By Lynne Blundell India is determined to reduce carbon emissions and to supply renewable power to its enormous population. But with the massive hydro power generation dam projects under way in the sensitive Himalayan foothills, the cost is high. Lynne Blundell recently travelled to the region and here presents a ...Read More > >

BRIEF - 9 March 2010 - A report from the NSW Department of the Environment, Climate Change and Water which projects Sydney's air quality to 2026 indicates that zone levels in Sydney haven't improved and will worsen over the next 15 years unless the government acts now, Total Environment Centre ...Read More > >

From the Sydney Morning Herald  - 8 March 2010 - Jonathan Chancellor, the SMH's real estate editor today delved into sustainability issues and wrote: About 2025 hectares across Sydney is devoted to professional vegetable gardening. Just 1050 properties grow vegetables, each averaging about two hectares, according to the NSW Department of ...Read More > >

Chapter 3: Monarchists and Republicans - mown weeds versus mounds and swales By Philip Pollard FAVOURITES - 21 January 2010 - Philip Pollard’s Phd thesis, Campus as Place, on the transformation of the University of Newcastle into one of the world’s leading sustainability exemplars, is a rare insight into the enormous ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs - 8 February 2010 - The waste and pollution from 26,000 gas and coal drills holes is polluting the rivers in the Murray Darling system. Miners are drilling 26,000 exploratory holes to assess how much coal and gas there is to mine in over 25,000 hectares of farming land ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES: 5 November 2009 - The Southport Broadwater Parklands project may well be a blueprint for adaptive planning solutions to combat sea level rise and storm surge on our coastlines. It involved some creative methods, including raising ground levels in some places by two metres. With its spectacular Nerang ...Read More > >

By Adrian McGregor, McGregor Coxall - All the evidence points inexorably to the unsustainability of contemporary cities, especially in a fossil-fuel constrained future, coupled with predicted - and unpredictable - impacts of climate change. Our urban future may lie with a new kind of city - the biocity. Landscape architect and ...Read More > >

FAVOURITES - 30 July 2009 -The Ecovillage at Currumbin on the southern Gold Coast is in its final development phase, 14 years after the idea was first hatched by Landmatters’ Chris Walton, Kerry Shepherd and Colin Bear. Located in the Currumbin Valley, The Ecovillage claims to have “pioneered how we must ...Read More > >

By Genevieve Lilley FAVOURITES - 19 November 2009 - The thing about rural Australia that most of its inhabitants don’t really understand is that it is so big. Travelling by road from, say, Adelaide to Sydney, is a sobering trip. Hours can pass before one sees another ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES - 17 December 2009 - With November bringing record temperatures across much of southern and inland Australia, bushfires are well and truly back in the headlines. And after last summer’s catastrophic Victorian bushfires, awareness of building design and safety in bushfire-risk areas has never been greater. While there ...Read More > >

By Liz Morgan Could this be the Singapore of the future? Maybe. The illustrations here present a vision for a sustainable Singapore by 2050, when all the island-state’s needs are met within its borders: food, energy, waste disposal, recreation, living and work spaces. It is one of nine designs commissioned ...Read More > >

In the midst of a densely urban setting in downtown Pasadena, California, radical change is taking root. For over 20 years, the Dervaes family has transformed its home into an urban homestead and a model for sustainable agriculture and urban living. Calling this project, “Path to Freedom,” the Dervaes Family ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs I was six when our family farm was flooded for six months. We couldn't get to town, or anywhere else, for three months. Kids came on horseback, or on boats, through the flood waters to the temporary school set up in the old disused farmhouse on our place. Like a ...Read More > >

by Michael Day It's spring. And no-one welcomes the lengthening days more avidly than our household. Cat sprawled in a sun patch, chickens in the veggie patch and kids clambering on the swing set. And the wife and I, shod in old jeans and oversized gardening gloves, planting and sowing, raking ...Read More > >

by Peter Fagan FAVOURITES - 3 June 2009 - According to a recent study by researchers at James Cook University and the Australian National University, the Murray Darling Basin, which drives the rural economy of eastern Australia, has lost approximately 200 cubic kilometres of water since 2001. This water loss – equivalent ...Read More > >

