Stanhope Gardens is an 1800 lot subdivision in the North West sector near Parklea and within the Rouse Hill water infrastructure catchment. After a concept design competition we were asked to redesign a dead worm subdivision to improve connectivity and permeability and also to illustrate a more ecological response to the site.

The overall context was set including- main roads, Rouse Hill water infrastructure and the mix of lots- 80% medium sized 500 sqm and 20% "integrated housing" which are usually the difficult leftovers at the ends- of cul de sacs. The location of schools and open space was open for review.

Our guiding principles were in order of consideration:

• Start with watercourses and develop a continuous open space system
• Continuous network for pedestrians and cyclists through and bordering the openspace
• Create and locate "special places" on this networkneighbourhood centres, sports and play
• Co-locate facilities and to provide urbanity- schools, shops and facilities in these special places
• Locate densest housing to take advantage of landscape amenity and facilities
• Re-conceptualise streets as part of the open space network-potential places of recreation and amenity not just conduits for cars.
• Control parking and minimise garage dominance of streetscapes

This approach grew out of our work on the Olympic village over number of years. One of the problems with urban design is that at first glance most rendered masterplans look the same- trees are green and water is blue. As diagrams, many current masterplans which claim to be improved practice all start to look the same with rectilinear street grids and octagonal overlays featuring prominently. However, the underlying urban structure, the detailed resolution of the way houses relate to streets, the density of housing and the character of the place are not evident.

It is important to distinguish the nostalgic Traditional Neighbourhood Development (TND) of small town America (Seaside, Kentlands) from the transit oriented development (TOD) of Calthorpe. The first is primarily concerned with recreating communities of "People like us" with all the iconic elements of a real community- post office, school town park etc. for the well off, and the second has a much broader environmental and social agenda of reduced car dependence and improved livability and accessibility for all.

It is important because our interest is whether the development is sustainable or not. For a development to claim to be sustainable it should contribute to an overall reduction in the existing environmental impact. In other words it should not only be good it should be repairing and compensating for what is already bad.

By this definition, which I believe to be defensible, there are no sustainable developments in Sydney. ESD has become devalued as a term because in Australia it has been picked up more by technicians and bureaucrats than by communities. As a result it has been turned into regulations, and policies that everyone tries to skirt around. This is in stark contrast to the interpretation in Europe where sustainable development is seen mainly as a social project with environmental benefits. Only Australia defines it as "ecologically" sustainable development. The fact that Agenda 21 seems to have fallen flat in Australia and is the guiding framework elsewhere is a clear manifestation of this difference in approach. It will be my contention in this presentation that

• the way forward lies not in improving the efficiency of houses but in developing neighbourhoods.
• that too stringent requirements for solar access may actually work against a more sustainable urban form
• that transport is the single most important factor in reducing greenhouse gases and that the role that urban design can play should be the focus not individual house designs

ENVIRONMENTAL EVALUATION
If an "instrumental",approach is adopted in the environmental evaluation of Stanhope gardens, then its performance is a modest improvement compared to similar developments.

This is largely because the most important factors were outside our control. These are:

• transport infrastructure: there is no point in increasing densities if it is not related to public transport
• landuse there are few employment opportunities in the area at present but the Mungerie Park Town Centre could become a significant employment area
• densities could not be increased because this would be perceived as an attempt to increase returns on the development by Landcom so it remains at 12.6 perha.

Energy
The DCP developed for the site controls orientation and building massing in a detailed way that should optimise the various crientations. however major structuring elements including an electricity easement and roads run NE-SW and NW-SE as do the water courses. It would be both perverse and extremely inefficient to not respond to these orientations. The rating of these lots suffers as a result.

Current planning documents do not recognise the difficulties of building at higher densities. All diagrams relate to large sized blocks and have arrangement that are unacceptable in the market and undesirable for a variety of reasons. The south side of the street is particularly difficult and I have not yet seen an adequate solution.

Habitat
Good extensions to riparian habitats have been achieved but too much open space is devoted to ovals and formal sports areas as both Council and Department of School Education are willing to share facilities as long as they're the owner and the other shares. The infrastructure consortium considers the only function of the trunk drainage to be the unimpeded flow of water, ignoring the habitat and recreational potential. At one stage the consortium was considering cyclone fencing off the entire area.

