﬂora and fauna;
Maximise areas of soft landscaping, including on top of buildings and on balconies;
Maximise indigenous planting;
Minimise light pollution;
Maximise areas of permeable paving, and reduce overall area of impermeable surfaces to reduce runoff and pollution in waterways; &
Capture run-off on-site before it enters storm water system.

8. Culture & Heritage
Local cultural heritage is being lost throughout the world due to globalisation, resulting in loss of local identity and knowledge

Increase number & richness of relationships between neighbours;
Maximise opportunities for neighbours to meet and talk;
Protect/change and enrich local identity and character; &
Create opportunities for residents to volunteer their time, and to work for the benefit of the community.

9. Economy, Equity & Fairtrade
Some in the industrialised world live in relative poverty, while many in the developing world cannot meet their basic needs from what they produce or sell

Increase awareness of the relationship between our consumption and economic status & lifestyle of the people who produce the goods in the developing world;
Retain and circulate money within local economies; &
Maximise prevalence and stability of small businesses within the neighbourhood.

10. Health & Happiness
Rising wealth and greater health and happiness increasingly diverge, raising questions about the true basis of well-being and contentment

Create situations which encourage people to question their assumptions of what makes them happy, and what makes a ‘good neighbourhood’;
Create opportunities for residents to meet the needs for live, work and play within the community, and without the ‘schism’ created by long commutes;
Improve the qualities of social relationships and mutual support;
Embody processes of localised, democratic participation in community life;
Provide safe places for children to play in public space; &
Increase size or value of public & communal space.

Phew.. finished! Ok, so this is all very ideal, and not every element may be achievable - but overall it should be do-able. And I guess, in theory at least, that is what I am going to work out over the next couple of weeks.

Stay tuned...

Built Form Study

2008-02-07T00:25:00.001+11:00

4 Questions this project & blog should address:

2008-02-06T20:01:00.000+11:00

1. What does a sustainable neighbourhood look like?
2. How does a sustainable neighbourhood work?
3. What are the basic design features of a sustainable neighbourhood?
4. How can we move towards sustainable neighbourhoods from where we are now?

to borrow a turn of phrase & proposal structure used so well by Matt Fisher in his proposal for a publication dealing with Sustainable Cities, 2005.

More about the block:

2008-02-06T19:23:00.003+11:00

Why a single block? It seems to make sense to operate on this scale. It’s small enough so that people can initiate change locally; outside centralised institutions, but large enough to be able to consider bolder interventions like back water mining or changes to the streetscape.

If you were to imagine a descending scale in which you might consider the application of ecologically sustainable design – starting at the ‘big end’ it probably would read something like this: The planet: the pacific region: the state: the catchment area: the region: local council area; my neighbourhood; me.

Everything higher than my neighbourhood feels like it’s totally out of my hands. Is probably not really, but that’s certainly how it feels – so that brings me back to me, and to my neighbourhood.

I read somewhere recently that anyone can imagine a utopia the secret is to imagine a something that’s do-able. I suspect that’s not entirely true either (the bit about anyone being able to imagine a utopia, I can think of a couple of people at least who would have trouble imagining a Bombe Alaska if they hadn’t seen one lately), but I do think it’s important for me to restrict this project to existing technologies, and proposals that are likely to be approved within existing planning processes and legislation (unless the game is worth the candle, and seems important to challenge existing legislative structures).

In Dan Chiras and Dave Wann’s book ‘Superbia!’ they say that cohousing research indicates...

that 25 – 40 households is an optimum number for running collaborative projects. Any more and it gets too difficult to communicate and to share facilities – and basically, I guess, it’s just too hard to get to know each other well. I imagine that any less than 25 would make it difficult to have the numbers to reach a critical mass, in terms of raising capital or organising ‘work parties’ etc. If I want to follow those recommendations the neighbourhood block I defined in the first post is much too large – roughly 137 households (not sure how many are in each block of flats).

Hmm, what to do? I could just redefine the ‘neighbourhood’ to a block of around 40, but then it’s starting to get too small to consider making changes to stormwater or streetscapes. Perhaps what I can do is divide my neighbourhood into four proposed ‘Neighbourhood Communites’ – each with about 30-35 households…

Ok that doesn’t work when you actually draw it up, not if I stick to including the streets in the divisions (to reflect the existing relationship patterns I have with my neighbours). Dividing into 3 makes the groups too large.

(click on image to see it larger)

If I make the overall neighbourhood block smaller by leaving off the houses on the other side of Wellington, that makes sense, because Wellington St has a lot more traffic, and acts as a barrier to relationships (people living opposite each other on Wellington would be unlikely to know each other, whereas I do know the people who live across the road on Hotham St). See diagram from Superbia! (pg.24) by David Engwicht – the traffic & community guru (click on image to see it larger).

