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30 April - housing in the city

I was forwarded an article at work yesterday morning by our CEO that highlighted the issue of chronic overcrowding in Sydney due to the lack of affordable housing in the city. It quoted a report released by Anglicare that concluded that there is no housing available in Sydney that unemployed people can afford.

This is a terrible situation that sets us further on a trajectory towards our cities become an enclave of the rich. Rather ironic really given that just 50 years ago the middle classes and the rich had fled the cities for the perceived comfort of the suburbs.

We must make sure that our cities are places for all in society. Some of the best cities I have lived in or visited are the best because they have a rich tapestry of humanity populating them. This brings vibrant, diverse, unexpected, sometimes confronting, always interesting experiences for those of us there to enjoy it.

The market will not solve this. It requires government legislation to rent cap properties (residential and commercial) and to force developers to provide much more than tokenistic portions of affordable housing in new developments. It also requires the State government to stop selling off state owned housing in the middle of the city. Too late for Sydney of course, but where do we expect all the people that serve us dinner and drinks in bars and restaurants, that clean our offices at night, that give us our morning shot of caffeine to live? 1 hour out of the city so as to add an extra 2 hours to their day in commute time?

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25 April - resilience in the city

I grew up in Wellington, NZ a city known for its earthquakes. We would regularly experience small earthquakes and would hold earthquake drills at school. We also all had a family civil defence plan and kit at home. 

I attended a Resilient Sydney briefing session a couple of weeks ago and this was one of the questions they asked of the audience…..how many of you have a plan and emergency supplies? Very few raised their hands including me. It really made me think about resilience and about how culture can really have an effect on this. I’ve never heard anyone in Sydney talk about having an agreed plan for what to do in an emergency and over the years it has slipped from my consciousness. Its all very well for our city governments and institutions to be thinking about resilience and how to get the city back up and running after a disaster but we as individuals have to play a role in this too.

Having this conversation at home, with our neighbours, our school and wider community would not only make us better prepared on the day but would build social cohesion that should see our communities recover faster. 

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23 April - Trees from the window

I read about a report today that has recently been released based on research undertaken in the UK and NZ that shows that people who can see trees from their window are happier and healthier, especially in high density housing situations. I love this. It corroborates an oft cited earlier piece of research that showed that patients in hospital who could see green spaces (even a picture of nature on the wall) recovered faster. 

I touched on the idea of greening all the incidental spaces in our cities and this idea builds on this by reinforcing the importance of tree canopy. Not only for the cooling effect they provide but now clearly the physical and mental health benefits for the people that inhabit cities. 

So how do we get more trees planted in our cities? Particularly when busy people are increasingly installing ‘low or no maintenance’ domestic gardens. One way the City of Sydney does it, aside from its own tree planting goals and objectives, is to condition private commercial planning applications with the requirement to plant a certain ratio of trees and other green spaces in new developments. 

The report also draws a link between its findings and how we as a society should view trees. Not as something the individual owns but that the people who see it have rights over too. This kind of thinking could reduce the number of trees that get removed every day and start to provide a new value to our urban trees. 

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18 April - getting to school

We are a week into school holidays at the moment and I’m reminded of how much easier it is to move about the city during this period. This always gets me thinking....is the lack of traffic due to the fact that a lot of families leave the city to go on holiday or because most of these families normally drive their children to school? Probably in reality a combination of the two but its the latter I’m would like to focus on today. 

There have been thousands of column inches dedicated to the reality of today’s school run and how it has become a car dominated endeavour. I’m one of those who hark back to my own childhood where I rode my bike to school nearly everyday - rain or shine - as did my friends. From the age of 6 I either went with my siblings or other local kids from my street the couple of kms to our local primary school. My son also attends the local govt primary school which is just over 1km from our house. We try our best to ride or walk to school as many days a week as possible but are definitely in the minority. 

The thing is, its actually quite a hard thing to do these days. The roads are way busier than 30 years ago and the cars are way bigger. Now I’m pretty laissez faire on the parenting front and believe in risk taking as means to teaching decision making but there is no way I would let him ride on his own purely because of the roads, and that frustrates me. How can we have a society where safe cycling infrastructure for kids to get to school is not considered an important necessity?

