How well are our cities working?

Here’s some encouraging news for city-dwellers: per person, since 2006, we’ve been consuming less energy and water, producing less waste and recovering more of it, and breathing cleaner air.

This information comes from the State of Australian Cities 2011 report, prepared by the federal government’s Major Cities Unit.

The study, which was first undertaken last year, compiles dozens of indicators regarding population, productivity, sustainability and liveability in urban areas.

Among its varied findings, the report reveals that while inner-city areas have become denser, it’s the outer suburbs that still accommodate most of the population growth.

Despite the gathering sprawl, average commuting times – longest in Sydney (35 minutes) and Melbourne (31 minutes) – remained steady in the decade to 2006.

The report also shows that public transport use is on the rise. The average distance travelled by vehicle peaked early last decade and has fallen slightly since then. Nevertheless, the total “vehicle kilometres travelled” in our cities continues to increase, because we have more people and more freight altogether.

So how should we judge these facts about our cities?

Alan March, senior lecturer in urban planning at University of Melbourne, says the analysis lacks a yardstick. “I don’t see a forward projection there, which is the point of ‘sustain’ in sustainability: a sense of how we’re going to deal with a low-carbon or a low–fossil fuel future,” he says.

He’s also troubled by the scant attention given to inequality and disparities in service provision. “The way cities operate is crucial to the difference between the haves and the have-nots, which is clearly increasing in Australia,” he says, citing, for example, the need for everyone to have a primary school within walking distance.

“I put that under the social sustainability mantle – if you let some people get a long way behind then it’s much harder to bring them back later. In many ways it’s much less efficient.”

And while a reduction in energy, water and waste per person is heartening, it’s the total eco-impact that counts. With a growing population, cutting overall consumption is a bigger challenge. When it comes to housing, that could entail retrofitting and adapting the housing we have, rather than building new.

Dr March argues that governments need to switch investment away from roads and into public transport, and pay heed to other concerns, including habitat loss and the way we feed our towns.

“We need to take our food supply into account,” he says, “particularly all the knock on effects when you relate it to oil-scarce economies and the large distances involved. Food should be weighing more heavily on our minds.”

In the same way, he says, we must assess our cities’ ability to withstand crises. “The evidence is conclusive that we’re going to have more extreme weather events. We’re also becoming increasingly aware of the fragile nature of the world economy.

“One of the big movements in sustainability now is thinking about the resilience of places, not just to natural disasters, but also to things like economic shocks, terrorism, or pandemics,” Dr March says.

“We have very vulnerable single-service systems, like our water and electricity supply. We know they’re not resilient and therefore not particularly sustainable if something goes wrong with one key element of that chain.”

Read this article at The Age online

The eco-standard of houses will be made public at sale or lease

IF you buy a car, you can easily find out its fuel efficiency. But what about a house? The ongoing costs and eco-impacts of existing buildings vary widely, but it’s hard for would-be buyers or renters to know what we’re in for.

In early 2009, state and federal governments agreed that a dwelling’s energy, greenhouse and water performance should be publicised at the point of sale and lease. Since then, however, not much has happened.

The policy is known as “residential building mandatory disclosure”. The name may be uninspiring, but if the reform is handled well, it could prompt a big change in household energy and water consumption.

While the details haven’t been set, the approach will be broader than the current star ratings. As well as the building fabric, it is likely to cover heating, cooling and hot water systems, together with lighting, clothes drying, rainwater tanks and water fittings, and a list of recommended upgrades.

Tim Adams, president of the Building Designers Association Victoria, says the scheme shouldn’t be compared to fuel efficiency in cars; rather, he likens it to a roadworthy certificate.

“We have consumer protection measures in place for all sorts of products. Mandatory disclosure should be seen as a kind of roadworthy check – and in this case we’re talking about protecting investments of several hundred thousand dollars,” he says.

“Unfortunately, we have a large quantity of building stock that was built before any energy efficiency provisions began. This is a way of informing us what the costs will be in our next house.”

Mr Adams argues that it will help people better judge the worth of the homes they’re inspecting.

“We’ve been lazy due to the cheapness of coal-fired electricity and natural gas,” he says. “In the future, when energy isn’t as abundant or cheap, we’ll need to be increasingly aware of these issues so we can value houses properly before we buy or rent.”

So how will it work?

In July, the federal government released a regulatory impact statement and sought feedback on different designs for the scheme. It detailed six proposals, ranging from a comprehensive, independent assessment, to an optional, self-assessed checklist.

