Better planning controls can add to household sustainability.

From next May, new houses and renovations must reach six stars. Even so, our building standards will still be full of gaps, according to Alan March, senior lecturer from the Melbourne School of Design at University of Melbourne.

“The current star rating system measures the performance of buildings. That’s good – it means they don’t let heat pass through windows or walls as badly as in the past. But there’s a whole range of opportunities to make them perform even better,” he says.

In a forthcoming research paper, co-authored with Christina Collia, Dr March found that the building code skips over bigger picture concerns, including the location and materials used in the home, as well as waste production and links with public transport and bicycle paths.

Even simple things, such as clotheslines, are left out in the cold. “If people want to dry clothes outside, it’s no good if the backyard or the balcony never gets sunlight. They’ll buy an electric dryer instead, and all the building technology goes out the window very quickly when you start using electricity from Hazelwood Power Station,” Dr March says.

He believes it would be simple to peg extra features onto existing planning controls. Those guidelines could encompass native habitat, rainwater tanks, fixed heating and cooling systems, lighting and daylighting, and even food growing and composting areas.

“We could go beyond a technological view of individual houses and start to create whole communities,” he says.

The Moreland City Council is already hoisting homes above the average with STEPS, a web-based tool that assesses residential sustainability. It covers five areas: greenhouse emissions from operating energy, peak energy use, water use, stormwater and building materials. The program also considers bike storage and space for waste and recycling.

Shannon Best, from Moreland City Council, says STEPS predicts household energy use more accurately than the star ratings. “If you install a lot of lights or an inefficient hot water service and air conditioner in a five-star house, you can end up with a much worse result than an existing home. It’s important to look at the whole product, not just the thermal efficiency.”

A group of 14 Victorian councils – the Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment – is now promoting STEPS as a voluntary measure for residents submitting planning applications.

Mr Best says the tool’s key benefit is to begin conversations about sustainable design. “If you’re going to build a house, ask your architect or designer to put it through STEPS to see how it performs,” he says.

“Last year alone, we calculated that the savings were equivalent to one-third of council’s greenhouse emissions and water use. That comes from getting people to talk about sustainability initiatives in their buildings – people can and do learn.”

Dr March says that while STEPS opens up a path to greener homes, a more comprehensive, compulsory scheme would be easier for local governments to enforce. “It’s a simpler and better outcome if the process is standardised across Victoria,” he says.

“Whether it’s sooner or later, we will do these things – and we as a community will be better off. People will be happy not to have to switch on their lights. Developers will enjoy the certainty that it provides, and they’ll have a better product to sell.”

A place making conference draws a new map for the city’s public life.

WHAT makes a “good” place? It could be a street where kids can safely chalk their hopscotch squares, a neighbourhood where you walk to the locally owned baker, or a public square that fizzes with action.

According to Gilbert Rochecouste, from Village Well, vibrant places such as these often connect high quality of life with low environmental impacts. They’re likely to reduce private transport and consumption, and encourage food production, green building and socially responsible business practices.

“The biggest thing we can do to reduce our carbon footprint is to create affordable, accessible, amazing places,” he says.

The Melbourne Place Making Series conference will be held from Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 October. It is hosted by VicUrban, together with Village Well, Fed Square, City of Melbourne and the Department of Planning and Community Development.

The series has been running six months, including online discussions and forums for developers, financiers and the community sector. It aims to engage government, industry, planners and international experts on how we can make our city and our suburbs better places to be.

Mr Rochecouste says development too often focuses on hard infrastructure, such as roads, buildings and utilities, at the exclusion of less obvious necessities.

“Place making brings in the soft infrastructure, like the gathering places, the culture, the walk-ability and the daily rituals of living,” he says. “All the things that we yearn for and take for granted when we visit great places, like Europe.

“But we don’t get them here. We’ve taken our model from America and delivered it to disconnected places. We’ve separated living, working and entertaining. Place making brings it all together,” he says.