In addition to the danger there are the social reasons fewer kids take active transport options. These days many households have both parents working and they often have to commute long distances in heavy traffic. This in turn leads people to get everything done as quickly as possible, including school drop off, and that means taking the car. 

Finally, we have a 2 tiered education system in Australia - private and public. Parents are automatically sending their kids to the local school but rather driving them across town twice a day to attend an expensive private school. This is madness to me. 

In my opinion, a sustainable city would have one, state run education system that everybody attends and receives the same education. Kids attend the schools that are part of their local community and the government has provided infrastructure for kids to cycle, scoot or walk to school safely. 

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16 April - car washing in the city

A quick idea today as I’m short on time! This is a small thing but, living in the suburbs as I do, something that I see occurring regularly - car washing! When added up over a whole city the potential environmental impact of this activity becomes significant. Not only are the chemicals that many car owners use to wash their cars detrimental to the environment but there are many pollutants on our cars and roads that get washed off and into the drains during the process. 

So what is the answer? Well if you’re me you actually just don’t wash your car more than about once a year but I understand that there are many people a lot more car proud than me. So here are some thoughts:

- ditch the chemicals and just use water and vinegar or choose a detergent that is grey water safe

- wash the car over a grassed or gravel area as this will filter the water and remove many of the pollutants

- use a bucket as opposed to just the hose as this makes you more conscious of how much water you are using

- there are eco certified car washes that use less water but also crucially are required to trap the water run off and send it to the sewerage pipe as opposed to the stormwater so that it can be treated before being discharged to the ocean. 

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11 April - renewable energy

How are we going to power our cities into the future? This is a question I spend a lot of my days thinking about. I work with businesses in the city and we talk to them about working towards efficient buildings run on renewable energy with the goal to be net zero by 2050. But some building owners have decided they don’t want to wait. In cities like the City of Sydney there is limited capacity for onsite solar because we have small rooftops on tall buildings. There is a lot of overshadowing and heritage planning rules that limit what you can do. Traditionally the only option would have been to purchase Greenpower from your electricity retailer or offsets for the scope 2 emissions associated with energy use. But we are increasingly seeing businesses enter into Power Purchase Agreements. This is where the business or building can enter into an agreement with an offsite renewable energy provider to purchase the equivalent amount of energy used. No one can control whether the actual electrons entering the building are ‘green’ or ‘black’ but this type of agreement is a viable alternative to onsite options. It can be done individually or as part of a group of buyers. It supports investment in renewable energy and goes some way towards assisting existing buildings to neutralise their carbon emissions. 

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9 April - the impact of shopping locally

One of the things that makes our cities so unsustainable in this modern age is our purchasing habits. A theme I have touched on in this blog before but which I’m going to consider at a principles level today. We buy so much stuff and so much of that has not only been made offshore and then imported but is sold to us by a company that is owned globally and whose profits end up elsewhere. As far as I’m concerned the ‘trickle down’ economic theory has been well and truly debunked and it is up to us to reconsider how and where we buy to make our cities better places for the planet and people. 

I’m a big believer in shopping locally. Seeking out businesses that are locally owned and operated have many benefits for our communities:

- we get to know people in our communities which leads to greater social cohesion, which in turn reduces crime and breeds resilience

- we support people who live in our communities and therefore in turn spend their money right back in the community

- for certain kinds of products for example food consumables that are made onsite we reduce environmental impact

- local businesses tend to be more responsive to the communities needs and wants and offer unique and interesting products and services

These are just a few of the benefits but imagine if we could get rid of the global chains and fill our cities with unique local businesses that keep money in our economy and make it a more connected, vibrant place to live?

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4 April - Water in a hot country

Coming from NZ I have grown up taking water completely for granted. It never felt like a scarce resource. Since moving to Australia 10 years ago I’ve often been surprised by the apparent lack of water management over here given it is a hot country, getting hotter. I’m coming from a completely urban perspective here not having experienced much of rural Australia. So whilst the headlines in recent months have highlighted the catastrophe that is the Murray-Darling system I’m focusing here on how we use water in the city. 