The scheme’s success will depend on the quality of information required. The more rigorous options would be the most useful for buyers, but cost more upfront.

Some environment groups have criticised the report’s modelling, arguing it failed to factor in the health benefits of higher standards, or the avoided expense of new electricity infrastructure.

In its submission, the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors proposed a hybrid option, in which householders could choose among three tiers. Only people who opt for the most comprehensive version would be eligible to receive the highest rating.

Mr Adams’ association, which also accredits sustainability assessors, supports a system of compulsory self-assessment, at a minimum. The weaker proposals, such as an optional tick list, would be a waste of time. “The information needs to be consistent and people should be obliged to provide it,” he says.

“It’s in nobody’s interests to end up with the status quo. We need to do something about climate change and energy efficiency, so we need to start making some progress.”

Once the various governments agree on the scheme’s design, it will be up to the states and territories to enact the rules.

Read this article at The Age online

Living ponds or pools are good for your garden

WITH the cost of electricity and water rising, conventional swimming pools are becoming more resource-sapping than refreshing.

But landscape designer Phillip Johnson believes there are several smart ways to keep water bodies in our gardens – from natural pools to seasonal ponds and billabongs – if only we think a little differently.

“If you have water in your front or backyard, you’re bringing back habitat and biodiversity. And it helps cool down that space as well,” he says.

The first thing to do, he argues, is to think of stormwater as a valuable resource. Because of climate change, south-east Australia is expected to receive less rainfall overall, but more severe storms.

“Every property and road has been designed to drain water as fast as possible, and that contaminated water gets into our creeks and rivers,” Mr Johnson says. “If you can slow the stormwater, catch it and clean it, whatever leaves your place will be in much better condition.”

To help do that, he designs dry creek beds or swales running from rainwater tank overflows or downpipes. “When it rains, the dry creek bed comes alive and feeds into a billabong, water feature, or natural pool, which works as a reservoir for flood mitigation,” he says.

“In a natural system, billabongs exist on the edge of a creek. When it floods, it fills up this little wetland to the side. They’re really rich in biodiversity and create great habitats for frogs.”

Unlike conventional pools, Mr Johnson’s natural pools don’t rely on chlorine or salt to keep the water clean, but rather, use biological filters to aerate the water. An energy-efficient pump moves the water through a “regeneration” zone. “We learn from nature, where water often passes through river gravels and plants that absorb nutrients,” he explains.

Installing natural pools, and converting existing ones, has become a significant part of his business, but he maintains that you don’t have to spend big bucks or install a complex system. “You can do this yourself, but you’ve got to do your research.”

At her house in Northcote, permaculturalist Kat Lavers took the straightforward approach. She simply dug a hole and dropped in an old bathtub with the plughole blocked.

“We filled it with water from our tank and put rocks in there to create niches and different microclimates for plants that need a shallower depth,” she says.

“We also collected water from a nearby freshwater dam, which contained lots of critters like small shellfish, freshwater snails and maybe even dragonfly larvae. It added a diversity of life into our pond – and that means mosquito larvae don’t breed in large numbers.”

The plants in the pond also help inhibit mosquitoes by aerating the water and reducing the nutrient level. You can grow edible plants there, such as land cress and some kinds of mint. Water chestnuts will thrive in a boggy spot at the edge of a pond.

“The most obvious benefit of having a pond is beauty, but it goes beyond that,” Ms Lavers says. “It provides a reliable water source for lots of critters – some of them slugs and snails, but also really helpful ones like dragonflies, hoverflies, honeybees and lots of creatures that help to minimise the work you need to do in the vegie garden.”

Climate change heralds an uncomfortable future for Victorians

It’s easy to think of climate change as a far-flung concern, well away from our daily lives. But what are the predictions for Melbourne and Victoria? How will they affect our cities and houses?

Dr Penny Whetton, principle research scientist at CSIRO, says we can expect the average temperature to be 1 degree warmer by 2030, compared to the start of this century. It could get much hotter as the decades go on.

“If we continue the growing trend in global emissions, we’re looking at between two and four degrees warmer by 2070. And then warmer again later in the century,” she says.

Among the most uncomfortable consequences will be heatwaves. “If you think about the severe hot spell in Melbourne in February 2009,” Dr Whetton says, “that type of weather is going to become more frequent.”

Under a high emissions scenario, days over 40 degrees could be three to six times more common by 2070.