-By Tina Perinotto FAVOURITES- 3 December 2009 - It came out of left field but Landcom’s Precinx, the sustainability assessment tool that looks at a whole neighbourhood to assess its overall sustainability, may in time be available nationwide with a modelling system that its developers say is world class. Launched at Homebush ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 2 December 2009 - The charming work of vertical garden artist created by French botanist Patrick Blanc was spotlighted  in Sydney this week when he dropped in to check on his new installation at Trio, the Frasers Property apartment project in inner city Camperdown on Monday and the ...Read More > >

By Philip Pollard Chapter 2 A collaborative approach to delivering the built environment –Design and Art Gallery precinct Philip Pollard’s Phd thesis, Campus as Place, on the transformation of the University of Newcastle into one of the world’s leading sustainability exemplars, is a rare insight into the enormous complexities – human ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES - 5 May 2009 - Caroline Noller of GPT is second in our series of profiles on the new breed of sustainability managers.... When Caroline Noller was constructing cities out of soap boxes as a child she thought only about the excitement of creating buildings and roads. The displacement ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell [UPDATE 14 November 2009] 5 November 2009 - The recent report on sea level rise from the House of Representatives committee on climate change has one very clear message - the impact of climate change and rising sea levels is happening now and urgent action is needed. In ...Read More > >

BRIEF - 26 October 2009 - One in every two Australians want to switch to solar hot water in the next two years, according to a survey by Newspoll commissioned by solar hot water supplier Solarhart. Newspoll surveyed  1062 home owners aged 18 to 64 to find that 55 per cent ...Read More > >

- Simon Wild - Cool Wall workshops foster knowledge sharing and a better green building industry By Tina Perinotto Residents near Glebe in Sydney’s inner west will be invited to be part of a "Cool Wall” workshop to flush out innovative sustainable ideas for a major urban redevelopment on ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto FAVOURITES - 14 October 2009 - A company that has pioneered low cost solar desalination systems for industry and the home is about to start production of the units by November and already has around 5000 units on order. Peter Johnstone, the inventor of the Carosell desalination system and ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto The ambitious and potentially world-transforming website  www.biocitystudio.com made its debut on the global stage just two weeks ago.  Its aim? No less than to measure the sustainability of the world’s cities and predict their likely survival rate as environmental conditions turn nasty. In a radical and very savvy way, ...Read More > >

INSTALLATION - 8 October 2009 - “Today 2/6/09 it was reported that the oceans are becoming more acidic. This is yet another in a series of markers on the road to irreversible damage of our environment. “When the oceans reach a certain point in this cycle all life within the water ...Read More > >

MOPOKE - A series on habitat by Liz Morgan FAVOURITES - 6 April 2009 - “When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do ...Read More > >

LETTER - 16 September 2009 - Following  the article in The Sydney Morning Herald of 14 September “Architects deride Keating’s ‘Mickey Mouse’ vision” the NSW Group of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects responds: As open space design professionals we welcome this latest debate relating to Barangaroo [development site adjoining the ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell Summer is on the way – well it certainly feels that way with Sydney last week experiencing the warmest August temperatures on record - and we haven’t even got to spring yet. And there’s a lot of talk of record high temperatures, low rainfall and more bushfires again ...Read More > >

- Germaine Greer has been at it again, prodding conventional thinking. This time she says old houses in the Scotland need to be knocked down and rebuilt sustainably because the building fabric is too poor to be retrofitted. And she makes a case for high rise. Following is her article ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto - 21 August 2009 - For a “former feminist theologian with a funny accent” Kristina Keneally sure knows how to hold the rapt attention of the property industry’s core players. As NSW planning minister for nearly 12 months, the industry generally acknowledges - as it’s done with every planning ...Read More > >