Solar Car Palaces to Save the Planet

Solar carport at Addison Road,
Photo by Tom Worthington CC-BY 2022

This is to suggest promoting carports covered with photovoltaic panels (called "Car Palaces"), to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and free up resources to build more accommodation. Currently in Australia, it is common to have houses with one or two car garages built in. As they are built into the house, the same quality of materials intended for people have to be used for cars. Many of these homes then have solar panels installed over the roof cladding. The cladding is commonly tiles, which are difficult to fit solar panels to. The Addison Road Community Center in Sydney has an example of an alternative: a two car solar carport, with charging, built from standard components.

I suggest encouraging, through legislation, marketing, and incentives, homes which have freestanding carports, covered with solar panels. This would have the advantage of lower cost, as the solar panels would provide the roofing. Also the carports could be prefabricated, for quick erection. The carports could also be designed with provision for batteries, electric car charging,  heat pump hot-water system and air conditioner.

The capital, labor, and materials saved could be used to build additional accommodation for the homeless. However, there would need to be regulation, and incentives, to prevent homes simply getting larger. If garages were eliminated, along with underutilized Media Rooms, and spare bedrooms, enough additional accommodation could be built within a few years for all those currently homeless.

Multi-centered Cities for Australia

In "Evolution of the Australian Dream" Philip Cox, Philip Graus and Bob Meyer give a short history of Australian housing and then propose some ideas for the future. This is timely with an A NSW Planning System Review, underway and an issues paper out for comment: "The way ahead for planning in NSW" (submissions have been extended to 2 March 2012). They envision the existing Australian cities growing with the population, with Sydney, by 2051, being the size of London in 2001. They appear to favour the poly-nucleated city: that is a large urban area with multiple centres.

City Edge Apartment

Noticed that one of the apartments in the city edge complex in O'Connor, Canberra, is for sale. This is a mirror image of my own, with exactly the same colour scheme. It is on the ground floor, with a balcony looking onto the street. Last week there was a tall hedge along the whole front of the building, screening the ground floor bedrooms. But this was encroaching on the footpath and in being replanted with a more suitable screening plants. In the interim it looks a little bare.

Livable city has one quarter million people

The ADC Cities Report: Enhancing Liveability (Report part 1 and Report part 2) was released 22 October 2010 Australian Davos Connection. Anthony Albanese, Minister for Regional Development and Local Government made a speech at the launch.

The report suggests that cities of 250,000 to 300,000 people will have the benefits of scale and density. These cities can be relatively self contained parts of a larger whole:

"...entirely new cities can get built with 250,000 - 300,000 people as a meaningful goal, or parts of existing cities can be re-imagined around this sizing. Large conurbations of 250,000 - 300,000 person nodes can provide for a sense of spatial identity and boundary, while maintaining significant public open space such as forests between nodes, and allowing each node to contain many aspects of urbanity, such as theatres, sports teams and large parks and gardens within them."

Last week for the Canberra 2030 Planning Workshop, I suggested Canberra could triple its density and population to around 1 million people. Canberra has five town centres: Civic, Woden, Belconnen, Tuggeranong, Gungahlin, with public open space, including forests, between these nodes. So each of Canberra's town centres could be expanded to a population of 250,000, while retaining the green space.

Expansion of Canberra's population would allow rebalancing of the housing stock. The ABS expects the average Austrlaian home to have only 2.2 to 2.3 people in it by 2021. Like much of Australia, Canberra has an excess of three bedroom, and larger, detached houses in low density suburbs. The city should therefore be expanded by building the needed studio apartments, plus one and two bedroom homes, at high density in the existing town centres. The new homes should have an average of of only one bedroom each: that is as many studio apartments should be built with no separate bedrooms, as two bedroom homes.

The new homes would require only a few square kilometres of land and could be built to a high environmental standard, lowering the city's ecological footprint. Each home could have solar water and space heating, low water use and low energy fittings.

Providing high density accommodation around the town centres would allow for efficient public transport. The new housing would be within walking distance of employment and high speed rapid transport between the town centres. The accommodation could be built quickly and efficiently using modular construction techniques.

Canberra's existing suburbs could be left largely unchanged, to provide a low density housing option for one third of Canberra's population. There is no financially or environmentally sustainable way to provide public transport to these suburbs. So those choosing to live in the suburbs would have to use private cars, with increasing fuel costs. But at least this would be choice these residents could make, knowing there is the option of a more sustainable high density inner city living. At present there is no option but a high cost high environmental impact suburban house for most Canberra residents.

ADC Cities Report: Enhancing Liveability Report

Edited by Anton Roux, ADC Forum and Professor John Stanley, The University of Sydney

Report part 1: 83 pages, (4.9Mbytes)

CONTENTS
Chairman’s Foreword 01
About ADC Forum 04
ADC Cities Summit – Program Overview 07
Integrating the City
- Why cities? 13
- COAG action 19
- The ‘must haves’ 24
- Future Population, better cities 33
- Governance arrangements 42
- Urban design and retrofitting 44
- Concluding remarks 48
The Inclusive City
- Introduction 51
- Principles 51
- Vision 52
- Themes 52
- Concluding remarks 61
The Ecological City
- Introduction 63
- What is an ecologically resilient city? 67
- Key approaches for achieving an ecologically resilient city 67
- Setting targets 67
- The top ideas 72
The Accessible City
- Introduction 75
- Principles 75
- Enables and inhibitors 75
- Initiatives and recommendations 76
- Vision and planning 76
- Community consultation and engagement 77
- Funding 77
- Technology 78
- Research 78
- Governance 79
- Reducing demand for travel 79
- Infrastructure pricing 79
- Skills 80
80
- Concluding remarks

Report part 2 : 57 pages (3.9 Mbytes PDF).