Such extremes not only damage infrastructure, such as electricity and rail networks, but also human health. The heatwave preceding the Black Saturday bushfires caused 374 deaths in Melbourne. To limit the consequences, we’ll need to design our buildings for low-energy summertime cooling, not only winter warmth.

Temperature rise is just one part of the change. On rainfall, Dr Whetton says most of the science suggests we can expect less. “But as temperatures increase, when conditions are right for a thunderstorm or a downpour, the atmosphere holds more moisture,” she says.

“We’re looking at longer dry spells and less rainfall, but when rain comes, we’ll have heavier downpours. That’s the pattern for Victoria and most of southern Australia as well.”

Drier conditions overall will make farming more difficult and probably lead to higher prices for fresh fruit and vegies. Bigger storms will cause more flash floods, unless we upgrade our drains and culverts.

Then there’s sea level rise: the predictions for the end of the century vary from about 30 centimetres to around one metre.

“The increase in sea level is due both to oceans becoming warmer and expanding, and to ice on land melting,” Dr Whetton says. “The largest ice sheets that concern us are in parts of Antarctica and Greenland. We don’t know a lot about how rapidly the ice can melt, but sea level rise is likely to continue for many hundreds of years.”

Under its Future Coasts program, the Victorian government is planning for a rise of “not less than 0.8 metres by 2100”. That’ll mean protecting beaches and properties against erosion and storm tides, as well as restricting new development in low-lying places.

But Dr Whetton says we still don’t know what the biggest impacts on cities will be. “We might feel it most through the impact on the hinterland – the climate change predictions are quite a worry for food production in the Murray-Darling basin,” she says.

“It’s likely we will find ways to adapt to a 1- or 2-degree warming, although we don’t know for sure. A 3- or 4-degree warming is going to be significantly more challenging. If we want to avoid the bigger climate change, then it’s not about adaptation. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.”

Let insects be your constant gardeners

ANTLIONS, the larvae of lacewings, have insatiable appetites. Luckily, for vegie growers, they’re on our side.

“They look like tiny balls of fluff,” says insect expert Jane Davenport, author of The Garden Guardians, “but they’re really like little crocodiles dashing around the garden, eating aphids and sapsuckers. They suck the juice out of the aphids and stick them on their back, so they smell like the aphids and ants give them a free pass.

“There are all these symbiotic relationships in the vegie patch. Once you’ve got your bug-eyes on and you realise what’s happening, it’s fascinating. ”

She says gardeners have a choice between being a “cure-all” or a “curator”: the former need all manner of pesticides to keep their patch in check, while the later employ bugs to protect their produce.

“If you’re the kind of gardener who uses chemicals, you’re giving yourself lots of work. Good bugs will do it for you for free,” she says. “And there are already so many toxins in our cities, why would you want to add them into your garden as well?

There is, however, the small matter of enticing the bugs into your beds. Ms Davenport suggests establishing “an insectary” – a dedicated area where you let the critters have their way – as well as a variety of flowers, so something is blooming all year round.

“For example, ladybirds need something to eat, that’s the thing that attracts them,” she says. “Once you’ve attracted them you want to keep them – they’ll eat pollen if there are no pests.”

Karen Sutherland, from Edible Eden Design, also prescribes petals as a cure.

“Plant flowering herbs and lots of flowers with different shapes – they’ll bring all sorts of beneficial insects to your garden,” she says.

If you’re beginning a vegie patch in an area where there are no established gardens nearby, you can kick-start colonies of good bugs by ordering them in the mail. Another useful hint is to compost your old mulch during the cooler months, and let the chill eliminate the pests.

But what can you do if your leafy greens look grim?

First, find out what you’re up against. “If your plant has a lot of bugs on it, check whether your neighbours and other gardeners have the same problem. If so, then it’s something normal – it’s not because the plant is unhealthy,” Ms Sutherland says.

In springtime, aphids gather to gorge on new growth. “You have to be patient,” she says. “As an interim measure you can squirt the plants with a hose to knock them off.

“I find that if I wait and don’t do anything, ladybirds and praying mantises start appearing and eating the aphids.”

For a more active response, she suggests searching the web for organic pest control tips. You can easily homebrew your own sprays. For white oil spray – to control aphids, scale, mealybug, mites and more – mix four parts vegetable oil and one part detergent, and dilute 1:50 with water.

Above all, spend time in your garden. Ms Sutherland says the diversity of insect life affords infinite exploration, especially for kids. “Praying mantises are hatching at the moment in Melbourne, so if you look very closely in your garden, you might find tiny ones, only one-centimetre long.”

Read this article at The Age online