from flickr

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

• 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)

• 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)

• 50-400m across

• 90 - 275m across with about 400-500 residents

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

• 10-20 work places

• People should commute a maximum 20-30 minutes

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

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

• 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
  

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

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.”