Government 2.0 for Cluster Housing

One area the Government 2.0 taskforce could usefully look at is applying web technology to the fourth level of government in Australia: cluster housing. While Australia has three formal levels of government: federal, state and local, there is a fourth level emerging: body corporates and companies running multiple dwelling accommodation. Apartment blocks and aged accommodation form an increasing part of how Australian live and an area outside formal government processes.

Local government is more important than federal or state government in the day to day lives of Australian citizens. That there is water in the tap, the phone works, the garbage is collected and the street lights work very directly effects daily life. Increasingly these services are not provided by government but by non-government organisations with limited input from the citizens. This is not good situation for a democratic country.

Most apartments in Australia are under state based body cooperate laws. Some apartments are run as non-profit companies, while aged accommodation is run as non or for-profit companies. These organisations face many of the same issues as government, in terms of consulting their clients. They increasingly provide services which were previously the role of government.

An good example is City Edge in Canberra. This complex has hundreds of apartments and town houses. The complex includes privately owned owner occupied and rented dwellings. There are also apartments owned by a non profit cooperative contracted by the ACT Government to provide low cost accommodation, including specially designed apartments for the disabled.

The buildings of the City Edge complex are government by several separate bodies corporate, each with its own management committee of owners. There is then a non-profit company with representatives from the bodies corporate to manage common property between the buildings. The complex has its own garbage collection services, solar/gas central hot water, fibre optic broadband connection, roads and solar powered street lights. The costs are paid from fees levied on the owners.

The usual way to run a body corporate is with an unpaid committee of owners. Large complexes, such as City Edge, employ companies to provide administration. These companies typically send the owners paper documents and arrange face to face meetings. Some companies are now using email and the web to a limited extent.

Owners are to a large extent disenfranchised by the lack of any effective way to be consulted in the running of their property. Tenants of cluster housing who are not owners are excluded from most of the decision making process. There are frequent problems with bodies corporate in Australia, leading to expensive court cases.

A similar situation exists in aged care accommodation, which is either run by non-profit or for profit companies with little input from the residents.

The Australian Government could usefully improve this situation by sponsoring the creation of web based systems to support administration and consultation for decision making in cluster housing. This would allow better administration and resident engagement. Free open source standard software could be provided for use across Australia. The software could be used by committees of volunteers in smaller complexes and by administrating companies for larger properties. This would also reduce costs to state government who are required to administer the cluster housing.

Public and Private Housing Mix

A National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) commences in 2009, with $6.1B for social housing, private rental assistance, accommodation for homeless and home purchasing assistance. One way would be to combine public and private housing in the same developments as was done at City Edge in Canberra. The Australian Government released a White Paper on Homelessness: T he Road Home on 21 December 2008 (Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek).

An example of where this could be done is in Sydney with the $29.5M public housing redevelopment project in Lilyfield. This is the redevelopment of a an old public housing estate at Lilyfield Road, Balmain Road and Edward Streets. As was done at city edge in Canberra, old flats are being replaced with new style ones. In Lilyfield 40 flast are being replaced with 88 (26 one bedroom, 53 two bedroom and 9 three bedroom). Like the Canberra units, the Lilyfield ones will be environmentally efficient and the ground floor units will be wheelchair accessible. The difference is that in Canberra, most of these were sold to private buyers, with some retained for public housing (administered by a non-profit non-government cooperative), to give a balance of occupants. One problem with the Lilyfield site is it is at the end of the the Sydney Light Rail. , which the NSW Government has refused to extend.

University Accommodation from Shipping Containers

According to an ABC News report " ANU considers shipping in accommodation", the ANU is considering student accommodation made from converted shipping containers. The best known shipping container housing is the Dutch Keetwonen project. But there are a other Modular Low Cost Housing options, which can produce a very liveable building quickly, without using shipping containers.

... The university is considering the idea to help address Canberra's student accommodation crisis.

The containers have balconies with room for a kitchen, bathroom and double bed.

ANU Student Association president Jamila Rizvi says the containers are cheap to build and only take about two months to put together.

She says they will appeal to students.

"They are probably on the outside not as attractive as what we've got at the moment but certainly on the inside they are twice as good as anything being offered at the ANU at the moment," she said. ...

From: ANU considers shipping in accommodation, By Penny McLintock, ABC News, 14 August 2008

See also:

1. Audio: Extended interview: Jamila Rizvi speaks with 666 presenter Ross Solly
2. eHome: Modular Low Cost Housing
3. Did the shipping container change the world?
4. More on Shipping Containers