VicUrban CEO Pru Sanderson says the idea differs from normal urban design in its scope and holistic vision. “Place making cuts across a whole range of disciplines. It is about more than just design,” she says.

“It’s about creating places that are resilient and can grow and respond in a climate-challenged future. We want this to be the mindset for new developments and for revitalising older areas in Melbourne.”

The agency has brought a place-based approach to its Revitalising Central Dandenong initiative. It is transforming the main road, Lonsdale Street, into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard and creating areas for people to congregate. It’s also running community arts programs with the local council. “It is about nurturing the economy, culture and physical place all at once,” Ms Sanderson says.

Mr Rochecouste says the best changes are resident-driven, rather than design-driven. “We run participatory democracy sessions, so people are deeply engaged in the process. When you do it well, you get much better places – you get the x-factor,” he says. “People say what they want and how they want it, and we end up with a much more informed and inspired citizenry.”

In that forthright spirit, he says we shouldn’t wait for good places to fall upon us: place making begins at home. “The first physical structure is our household, and then our footpath, street and local shops. All these things are our daily narratives – the more beautiful they are, the more connected, the more people feel like they can say hello to their neighbour. They feel safer,” he says.

“Neighbourhood renewal, street parties and celebrations. All these details add to people’s quality of life. That’s place making.”

Community-ownership could herald a gust of green power.

CONSTRUCTION is about to begin on Australia’s first community-owned wind farm. The Hepburn Community Wind Park Co-operative held its official groundbreaking ceremony last week at Leonards Hill, 10 kilometres south of Daylesford.

Vicki Horrigan, a director of Hepburn Wind, says the turbines should be ready and rotating by mid-2011. “It’s over five years since the local community here had the idea. And now we’re building a project worth just under $13 million.”

The wind farm comprises two turbines with a combined capacity of 4.1 megawatts. They’ll be built by German company REpower Systems AG and connected to the grid.

“The turbines are estimated to produce about 12,200 megawatt hours each year,” Ms Horrigan says. “That’s enough to power 2300 homes, which is more than the number of households here in Daylesford and Hepburn Springs.”

Hepburn Wind was set up as a co-operative. Membership is open to all Victorians, but there’s a lower minimum investment threshold for locals. All members get one vote, regardless of the size of their shareholding. Once they’re whirling, the turbines will generate a return for members and contribute funding for local projects.

“The structure has been a real bonus for engaging the local community, because they can see the idea came from here and they can participate in it easily,” Ms Horrigan says. “It’s a good financial model, but it’s also a good philosophical model – it’s socially responsible investment.

“People often feel powerless about climate change on a global scale. This project shows that local communities can set up systems that really go towards making ourselves sustainable.”

Precinct-scale power generation can also be much more efficient than a house-by-house approach. The Hepburn Wind turbines will cost far less per household in the area than a comparable roll out of rooftop solar photovoltaic panels.

The group’s success has turned heads. “We get a couple of requests every week from other communities wanting to find out about what we’re doing and how they could start something similar,” Ms Horrigan says.

There’s a lot of advice to pass on – among the thorniest impediments have been raising the capital, estimating costs and gaining planning approval.

For this reason, a spin-off organisation, called Embark, has been founded to support other communities through the process.

Embark’s executive director Mary Dougherty says the organisation is already in contact with about ten groups, including some working on proposals for mini-hydro and solar schemes, as well as wind turbines.

“We’re trying to break down the steps involved and provide practical advice and templates, like business plans, financial models and landholder lease agreements. It’s much easier than starting with a blank slate.”

There are scores of articles on Embark website, covering everything from the ins-and-outs of the energy market, to how to run effective public meetings, together with case studies from both here and abroad.

In Denmark, co-operatives own over a quarter of the country’s wind farms. “In the European countries where these community projects started out, they have a far greater uptake of renewable energy overall. These small projects lead to large ones,” Ms Dougherty says.

“In ten years, we’d love to have started 100 projects. Through all the investors, that translates to about a million people who are exposed to the benefits of renewable energy first hand. That’s really powerful.”