Print

[eclipse]

The following 5 minute Youtube video is an extremely inspiring example of what great eco-city planning can do.

Once we have "enough" of the population living like this, we'll have beaten both peak oil, global warming, waste issues, water issues, and many social issues.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWVsi0UtmgI

But what legal changes are necessary to get there? And how would we plan something of this sheer magnitude in a post-States Australia?

As the Australian Federal Peak oil enquiry put it... after raving about the benefits of 'walkable cities' and public transport and some niche biofuel energy markets (not at all suggesting "business as usual")...

5.21      Increasing walking, cycling and public transport use in cities is a worthwhile goal for a number of reasons, regardless of predictions about the oil future. If there is a long term rise in the price of oil, it will be all the more necessary.

5.22      However we should not underestimate the difficulties involved. Vast areas of post World War 2 suburbia have been designed on the assumption that most travel would be by car, and with the aim of making this easier. The effect has been to make travel in any other way more difficult, as activity centres disperse to sites distant from the public transport network, and the environment for pedestrians and cyclists is degraded by traffic. In these areas existing public transport routes do not serve many travel needs, and existing services mostly function as welfare for people without cars, with a very low proportion of total trips (less than 5%).

5.23      Turning around this situation requires better public transport services and supportive planning policies to shape urban development so that public transport networks can work efficiently and attract more ‘choice’ customers. This means, for example:

    *                     encouraging commerce and employment to locate at strongly planned regional centres, so that public transport networks have somewhere to focus on;
    *               new subdivisions to be planned so that buses can be routed efficiently;
    *               transit-oriented development: medium density mixed-use development around public transport nodes (this will usually mean rail stations, since rail best provides the visibility and permanence needed to attract this sort of development);
    *               design principles to give high priority to a quality pedestrian environment.

5.24      Urban strategic planning is the responsibility of State and Territory governments. The needed initiatives involve State and local government. Most of them require regional scale planning going beyond the boundaries of any one local government area.

5.25      In all these matters, the aim of policy is to change people’s travel behaviour at the margin. In the foreseeable future walking, cycling and public transport will continue to be unsuitable for many travel needs. The aim is to encourage them where they are suitable. A commonly stated goal is to increase the public transport mode share from 10% to 20% of trips. On the positive side, because the present public transport share is so low, only a small behavioural change by motorists would be needed to greatly increase public transport use.[100] This would make better services more viable.

[Charles Mollison]

The first point that should be made is to reinforce the statement that most current Local Governments do not have the scope to achieve what is illustrated here. Regional planning is a necessary prerequisit.

So, after we get rid of State Gov'ts and create Regions instead, it will be possible to create such areas and retrofitting existing urban environments will be facilitated.

The second point that should be emphasised is that urban planning leads to a semi-permanent built environment. If you get it wrong, it is wrong for a very long time. Fortunately there are now computer models that allow urban planners to trial plans before they are built. Dozens of criteria can be applied to any plan; and infinite variations of each criteria can be applied and the results assessed.

Thirdly, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Eco-friendly urban areas have been built in various places. Freiburg in Germany is just one other example. I haven't checked but am sure a Google search will show the several areas in Germany that have been built this way.

The Draft Constitution of the Foundation for National Renewal calls for regions to be established based on water catchment areas. This is another significant contributing factor to eco-friendly urban, suburban and rural design.

Charles Mollison

[eclipse]

Hi Charles,
how big is your "Draft constitution"? If you want you can upload PDF's to the website server, but they have to be under 10 meg at this stage.

It would probably fit best under "Constitutional changes" if you wanted to upload it. You could copy and paste the executive summary into the post, and then when posting click on "Additional Options", go down to "Attach" and use the "Browse" button to find the PDF or .doc file on your computer. Then click post and it's uploaded to my server! Done!

People will see a little PDF attachment logo and you'll have your Draft Constitution up there ready for anyone to download, and a thread for them to comment in.
(Remember to add "If you have any comments please reply to this thread!")