No house I’ve lived in has had a water tank and since owning my own home I have been amazed at how much they cost. Whilst there is government legislation relating to water tanks for new developments there is no such thing or subsidy for existing housing which I find crazy. I’m also amazed at how there doesn’t appear to be any restrictions on how much of your land is porous. These 2 factors combined means there is so much wasted rain water which simply washes off our roofs and driveways picking up pollutants along the way and then washed out to sea. 

A sustainable city should have a comprehensive plan for capturing as much rainwater and grey water as possible and using it onsite as much as possible. If all the money spent on building and operating highly energy inefficient desalination plants was spent on subsidising that kind of retrofitting to existing buildings I wonder where we would be?

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2 April - circular economy

I heard about this really cool company today that are really trying to implement a sustainable business model. They produce coffee beans here in Sydney. They buy beans from a Ugandan farmer and ship it to Australia (offsetting the emissions) and sell it to workplaces in reusable aluminium cans. When they drop off, they collect the can and the grounds which they deliver to a composting facility or use to make a coffee scrub beauty product (which are very on trend at the moment!). For every 6kg of coffee they sell they put money back into supporting Ugandan women in agriculture through a micro finance scheme. There are no shareholders as they operate as a charity. They even supply UNSW!

Its amazing what you can find once you start looking. Our purchasing power as consumers has so much potential to do good in the world for the planet, people and the economy. All we need to do is put in a little effort and be prepared to do things a little differently and to go without every now and again. Convenience has become the plague of our times. 

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28 March - Fast fashion

I watched a program last night about the modern phenomenon of ‘fast fashion’. We are consuming clothes at an unprecedented rate, driven by constantly changing trends and the availability of ridiculously cheap products. The program quoted UN figures stating that the global fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global wastewater and 20% of global emissions - more than aviation and shipping! What’s more, washing clothes releases half a million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean each year. 

I found this so horrifying...........and so ridiculous! Aside from the scary environmental impact of this phenomenon, the social cost of producing these cheap clothes is equally as horrifying. Human beings routinely working long hours for little pay in unhealthy conditions just so someone in the ‘developed’ world can have a new pair of jeans every few months that they possibly only wear once or twice before discarding. 

Why? There is simply no need for this gross over consumption of virgin materials. If these items have only been worn once or twice by one person then they will be perfectly good for someone else to wear. We must change our habits and stop obsessing about buying everything new all the time. As with a previous post this will require action from many levels of society. Us as individuals to demand different, retailers to make second hand cool and desirable, producers to make items from recycled fibres and governments to introduce legislation around the production and import of unsustainable fashion.  

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26 March - urban green spaces

I often reflect as I’m wandering about the city on the missed opportunities for greening our urban landscape. Here in Sydney we are pretty lucky with the big ‘hero’ green spaces we have - Botanical Gardens, Hyde Park, Barangaroo foreshore park, Sydney Park etc. These are amazing and important natural sanctuaries but there are so many more opportunities for small scale, simple greening, particularly in our suburbs. 

Routinely (as opposed to by exception) turning nature strips into rain gardens, native garden beds, vege patches etc would be a start. Converting roundabouts and median strips from barren, concrete mounds into planted areas would be another. And more than just grass too. Using plants that attract insects, filter pollutants and provide visual appeal should all be objectives of this type of greening. 

I have recently seen images of Europe and Melbourne where the tram tracks have been sown with grass between the tracks instead of concrete - what a great idea to help combat the urban heat island effect! Now of course this would require irrigation of some sort but through good design and planning this could be sourced from rainwater or other such means. 

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21 March - Living sustainably in the city

Last week I started talking about the fact that urban form in and of itself is not the answer to creating sustainable cities but rather people’s behaviour. So this week I wanted to reflect a little on what that might be. 

Its super tricky because in my opinion we all have to arrive at an understanding of what this is in our own minds in our own way. Knowledge helps of course, like Leunig’s famous cartoon of the man searching for his lost keys only in the illuminated sphere of the street light when they lie just outside of it, we don’t know what we don’t know. 

