Local walking groups are reclaiming the streets

HOW “walkable” is your neighbourhood? If it’s raining outside, you can find out by checking Walk Score, a website that measures “how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle” in your area. You might be surprised by what you find nearby.

The site was founded in the USA, but works in Australian cities too. Type in your address and it’ll rank your location from zero to one hundred, in a category from “car-dependent” through to “walker’s paradise”.

Dr Ben Rossiter, from Victoria Walks, says Walk Score is being used more often in real estate, especially in medium density suburbs.

“It gives people a really good idea of what is close by. The most highly walkable communities have a variety of services and facilities relevant to everyday life, all within walking distance – things like schools, shops, parks, cafes and movie theatres,” he says.

“Walking is becoming increasingly important to people when they’re deciding where they want to live. The choice might be more about having high walkability than it is about having a bigger backyard.”

Victoria Walks is a charity, funded by VicHealth, which promotes everyday walking. Among other initiatives, it will shortly launch an online mapping project in which residents upload their favourite routes, from strolls through hidden alleys to hikes in national parks.

“Walking goes beyond the act of getting physically active,” Rossiter says. “It creates safe, vibrant and connected communities. One of the key indicators of a healthy and sustainable neighbourhood is the number of kids walking to school.”

And, of course, more walking means less driving, and fewer carbon dioxide emissions. As the Walk Score website states, “Your feet are zero-pollution transportation machines”.

Rossiter says the first way to make your streets more walkable is to walk. “Step outside and say g’day to people while you do it. You could start an informal walking school bus with neighbours. We always like to see householders in their front yards too – grow vegetables there, so you can say hello when people go past.”

You can also form a Walkability Action Group, or join one in your area. (There are 16 existing groups listed on the Victoria Walks website.) Last year, a group in East Ivanhoe successfully lobbied local and state governments to install a pedestrian crossing next to the notorious Burke Road North roundabout.  

Another Walkability Action Group, Locomote, based on the Northern Bellarine Peninsula, has been working with local authorities to make their foreshore track usable for all-comers.

Locomote’s Patricia Crotty says “equity of access” is crucial, especially with an aging population in the region. “We’d love to see more people walking, but the footpath infrastructure isn’t great in these little towns. It’s a big issue for young parents with pushers too.”

Changes are afoot. In the centre of Portarlington, the council has widened the sidewalks and created a new town square.

“They’ve put in trees and places to sit, and restored the historic rotunda. It’s opened up the whole main street,” Crotty says. “People can wander around there in a way that wasn’t possible before, because traffic has been blocked off in the connecting street.

“Sustainable communities are places with gathering spots. They have to be safe and accessible, with the opportunity for people to come and sit in the main street and watch the world go by.”

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On Neighbour Day this year, find new ways to say hi.

THIS summer, when four neighbours got fed up with their long lawns in Thornbury, in Melbourne’s north, they formed a mower collective.

One of the communal grass-cutters, Amy Brand, says it was just common sense. “There was a distinct lack of shareable lawnmowers in our area so we all threw in money to buy a mower that can become a community resource.”

She and her neighbours have signed onto The Sharehood, a website that encourages householders to meet and share with people nearby.

When you log in, you get to see the one hundred members who live nearest to you, and the things they’re happy to lend and borrow. You can also see a local noticeboard, where people within walking distance can post events and questions for each other.

The Sharehood began in Northcote in 2008, but there are now members throughout Australia and as far away as Cambridge, in the UK. The site is coordinated by a group of volunteers (including your Greener Homes columnist). To coincide with Neighbour Day, 27 March, The Sharehood is challenging householders to meet one new neighbour. The connection might prove to be good for both your tool shed and your well-being.

Ms Brand moved to Melbourne last year from Darwin. Getting to know people in her street has made her feel more at home. After mowing their lawns, she and her neighbours held a backyard movie night to celebrate.

“I’ve been a little sad at the lack of local community since I moved here,” she says. “I was spoilt for sharing and socialising in Darwin – it just seemed to grow and evolve so naturally. The Sharehood has been a reminder that community exists everywhere, but sometimes you just have to work a little harder to find it.”

The Sharehood is just one of many innovations boosting communities and green living. Lauren Anderson, from the consultancy CC Lab, says clothing exchanges, car-sharing and peer-to-peer renting are all examples of an emerging trend in “collaborative consumption”.

In the US, there are several neighbourliness and sharing websites, including NeighborGoods, Hey, Neighbor! and Share Some Sugar.

“These systems have created a revolution for sharing that allows us to minimise what we’re purchasing outright,” Ms Anderson says. “We have so much stuff in our possession that is sitting there idly.”