Then the new Neighbourhood Block and smaller Neighbourhood Communites would look like this:

(click on image to see it larger)

Of course I’m doing this now so that I can go ahead and design a practical/theoretical case study. In fact the best way for these divisions to be decided would be by my neighbours – and then the divisions would reflect actual relationships as well as practical & spatial considerations.

The other reason why it makes sense to work on the level of a ‘block’ is that the neighbourhood block is, if you like, the basic building block of the city. So if we can make one block ecologically sustainable, then in theory at least, we should be able to apply the same changes right across Melbourne (and elsewhere).

Well… fingers crossed.

Lets have the kind of conversations that lead to doing (& thinking)

2008-02-05T08:59:00.002+11:00

"If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own." Goethe (from Dave Pollard's fascinating & ecelectic blog)

Australia, along with China ranks higher than USA in contributing to climate change

2008-02-04T21:42:00.001+11:00

Now that is depressing... (thanks for the link Dave)

Books I'm reading...

2008-02-04T12:35:00.001+11:00

Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods
by Daniel D. Chiras & David Wann

Superbia! is a book of practical ideas for creating more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. It is about remaking suburban and urban neighborhoods to serve people better and to reduce human impact on the environment.

http://www.amazon.com/Superbia-Ways-Create-Sustainable-Neighborhoods/dp/0865714908/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202089028&sr=8-1

"One Sustainable Block"?

2008-02-04T09:35:00.005+11:00

Recently I decided to follow the instruction "Think Global and Act Local", and to that end I have started to try and change my buying behavior (local produce, buy less, buy services instead of things), and my living style (shorter showers, recycling, drink tap water instead of bottled etc) and also started to think about what we could do to our (rented) house to reduce our energy and water usage.

I'm an Urban Designer, so when I think about our house, I naturally begin to think about the relationship with the other things around it - the street outside, the laneway behind, the stormwater system, the street trees, the local park & my neighbours houses.

From both and ecological and urban design perspective - it makes sense to think this way. Because cities and ecologies are both systems, and when you're dealing with systems it doesn't help you much to focus solely on one element within the system, what is important in the relationships between the elements.

So thinking about it that way - my house is literally connected to a series of systems; the road network, power, gas and electricity systems, stormwater and drainage systems. My neighbours and I share the problems of pollutants from the two major roadways nearby, our cars spend most of the day and night beside each other on the street, our oranges and teabags probably travel half way around the world on the same shipping container, get loaded onto the same truck and delivered in the same box to our local supermarket.

We are also connected in less physical ways; by council and community infrastructure, by cultural events and attitudes, and by personal relationships (my family have only been living here for a few months, but Jo and Joanne; the couple that own this house have lived here for 16 years, and they have strong relationships with dozens of households in this neighbourhood).

It makes sense then to expand my thinking past the boundaries of my own house in order to think effectively about achieving a higher level of sustainability. At the same time it seems to me that the best way to achieve change is not to worry about what everyone else is doing and "heal thyself" - because, lets face it, that is hard enough. And in fact, it's only ever by changing yourself, that you can ever change or affect anything else.

Ok, so that leaves me stuck between a rock and a hard place really...

Perhaps the solution is to try and find a middle ground between trying to deal with a whole system or large scale series of interrelated systems and thinking about only me and my house. The secret is to identify a mini-system which is manageable in some sense - that I can get my head around, and maybe hope to affect in some way.

I'm going to define 'a block', which I'll think of as my neighbourhood. Of course I'm not trying to over simplify, I know that these systems and relationships can't be diced up into neat units like that, but I think even Christopher Alexander would approve of finding a focus area, or a defining a 'problem'.

I'll define two areas on two separate scales - a 400m five minute walk radius (so loved by New Urbanists) and a 100m radius centred around my house. I'll draw the boundaries in the middle of the housing blocks rather than in the middle of the road - because I want to cater for the fact that over the parked car relationships are more common in my neighbourhood that over the back fence (or back lane) relationships.

Ok, so here below is my subject area - my neighbourhood, my little part of Collingwood - including Hotham, Gold, Charlotte and Wellington Streets. And my project is to try and design a series of interventions which can be taken up by residents or retrofitted to make this one block ecologically sustainable.

In the next post I'll define some clearer & more detailed objectives. And also take a closer look at my neighbourhood - and maybe do a kind of site or context analysis.

The story of this blog...

2008-02-01T20:40:00.001+11:00

This blog is an attempt to work out how my neighbourhood in Collingwood Melbourne could become sustainable. Here are the key posts - tracking the project from the first couple of posts where I try to work out what I'm interested in doing, and define the 'scope' of my research - through the process of defining 'my neighbourhood' - to researching and designing possible sustainable interventions:

Key posts in chronological order: