Units swap room - swap shelf

Swap room with stuff for the taking

A block of units I’m working with to ‘go sustainable’ has a ‘swap room’ where residents put their ‘stuff” for others to take if they want it.

Things not taken after a while are then sent to waste.

Next step is to work out how to stop stuff going to the mine near Goulburn where Sydney’s waste gets tipped down the shaft.

Good idea.

There’s no such thing as waste, just a failure of imagination,

M

New lanes being added and footpath narrowed for new 3,300 car park, Broadway

(Apology for pedestrian giving the works the finger in the artwork.)

Frasers will slow city traffic with their new project, and we’re looking at more minutes added to the journey for buses and cars going to and from the city.

The 30,000 students at UTS and Sydney Institute  and the 40,000 + students at Sydney uni and the thousands of citizens who walk the pavement will have their pavement reduced by 1.5 m.  This will increase congestion, aggression and violence in the already jam-packed student throngs and late night crowds there.  Remember when the city widened its pavements to reduce late night violence and the success that followed?

Frasers are putting a right hand turn lane from Broadway to their new project to invite cars to get in and out of their new 3,300 space car park.

To accommodate Frasers’ profit-taking from their site the median strip is being deleted and the footpaths narrowed.

A gift to us from the state government and Frasers.

The new car park will generate over 6,000 new car movements a day.

Thank goodness the Frasers project is ‘sustainable’.  How can it be ‘sustainable’ you may ask when it’s adding several thousand car movements, several thousand tonnes of air pollution, reducing the attractiveness of walking and cycling, and the trees there have been cut down, and the urban heat island increased by a few degrees?

That’s a silly and aggressive question if you did ask it.  Have you no faith?

The developer says the project will be ‘sustainable’; surely you don’t doubt that?

Me, I just enjoy the entertainment and play with words here and I think that’s the real gift of the project; laughter.

Speaking of laughter; if Piers Ackerman from The Daily Telegraph is right, and I think he is, Frasers may end up swimming in its own greed and the city trips may become shorter and the air cleaner;  have a look at this and ask, where will Frasers be if Piers is right:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/all-evidence-of-this-treachery-went-down-the-memory-hole/story-e6frezz0-1226248729853

May the doubts and the laughs be with you,

M

We’re measuring the urban heat island in two Chippendale streets, Myrtle and Buckland.

In a partnership with Sydney City Council, our community and Professor Peter Newman’s Biophilic Cities project, we’re getting data of the temperature of the streets every five minutes.  Every 25 minutes the data is sent to a computer in Hobart using a data system developed by HydroTasmania called, Ajenti.  Anyone may obtain the data here:

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/environment/EnergyAndEmissions/UrbanHeatIslandEffect.asp

For information on Peter’s work:

http://www.sbenrc.com.au/research/greening-the-built-environment/harnessing-the-potential-of-biophilic-urbanism-in-australian-cities

One street runs east-west  - Myrtle; and one runs north-south  - Buckland.  Both have black tar.   At the Myrtle data station there is almost no tree canopy cover and the buildings do not shade the street from the western sun.  At the Buckland street station, there is about 80 per cent tree cover and the buildings shade the road from the western sun.

Data collected from the system by an engineering student at UTS, Mat Faint, shows the Myrtle street data station area is 3 degrees hotter than Buckland throughout the day and night.  Thus, the black road and lack of tree cover and shading from the sun makes the temperature in that area 3 degrees hotter than if it were shaded by trees and the road was a pale colour.  (Think of the red and green bus lanes and of that media used but as a pale colour, or the freeway between Newcastle and Sydney which has pale surfacing for much of its length.)

Solutions, costs, designs and options for cutting the urban heat island in Chippendale and any city are in the draft plan, Sustainable Streets and Communities Plan, which the Council asked me to prepare.  It’s on the web, here:

http://www.sustainablechippendale.com/the-plan/

Data in the Plan and research referenced there shows it can be cheaper for building owners and tenants, the local community and governments such as local councils to cool the streets than to cool the buildings.

Recently, Melbourne City Council published its own research showing pale roofs can cut heating costs.

Data from a Victorian Health agency report about the high number of deaths from the urban heat island confirms the Chippendale data; during the Black Friday bush fires in 2009 more than twice the number of people died in urban Melbourne from urban heat than were killed by the bush fires.  Here’s a graph showing the temperatures of some Melbourne suburbs during the heat wave; notice how it gets hotter where tall buildings are concentrated?

Spatial variability of the Melbourne Urban Heat Island (23 March, 2006 at 1:00am) Source: Victorian Department of Health, 2009

So Sydney’s CBD is several degrees hotter than it need be because of the urban design – money spent inside the buildings to make them energy efficient is spent because the buildings are seeking to compensate for the heat forced on them by urban designer, consultants, developers and councils thoughtlessly applying out of date road design ‘standards’.

Despite the data about the damage done by black roads, poor tree cover and dark roofs developers and councils are still building suburbs across Australia so they heat up by 3 to 10 degrees more than they need to.  I wonder what they understand by the words, “world best practice’, if they’re aware of them?  For a recent example of a typical subdivision being built and sold with black roads, poor tree cover and dark roofs – despite the data about the harm done by urban heat islands – have a look at this Google image :

Go the cool streets,

M

Chippo ads are go

Ads that add, not subtract

Clive sent me these delightful pics along with a story; here’s his note:

Me, too.

But who of we humans can match this:  get ready for one beautiful vid:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/starling-flock/

Mmmmm

Ad industry welcome in Chippo

Chippo’s streets are rich with artists’ work and the better for it; walking here is a delight to the eye, mind and all the senses, tho’ challenging to some sensibilities.

And this effort on a wall in Cleveland Street by the advertising industry  shows it trying hard, too.

Ads that work,

M

Geoff, Green Building Council compost and road verge

Today Geoff and I picked up three bags of compost from the Elizabeth Street offices of the Green Building Council.  For info about the Council:

www.gbca.org.au

Two fellows, Toufik Refki and Jeff Oatman were waiting on the footpath with the compost in hessian sacks ready for loading into Geoff’s van.

Loaded up, Geoff and I went straight to the area most in need, the road verge outside the units in Myrtle on the corner of City Road whereupon we decanted the compost where it’s going to work now; it had worms in it.

Thanks, GBC – come out and pick a few limes or whatever’s to hand some time, enjoy a terrific meal at the new Duck Hotel in Rose street and give yourselves a few credit points.

M

Warrnambool Council asked me to speak about sustainable living at their Sustainable Living Festival held on Saturday 14 January.

It was a lot of fun, seeing these places and meeting so many interesting folks.  Saw a great community garden at Warrnambool; info here:

http://warrnamboolcg.wordpress.com/

Friday morning I flew from Sydney to Avalon airport near Geelong, about 1 hour 20 if you don’t count the time Jetstar took to actually get us there.  Then by hire car down the Great South Road for five hours ’til I got to Warrnambool.  Lots of walking around the place there but also some short five minute car trips.  Then Sunday, back in the hire car to Melbourne to meet some folks about some new projects. Then later Sunday afternoon, on the train back to Sydney to arrive here this morning.  Over 1600 kilometres in three days.

I couldn’t have been to all these places in three days without burning a lot of oil.

Oil allows us to get around and do things like nothing else does – not gas, not, electricity, not diesel . . .

It was a lot of fun.  Thanks oil.

To offset my pollution I asked the Council to pay $100 to a farmer who grows soil, or carbon, as part of his farming.  By growing soil over the next year he’ll take carbon pollution out of the air.  But if I’d bought, say, trees to ‘offset’ my pollution then as the trees take up to 50 to 70 years to take carbon out of Earth’s air that would have been a waste of my money; we don’t have that much time.  The Council pay the $100 straight to this farmer to whom I make all my carbon farming payments: Michael and Louisa Kiely’s farm near Mudgee, info here:

http://www.carboncoalition.com.au/CarbonFarmers/index.html

So thanks to Michael and Louisa for helping me get around, too; they’re providing ‘the good oil’.

And thanks to Warrnambool Council for it’s initiative and for having a go.

And so it goes,

M

Brugmansia - Angel's Trumpets flowers, Myrtle Street

The trumpet-shaped Angel’s Trumpets plant in Myrtle Street, on the southern side, outside the units on the corner of City Road has bloomed for the second time this year.

Beautiful, fragrant blossoms.

The technical name is Brugmansia.

The first lot were completely cut off by someone; another Urban Galah.

Toot!

M

Peace Park being a park after being locked up for nine months . . .

Last Friday the fencing came down, the contractors mowed the grass and we got Peace Park back.

Thanks to those who returned it to us,

M