By making better use of the goods we have, we can buy fewer new products and reduce waste, energy and resource use.

Ms Anderson says that while some websites are based on free exchange, others make money for householders. Drive My Car Rentals and Rentoid are examples of “peer-to-peer” rental systems, where people trade with each other. Either way, she argues, collaborative consumption has a direct environmental benefit. “The technology is more of an enabler than an endpoint. It instantly matches haves and wants. People use it to participate in something in real life,” Ms Anderson says.

Landshare Australia is the perfect example – a local version of the popular UK website was launched in February. The website connects gardens with gardeners: enthusiastic vegie growers can find nearby landowners with space to spare.

“From a holistic perspective, sustainability is about people getting in touch with their neighbours, sharing common interests and realising the resources they can pool together,” she says. “Not everybody in the street needs a drill.”

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If you’re building, plan for long-life, adaptable housing

NOT long after completing his architecture degree in 2007, Mathieu Gallois went on holiday to Lorne, on the Great Ocean Road. He stayed in a “big block box”, owned by a friend.

“I was struck how this home was contrary to everything we’d been taught about how to build a good sustainable house,” Mr Gallois recalls. “I was thinking, ‘What do you do with homes like this?’”

His answer is Reincarnated McMansion, a mix of architecture and art project, designed to challenge the way we think about our energy-sapping dwellings.

“Our proposal is to get a large unsustainable house, take it apart, and reuse the great majority of the materials to build two or three best-practice, zero-emission homes on the same site,” he explains.

The project also deconstructs the notion of a housing shortage in Australian cities. “Our new homes are three times as big as new homes in the UK,” he says. “There’s plenty of room for everybody. It’s just that we’re electing to live in bigger and bigger homes with fewer people in them.”

Now based in Sydney, Mr Gallois and his team hope to secure funding in the coming months. As well as making a point, the scheme should turn a profit: once constructed and displayed, the reincarnations will be sold.

While the designs will depend on the site, one key strategy will be to crush the old dwelling’s brick veneer and convert it into a type of rammed-earth interior wall, for thermal mass.

“All those materials we associate with suburbia – concrete, terracotta tiles and red bricks – will be visible in the Reincarnated McMansions,” he says.

The project will embrace a concept of green design championed by one of its members, architect Tone Wheeler, from Environa Studio. He’s coined the “three L’s” of sustainable building: long-life, loose-fit and low-impact.

In a conventional building, Mr Wheeler says, too little thought goes into the varied lifespans of component parts. Instead, we should consider buildings in two sections: the main frame, and the services and fittings.

“The long-life section is the structure of the building, the thing you can imagine lasting between one and two hundred years,” he says. The embodied energy of the structure doesn’t matter, so long as it is built to last.

The rest – the plumbing, wiring, sanitary-ware, heating and cooling, and interior – should be installed in a way that’s easy to adapt.

“You use a spanner, not a hammer,” Mr Wheeler says. “It’s not nailed and glued in place, but bolted so you can undo and remove it.”

Typically, bathrooms and kitchens are replaced every twenty years, and the renovations produce a lot of waste. “The wiring and plumbing is buried in the wall so you’ve got to rip off the plaster. You have to re-build the building.”

The third “L”, low-impact, relates to the fit-out. “We need to concentrate on using green materials for things like the carpet, paint and furniture. Think about the longevity, maintenance and renewal of those parts, and choose as good quality as you can find,” he says.

Mr Wheeler’s firm now designs houses so they can be split into two or three apartments in the future. “We need to recognise that buildings are continually updated, and design them in a way that can adapt to change,” he says.

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The time is ripe for backyard produce exchanges

IF you happen upon McCleery Reserve, in Coburg, on the third Saturday morning of the month, you’ll see a small group gathered next to a big brolly. They’re the gardeners of the Inner North Urban Harvest, there to swap home-grown fruit and vegies.

On the trestle tables and in baskets, you’ll see the season’s produce sorted. And likely as not, you’ll see the swappers in repose. “It’s a very good excuse to sit down and have a cup of tea and a chat, really,” says Alicia Hooper, one of the swap’s founders. “We catch up on what’s going on in people’s gardens and share tips, tricks and recipes.”

The Coburg group is just one of dozens of food swaps around the city and beyond. There are long-standing monthly exchanges at CERES in East Brunswick, and Smith Reserve in Fitzroy, and others in Bulleen, Forest Hill, Newport and Footscray, to name just a few.

Swaps are easy to set up, blessedly free of bureaucracy and as popular as summer’s first strawberries.