Take waste for example, as soon as you embrace the idea that there is no ‘away’ you can’t ‘unsee’ all the waste you produce on a daily basis. This makes it relatively easy to make small, simple changes such as not using single use items, (disposable coffee cups, plastic bags and cutlery etc) and composting food scraps which then motivates you into looking at different ways to buy your food to avoid packaging. But the change is not linear. The further along the waste continuum you move the harder it becomes, its exponential. This is when you start to question the ‘system’ and wonder why things are being done a certain way. 

For me I reach this point on packaging. I start to feel like I’m perpetually wearing a metaphorical hair shirt because of the lengths I go to in what is a very busy period of my life to avoid buying certain products because of the packaging they come in. I would like instead for the manufacturers of these products to take more responsibility. This is what the economists would call a market failure and so the government needs to step in with regulation. For example all plastic packaging must be made from recycled content not virgin materials. This would immediately place value on plastic ‘waste’ as a material  and force manufacturers to innovate. 

This is just one example of many but what I’m trying to show is that there is a role for everyone to play in bringing about sustainable behaviour - the individual, the private companies and governments. 

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18 March - The compact city fallacy

I just finished reading Neuman’s article and it really resonated with me. The idea that form would be the deciding factor on whether a city is sustainable or not has never sat well with me. Now I’m not advocating for sprawl as the alternative, I can see with my own eyes the problems that brings about. But the notion that compact form in and of itself is sustainable is too simplistic.

I work with high rise residential buildings in the city and they are hugely energy, water and waste intensive compared to other residential forms due to the lifts, central HVAC, gyms, heated swimming pools, car park ventilation systems etc. But this inefficient technology is just the beginning, the biggest problem is trying to get the solutions (that exist) in place to address these inefficiencies. And herein lies the crux of it all. It comes down to people. People inhabit these spaces, use them and make decisions about them. In a purely rational world the business case for the technological solutions would speak for itself but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my work we humans are not rational beings.

A sustainable city must be used in a sustainable way. The people who inhabit it must exhibit sustainable behaviour. A suitable analogy is the way commercial buildings in Australia are rated. Buildings are split into the ‘base building’ which includes centralised plant and equipment and ‘tenancies’ which are the spaces companies occupy. The base building could have a 6 star rating but any one of the individual tenancies only a 1 or 2 star rating. I’ve seen it happen. 

So what might sustainable behaviour look like? Tune in next week....

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14 March - urban food farming

As more and more of the global population moves to cities and the boundaries of our cities start to expand and morph in to one another, our productive food bowls are increasingly being threatened. How cities of the future will access food is an issue that experts and ordinary citizens alike around the world are talking about and exploring.

One solution is the urban food farm. The premise is to use vacant and underutilised urban spaces to grow food. Often on rooftops, these projects turn often barren and hot spaces that contribute to the urban heat island effect into productive local food sources for the community. There are example projects in cities all over the globe. Primarily small scale they are important proving grounds of an entirely scalable idea that may not solve the urban food conundrum of the future entirely, but certainly go some way to:

Reintroducing the skills and capacity for people to grow food

Providing a source of locally produced food with a small footprint

Providing places for people to connect with nature and each other

Providing urban habitat for wildlife

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12 March - walking in the city

I’m a walker, and a cyclist. I’ve totally bought in to the idea behind active transport. That’s not to say I don’t own a car but where possible I walk or ride my bike as a first option. Where possible is the key here………..

The City of Sydney, where I work, also has a travel hierarchy as do many organisations. Active transport first, public transport next, electric fleet vehicle then private ICE vehicle last. This is clear and clarifying. In most weeks I will attend meetings at other buildings in the city and I pretty much always walk. The problem is, its often not a very nice experience and that is wrong. Since I had kids and become a whole lot more aware of my mortality I’ve also stopped commuting to work via bike, favouring instead the bus. 