Water
The Rouse Hill Infrastructure Consortium has controls of water services. The approach has been centralised treatment and dual reticulation. Drainage design is uninspired to say the least. Headworks charges are in the order of $10,000 per block approximately.

This may seem reasonable until compared with a similar cost for apartments in the Rocks at about 6 times the density where we were able to provide full water supply recycling and treatment to a standard for discharge to a protected waterway resulting in a 99.5% reduction in mains water demand. Centralised systems simply don't make sense. Materials

We have had no control over materials or construction methods. All suggestions that there could be consistency or style or environmental criteria is met with counter claims of the public wanting choice. Unfortunately this is simply a reflection of the paucity of real choice available when it comes down to a choice of theme and colour. However Landcom has begun a process of tendering sites by awarding the development to the best design. There will be a joint venture for most of the site and it is likely that we will be able to take these issues further.

Quality of life
The design provides significantly better circulation and gives precedence to pedestrians and cyclists. The layout and densities should help make any public transport more viable but there are few employment opportunities.

So overall, modest achievements but instructive and able to suggest a direction. To proceed, the following questions should be asked:

• Firstly, what are the impediments to better suburban design
• Secondly, what is the relative significance of suburban design and energy efficiency of housing in particular.
• Thirdly, what policies should be developed to support and aid suburbs to be more sustainable.

IMPEDIMENTS

Design process

Urban design is not given sufficient- weight. The "production" of housing lots and the related infrastructure is a process that has become efficient in producing the wrong outcome. Every one involved has become familiar with the process and the product, and this familiarity has a value in itself providing certainty and predictability to banks, councils, and residents. Fundamental to this has been the simplification of the process by breaking it down into simple tasks.

Normal subdivision does not require design at all. It can be seen simply as the end result of compliance with a set of Australian Standards. This is fine for the production of "normal suburbs" where all problems and conflicts appearance, privacy, parking are all "solved" by spatial separation. The increased travel distances that result are overcome by the car.

However the required space is not available to "solve" the problems at 15 dwellings per Ha. Which is the DUAP benchmark. An integrated design response is required that considers how all the elements can contribute to the space and how particular issues - car parking for example - can be resolved.

In other words a quite different integrated design process which all the existing players are unfamiliar with and therefore resistant to. The prevailing attitude seems to be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" not recognising that it is in fact "broke" and disfunctional and incurring considerable social costs and causing inefficiencies.

John Mant refers to the "guild" mentality of the different professions protecting their own territory but the desire to simply continue doing the same thing is equally potent. Even when "urban designers" are introduced into the process the maior elements of the context are already set- electricity, roads, school locations and water services are put in place according to their individual needs without any consideration of how they might contribute to the overall place. And yet these occupy about 44% of the area of the suburb and will be the major determinants of its character and livability.

The need for an integrating vision cannot be overemphasised but who does it? Landcom is exceptional as a major developer of broad acre subdivision which is also capable and willing to fund and produce site specific development controls. Most developments are smaller and rely on Council Development Control Plans which are generally simplistic and tend to maintain the status quo and restrict innovation. Local Environment plans tend to be even less related to the qualities of a place and are mainly concerned with the distribution and definition of landuses. They tend to "freeze" the structure of the suburb before any "design" takes place. Design here means the development of an overall vision or set of guiding principles that would allow responsiveness and flexibility of a place. This is the difference between architecture and urban design.

So for design the question is who pays for urban design and when does it occur?.

Council

Councils are also inherently conservative- elected by an existing population to preserve the status quo and improve services without increasing rates. At worst good urban design from a council's perspective is where the streets are low maintenance with no vegetation, designed for garbage truck movements, where there are a few large centralised recreation facilities and where water is channelised and therefore liability free.

Increasing density in an area over time is a highly political issue. "When what you're promoting in a residential development is privacy and exclusivity, each new home takes something away from what was promised to the first buyers. But if you plan in the form of whole neighbourhoods, and are selling the idea of community, then each new home contributes to what was initially promised,. The place becomes better as it reaches completion"1. This comment applies equally to whole areas in as to specific developments.

