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Driving out the weak link
Jago Dodson, The Courier Mail (Australia)
…Recently the Queensland Government released its “Smart City” plan which applies the Smart State ethos to the future form and function of the inner city. The Smart City strategy seeks to nest Brisbane’s emerging knowledge economy within a high quality urban environment.
The Smart City strategy is a notable document because it shows some important insights that link economic growth to other key dimensions of urban change, such as environmental sustainability and social cohesion.
The strategy sensibly focuses on transport as a critical element in joining the various new redevelopment precincts to secure the urban knowledge economy that will lie at the core of Brisbane’s future prosperity. Yet the form this transport will take contrasts strongly with Brisbane’s historical pattern.
The strategy proposes a new light rail system for the CBD linked with an expanded network of bikeways and pedestrian paths, including new bridges and close links to the heavy rail and busway networks. These, the plan argues, “should form key aspects of a coordinated strategy to reduce automobile movement throughout the city centre to radically reduce car reliance”. Roads and cars are to have little place in the smart city.
If the density of inner-urban redevelopment is restrained and contained, the Smart City strategy of trams and bikeways could signal a major change in the Queensland Government’s approach to Brisbane’s growth. There is some cause for caution, however.
If development brings the same high levels of resident and employee car parking as at present (delivering in turn high levels of inner-city car ownership and car use) then much of this work will be self-defeating.
Further, the plan might build an island of wealth within a broader but less secure suburban landscape
(8 August 2007)
Contributor Stuart McCarthy writes:
Jago Dodson is a research fellow with the Urban Research Program at Griffith University, and co-author of Shocking the Suburbs: Urban Location, Housing Debt and Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City (www.energybulletin.net/17846.html). This article highlights the fact that Southeast Queensland’s rhetoric in addressing the challenges of climate change and peak oil is not matched by real progress. The ‘Smart City’ plan looks great on paper however local, state and federal governments are presently engaged in an orgy of motorway and tunnel construction while public transport is being neglected, exacerbating the already serious problem of car dependence. The Courier Mail story is part of its ‘Our Future Your Say’ special project looking at the impact of growth in southeast Queensland.
World’s first carbon-free city
Susanna Hamner, Business 2.0 Magazine via CNN Money
Get ready for the world’s first carbon-free city — smack-dab in the center of the oil-rich Middle East.
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It may seem strange that the emirate of Abu Dhabi, one of the planet’s largest suppliers of oil, is planning to build the world’s first carbon-neutral city.
But in fact, it makes a lot of financial sense. The 3.7-square-mile city, called Masdar, will cut its electricity bill by harnessing wind, solar, and geothermal energy, while a total ban on cars within city walls should reduce the long-term health costs associated with smog.
Masdar is still on the drawing board — construction begins in January, with a very tentative completion date of 2009 — but the result will be watched closely around the world.
“If they can construct a zero-carbon city in this climate, you can do it anywhere,” says Richard Young, a research manager with SustainLane, which evaluates sustainable cities and products. “It will have tremendous economic impact.”
(6 August 2007
