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 Tina Perinotto FAVOURITES - 10 September 2009 -Picture this: an apartment tower constructed entirely in a factory — right down to the base fit-out and even the defects’’ rectification. The walls built of new lightweight materials, pre-insulated. The whole thing shifted like Lego blocks and assembled on site, in Little ...Read More > >

FAVOURITES - 6 April 2009 - Peter Szental explains how the Szencorp Building at 40 Albert Road, South Melbourne, claims it is the country's highest sustainability achiever with top ranking in each of the three major ratings systems. Szencorp's headquarters achieved a 6 star Green Star Office Design v1 certified rating ...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 Tina Perinotto - FAVOURITES: 6 April 2010 -Property owners can raise their NABERS energy rating to 4 stars  by better management practices and no major capital investment, the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering at Sydney University has found in its Low Energy High Rise Building Research Report. The project, which called ...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 Professor Ralph Horne, Director of the Centre for Design at RMIT - FAVOURITES - 21 June 2009 - The bushfires in Victoria are tangible evidence of the sort of extreme weather events climate scientists have been predicting and they underline the need for significant action now to cut our greenhouse ...Read More > >

Brief - 5 November 2009 - Local government councillors say there could be enough forward buying power for electricity from local government areas to fund a thermal solar plant. A unanimous resolution passed at the Local Government Association of NSW Annual Conference at Tamworth in regional NSW, 24-28 October, promised to  ...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 > >

Following is a transcript of the speech by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, Building a Big Australia, deliverd to the Business Council of Australia yesterday. Tonight I want to discuss a core element of our nation’s long term infrastructure reform. One that has been part of our national economic policy debate for ...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 > >

FAVOURITES- From The Atlantic magazine, some excerpts from the article, The Elusive Green Economy, by Joshua Green: “The best way to get an idea of what a green future might look like is to visit Silicon Valley. It’s impossible to convey how otherworldly the place felt this spring. While the rest ...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 > >

  By David Wilson - Another 500,000 thousand residents in Western Sydney cannot be accommodated without a radical overhaul of transport policies. Transportation is a very emotive word in Australia, starting with the arrival of the First Fleet and its crew of convicts in 1788 after a long and tedious journey, to ...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 > >

By Tina Perinotto For chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Architects, David Parken, the reaction from the audience, the Canberra bureaucrats and the organisers to the Built Environment Meets Parliament conference on 12 August, could not have been more encouraging. “We were very pleased with the level of engagement ...Read More > >

Consultation draft July 2009 Report to Built Environment Meets Parliament (BEMP) Partners by The Allen Consulting Group From Chapter 1 Introduction This project’s aim is to provide a model, principles-based framework about the shape and form that strategic plans for cities and our communities should take. These are provided in a form that would be suitable for adoption ...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 > >

Two winners of the prestigious Australian Award for Urban Design were announced last week (11 August) at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra in a prelude to the Built Environment Meets Parliament conference. They were the Paddington Reservoir Gardens, designed by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects with James Mather Delaney Design and City ...Read More > >

By Philip Pollard Chapter One: From garbage tip to bio-diverse wetlands 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 and technological – that need to managed, nurtured ...Read More > >

The cylindrical skeleton of a former giant oil tank stands sentinel at the newly opened Ballast Point Park in Sydney’s inner west Balmain. Encrypted into the metal through punctured holes are the words of poet Les Murray: Stone statues of ancient waves, tongue like dingoes on shore. It’s an artistic finial ...Read More > >

From the New York Times - 10 August 2009 -  GDP measures activity not benefit, like a cheque book that records all activity, including repairs to damaged property. It tells you nothing about whether you are better off this year or worse. And the value of natural capital, such as ...Read More > >

by Tina Perinotto - 11 August 2009 - (Updated) John Tabbart, the man who got Melbourne’s Docklands off the ground and then went on to run VicUrban, and more gigs in the UK and Middle East, is in Sydney heading up the Barangaroo Delivery Authority that will transform the CBD’s last ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 30 July 2009 - [Updated 9 August 2009] -  One of Australia’s leading architects, Glenn Murcutt, has described as “unbelievable” that one of his earliest and most important buildings at the University of Newcastle campus has been “destroyed” by alterations carried out without his consent or consultation. Professor Murcutt, ...Read More > >

Work on Sydney Olympic Park for the V8 Supercar race in December was in “resolute conflict with the designs and outcomes of the site” - By Tina Perinotto - 28 July - The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects has accused the NSW government of turning its back on Sydney’s ...Read More > >

by Tina Perinotto - 24 July 2009 - President of the NSW Local Government Association, Genia McCaffery, said the regional planning panels announced today by state government would deny residents their democratic rights and would duplicate existing planning processes, at taxpayer expense. NSW Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally today announced the appointment of ...Read More > >

BRIEF: 16 July 2009 - Environmental impact assessments for new developments are expected to be more streamlined following bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and all Australian states and territories, with Victoria and the ACT both signing agreements in the past month. The signing of the agreements fulfils a goal set out ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell Sydney’s laneways are about to get a sustainable makeover, adorned with everything from silver birch forests, canopies of bird cages, giant fluorescent light tubes, a mini outdoor cinema and a seven metre high bar to highlight climate change. Laneways by George! Hidden Networks is the City of Sydney’s second ...Read More > >