Ms Hooper says all-comers are welcome at their events, bearing any shade of green-thumb or any variety of fresh produce. “In the summer months, people often bring bags of plums, apricots and other stone fruit. It always makes a return next time as some sort of preserve,” she says.

As well as encouraging healthy eating, the urban harvest is about learning. “I’ve never before had such a good understanding of seasonal produce and the sorts of blights that occur,” Ms Hooper says. “It’s given me an appreciation of the land, resources and transport it takes to feed ourselves.”

Skill sharing is also top of the list for Drysdale Harvest Basket, on the Bellarine Peninsula. The swap has been running for just 18 months, says co-founder Jill Pring, but members have been spoilt for workshops, talks and backyard tours.

“Over time people have lost knowledge about how to provide food for themselves and their family, so we’re trying to reintroduce those skills. The older generation in the group love being able to pass them along,” she says.

Swaps are held on the first Saturday of each month at Drysdale’s neighbourhood centre. The group has about 90 members ($10 a year, per household). Like the Coburg urban harvest, it is very informal; members give and take as they please. “People take less than what they bring,” Ms Pring says. “It doesn’t matter how many times you encourage them to take more.”

Any leftover fruit and vegies are given to the public by way of donation to the local food bank.

Ms Hooper and Ms Pring encourage householders to start their own swap if there isn’t already one in their neighbourhood. Permits usually aren’t necessary, because the veggies are swapped among neighbours, not bought and sold.

But if you want to start an exchange and you’re concerned about regulations, contact the Municipal Association of Victoria, or your local council. Friends of the Earth in Adelaide have also put together a helpful step-by-step guide.

When she began in Drysdale, Ms Pring was motivated by the idea of reducing food miles and promoting eating fresh, local, seasonal produce. “But surprisingly, the most valuable thing that has been building up a strong community feeling,” she says. “The more communities that do it, the better.”

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Harvesting stormwater is essential in a sustainable city

CONSTRUCTION has just begun on a stormwater capture system in Darling Street, East Melbourne. The project, funded by the City of Melbourne, signals a big shift in the public pipelines.

The scheme will divert stormwater from existing drains in adjoining streets and recycle enough water each year to fill nearly 20 Olympic swimming pools. The water will be captured in an underground tank, treated, stored and used to keep nearby parks and trees lush.

The technology has been developed by Biofilta Stormwater Solutions and engineering firm Cardno. It uses natural filters comprised of triple-washed sand and carefully selected indigenous plant species.

Biofilta director Brendan Condon says: “The microbes that live on the roots of the plants break down nutrients and utilise them. Heavy metals get bound up in the top layer of sand. The system can recirculate the water for multiple passes so the bugs get more grabs at the pollution.”

The East Melbourne project is the first in a series of in-road stormwater projects that form part of the council’s climate adaptation strategy. It is estimated to cost $750,000 and should be completed by mid-year.

“We’ve got an enormous volume of polluted stormwater sheeting off the urban environment, creating problems in rivers, creeks and waterways,” Mr Condon says. “And it’s a phenomenal untapped resource that will help protect cities against future climate challenges.”

Professor Tony Wong, director of the Centre for Water Sensitive Cities at Monash University, agrees that we must shift our mindset about stormwater.

“Stormwater is often seen as a nuisance we should get rid of very quickly,” he says.

He argues that our standard approach not only misses a chance to improve our water security, but also causes erosion and degradation of our waterways and Port Phillip Bay. The scale of the problem grows as the city expands and housing density rises.

“Creeks are now getting more water than they would normally get in any storm event. The traditional infrastructure is less able to cope, so we see water on the road more frequently now than in the past,” Professor Wong says.

In a natural environment, only about 15 per cent of rainwater flows into waterways, filtered through the soil. The rest evaporates or is transpired by plants.

Hard surfaces flip the ratio. “When we knock the trees down and pave the land, we find that the creeks now get 85 per cent of the rainfall,” he says. “The numbers vary from city to city, but with any urbanisation, natural creeks receive about four to eight times the water that used to flow into them. Our urban creeks are suffering from too much water.”

A number of other local governments – including Port Phillip and Kingston by the bay – have begun to install raingardens to treat and minimise stormwater runoff.

Professor Wong believes that within two decades, up to a third of Melbourne’s water consumption could come from stormwater.

“Having gone through the last drought, a lot of councils are now looking at stormwater to help with the public space maintenance,” he says.

“It’s not just about water as a commodity. It’s about water providing the means for liveability and for the greening of the city. With water we can bring some biodiversity back and influence the microclimate to protect against the effects of heatwaves.”

Read this article at The Age online