Its about time that urban Australia took some responsibility for reducing our demand for energy to cool our dwellings. We can do that by demanding that all new houses are solar passive ie in southern lattitudes aligned capture winter sun and shun the western summer sun. In northern Australia the houses should have good cross ventilation. All houses should have judiciously planted shade trees both in their yeards and as street trees.

The ultilities shouldn't have carte blanche to gouge the crowns out of shade trees.
Optus cabling shows us the real cost of 'choice' when we see the vandalism done when their cables were strung all our once shady boulevardes.

In fact Australia would be greener if we had underground cabling as there are bugger all penthouses in the urban areas.

Good article. The new Lend Lease Aurora Place is supposed to carry gardens, and in many states now there are fairly stringent energy standards to be met. So there is a start at least. There is more that can be done, consider the following except from UNE coursenotes 2006:

"Manhattan is full of big buildings, and big buildings are bad news in terms of energy consumption, although progress is being made. For example, take the extraordinary office tower in London designed by Norman Foster:

It is officially known as the Swiss Re Tower, or 30 St Mary Axe. But Londoners universally refer to the newest addition to their skyline as “the Gherkin”, thanks to the 41-storey building's distinctive, curved profile, which actually looks more like a pine cone. [Pic here deleted by me] What is most remarkable about the building is not its name or its shape, however, but its energy-efficiency. Thanks to its artful design and some fancy technology, it is expected to consume up to 50% less energy than a comparable conventional office building.

Most people are not used to thinking of large buildings as vast, energy-guzzling machines. But that is what they are. In America, buildings account for 65% of electricity consumption, 36% of total energy use and 30% of greenhouse-gas emissions. So making buildings more energy-efficient could have a significant impact on energy policy, notes Rebecca Flora of the Green Building Alliance, a group that promotes sustainable architecture. That is a key goal of the “green architecture” movement, which is changing the way buildings are designed, built and run. (The Economist, 2 Dec, 2004)"

There is no intention to slight Renzo Piano's Aurora Place; Piano is a seriously clever architect and I am sure that Aurora has some very clever technoloy to reduce energy consumption.

This weeks "New Inventors" on our ABC featured an innovative hydroponic food production system that used very little water and produced food close to where it is required with no transport costs. This would fit in well with this philosophy. Also see "The Age" November 8 2006, which featured a "paddock in a can", a hydroponic system producing 1.2 tonnes of green feed a day for 3c a kilo using 500 litres of water, the links from the article are: www.peterdoyleconsultancy.com.au geobay.com/daab85

Richard42

These are all good ideas for diff situations, best chosen among by those closest to the space. Why are they still fringe? Insufficient price signal, that lever on Mr Howards desk he leans his preening mirror against. The man embodies market failure.

Can you tell us more about the impediments to roof gardens in Aus? I'm guessing higher capital cost of building, no cultural experience of them nor understanding of need.
An electricity supplier might benefit from fostering roof g.'s to reduce peak airconditioning demand, v.expensive to supply. Could they tender for locals to provide +5% greencover and hope for -x% peak electricity demand? If peak electricity demand were priced to household instead of being smeared across all users then households would have an incentive too.
Thanks for article, changed my thinking (and nice tie-in with call for higher density living!).

Some good comments, I like the idea of charging users for peak usage. I assume that means the individual's peak usage, not charging everyone extra when the total peaks.

There might be a movement to more environmental housing in some places, but my observation does not bode well for it. The current fashion is for houses with no eaves. This is largely driven by building rules that limit the effect of a building on neighbours. These set the roof size, and builders have to use the whole roof to get an oversized house on a tiny block.

There is nothing wrong with rooftop gardens as a means of improving the visual amenity of cities, and improving the energy consumption of individual buildings. However, to say that the heat island effect is a significant contributor to global warming is utter nonsense. Enhanced global warming comes about from the heat of the Earth, normally partially radiated back to space, being trapped in the atmosphere by carbon dioxide, methane and other natural and man-made (or man augmented) gases.

Any additional heat from cities would be less than miniscule. The heat comes from the massing of buildings, all pumping out heat whether from internal heating in winter of from the absorbtion of heat from sunlight, with the addition of that from vehicles: combined with lack of greenery and poor "ventilation". Possible greenhouse effects from the carbon dioxide needed to produce that energy, yes, from the additional heat, no. If all those buildings and cars were spread out so no heat island effect were present, the carbon dioxide addition would be almost the same.

The heat island effect was noted long before enhanced (or anthropogenic) global warming became an issue. Indeed, weather records from around the world are scrutinised to cut out those affected by urbanisation. The city location of Sydney's and Melbourne's "official temperature sites", surrounded as they are by roads, carparks and tall buildings, makes them unsuitable for inclusion in any list of "baseline" stations. In fact, even country town's temperature readings can be affected badly by the asphalting of a paddock next to the thermomometer for a car park.

With talk about our gardens on our rooves, nobody has mentioned replenishing the gardens from roof gutter catchment water.

As a retired farmer who has had to live most of his life on water caught from housing and shed gutters caught on farms, mixed a bit from roof dust and bird-droppings and still alive near 85, has been suggesting about multiplying the amount of rainwater water caught on the roof of every average suburban Aussie house.

From a wheatbelt farmhouse alone it is around 150,000 litres from 300 litres of yearly rain. Yet nowadays any advice from bush people seems to be mostly taken with scorn as if we now belong to another planet.

There has been a saying from politicians who should know better, that because we now have other productive means of keeping us going the days of the feudal yoke in Australia are over.

But surely we can still offer a bit of advice, especially about water, which even not regarded as drinkable once caught and stored can easily be used for garden and wash.

There is an old saying about from deserts the prophets come. As regards the saving and surviving on less water, and able to give advice about it, looks like the old bush people should still be allowed that privelege.