This is because cities like Sydney are so car obsessed that the urban form has actually become totally dominated by the infrastructure required to enable their mobility at the expense of the people who inhabit it. I live on a street that comes off Anzac Parade in Maroubra. In order to get to a city bound bus stop I have to cross 6 lanes of traffic. 6 lanes. In a suburban back water. There is a huge wide median strip that seperates the north and south bound lanes (ironically historically used as tram corridor) and in many instances I have to wait for 2 separate sets of lights to cross the full width of Anzac Parade as the phasing is so geared towards cars. This drives me insane on so many levels. 

Even in the central business district cars have too much priority. Admittedly something that is being addressed with the new light rail project. Roads are too wide, cars drive too fast, they create noise and air pollution and there are cars parked everywhere. 

I lived in the UK for many years and spent a lot of time travelling in Europe. I really miss the urban form of some of those old European cities. Human scaled, safe, pleasant places to walk and interact with the city as part of everyday life. Banishing the car (not just converting to EVs) at least in our central business districts is, in my opinion, a key factor in achieving sustainable cities. 

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10 March - net zero buildings

As I mentioned on a previous post, I currently work for the City of Sydney in the Sustainability Programs Unit so I think and breath sustainable built environment every day! I head up a team that is responsible for delivering environmental sustainability programs to the accommodation and entertainment sector. We work with the managers and owners of hotels, serviced apartments, museums, art galleries, convention centres etc to help them realise the emissions, energy, water and waste improvement opportunities available to them.

One of the big pieces of work we are focusing on as a Unit at the moment is how we transition our LGA to net zero emissions by 2050. For us, that means:

- working with our planning department to do what we can with the DCP and more importantly the LEP to mandate and incentive high performing new builds

- advocating to our state and federal government counterparts using evidence and data that they need to also ‘raise the bar’. (A recent win here was the recently announced 40% uplift to Section J of the National Construction Code)

- working with existing buildings in our LGA (including our own) to develop net zero energy building pathways considering efficiency measures, onsite and offsite renewables. 

This last point is the one that takes up most of my time. How can cities efficiently and cost effectively tune and retrofit their existing buildings to deliver positive environmental outcomes? What does a ‘net zero’ energy building actually look like and how do you get it there? Don’t get me wrong, we know the technology exists already to make this happen but the challenges lie in overcoming the systemic economic and social barriers that currently prevent this from happening. Many of the conversations I have with building stakeholders relate to the ‘business case for sustainability’. What is the RoI for the capital expenditure required? What is the cost to benefit ratio? The problem with this paradigm is that it views a societal issue solely through the prism of capitalism. By not applying a dollar value to the environmental and social costs associated with inaction, it externalises these considerations. We will all be effected by climate change but the people that currently hold the purse strings are the ones making the decisions. 

However, on a positive note there are also lots of companies out there doing positive things too! Including the City of Sydney whose Councillors unanimously voted to purchase 100% renewable electricity for the City’s operations and continue to offset the rest to remain a carbon neutral organisation. 

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6 March - waste management in education

I’m the Chair of my son’s school’s Environment Committee. We had our first meeting for the year last night to talk about our goal for the year. We’ve decided to make 2019 our War on Waste and so started to talk about all the problem waste streams we have and what we could do about them.

One of the things that came up was single use cutlery. We identified where the cutlery comes from (brought from home and from the canteen) and tried to think of ways to eliminate the need for them.

One solution we are going to trial is having a class set of cutlery that the children can be responsible for collecting after lunch, washing and returning to the designated place. This engenders a sense of ownership among the kids and consciousness of what they are using as opposed to just picking up the utensil someone has given them. They have to go somewhere and make a choice.

The canteen is a harder proposition because it is outsourced. The long term solution is to make sure that the next contract has stipulations in it about the provider being single use item free. In the meantime we have set up a group of class representatives called Eco Warriors and we have decided to ask them to come up with solutions for this problem that they can own and implement. Can’t wait to see what they come up with!

We’re also doing an audit of our bin infrastructure to make sure it is fit for purpose and engaging for the kids.

This is a public school in an area that draws from a wide range of socio economic backgrounds and cultures. So our solutions have to factor in that some of the kids don’t know about recycling at all when they come to school. We are planning a series of stories and tips for the school newsletter to communicate our progress and to give families ideas for how they can scaffold their kids new found enthusiasm at home.