State Govemment

State Government agencies have a similarly narrow focus. Schools are recognised as the social glue that binds a community and the physical presence of the larger scale buildings of a school can contribute immensely to an otherwise undifferentiated single storey landscape. However due to many perceptions of security, and problems of locating schools near shops and bottle shops in particular, schools are usually located away from all other activity. Other agencies are similarly single minded.

Developers and House Builders

There are two levels of involvement- subdivision and house building. There is no incentive to design a road layout or circulation system that achieves objectives of permeability in fact there is active resistance. People prefer cul de sacs which they feel has a sense of "community", and believe they improve "neighbourhood security". The preference needs to be recognised and there is no problem with incorporating short (60m max) cul de sacs in an other wise permeable network. The perceptions of improved security however are not founded in fact. These perception are taken to their extremes in the form of "gated communities" which provide elements such as neighbourhood meeting hall and playgrounds which have a symbolic rather than actual function. These simulations of community can cause major disruptions to permeability and accessibility.

There is no incentive to produce higher densities in fact there is considerable resistance. Cost of building increases with two storeys and requires more careful design. Few houses builders have an in-house capacity to design and designs tend to be approached as a production engineering and efficiency optimisation exercise rather than responses to particular site characteristics. Design and redesign are seen simply as an unwarranted additional cost. The bottom line for builders is that they simply want a smooth approval.

However builders are producing affordable accommodation built to a budget which is the major determinant of housing choice. People will sacrifice amenity: back yard, attractive neighbourhood to be close to employment.

RELATIVE SIGNIFICANCE
The reason for concentrating on the urban design and quality of life aspects is that this is where- I think major environmental achievements can be made rather than trying to deal with individual houses. In 1994 The Victorian Greenhouse Neighbourhood Project1 concluded "substantial savings in energy requirements and C02 could be achieved through changes in urban form. By comparison with conventional development practice, emission reductions of up to 42 percent were achieved by optimising land use and transport related factors to reduce car travel, and by optimising dwelling siting and design to reduce heating and cooling related emissions. Greater savings were possible from landuse and transport related1 changes than dwelling related changes. For transport, car related savings of up to 57% were achieved, with two key factors being increased residential densities and an increased proportion of local employment, retail and related land uses providing higher levels of self containment for daily activities. For housing , heating and cooling related savings of up to 26 percent were achieved with key factors being increased solar access, increased number ' of dwellings sited and designed to take advantage of solar energy and increased proportion of dwelling types with shared walls and floors."1

In Victoria heating and cooling is about 50% of domestic energy demand. In NSW it is only about 35%. this means proportionally transport could be even more important.

The claims seem high but recently the models have been validated by Chris Stapleton Empirically and by traffic modelling. Stapleton has found that connective Neighbourhoods such as Stanmore and Merrylands have up to

64% of people within easy walking distance of their neighbours These figures exceed those suggested by the Victorian study.

In 1992 the Victorian Transport Externalities Study investigated how policies could be introduced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This showed that it would be possible to reduce C02 emissions by 16% for no net cost. Two significant parts of the strategy involved changes to urban form. Redevelopment of inner sites produces a net income and changes to new residential development has a moderate cost but is effective.

The reason for our interest in the transport are two fold.

Firstly design guidelines for houses only deal with 2% of the problem- roughly the annual increase in housing stock. Renewal also takes a long time with a life cycle of around 40 years.

In comparison some transport initiatives not only have a net cost saying but can be implemented immediately- they are to do with policy and pricing. Whether any Government has the guts to introduce them is another matter. Other transport initiatives will take longer and require substantial investment.

It would be wrong to concentrate on the fringe and the argument for no further fringe development is convincing. The development of areas such as Green Square will have very significantly lower environmental impact simply due to the built form and transport pattern.

Our role as urban designers is to recognise and reinforce the holistic pattern of land use distribution, transport and housing forms. Density and sustainable forms of transport- public walking and cycling are closely related as shown by Peter Newman's work.

There is a threshold level of density and facilities that would allow people not to rely on cars. It is not clear at what density this might occur or what the vital components are but the principle of creating nodes of grouped activity within walking distance seems an indisputable starting point. It means both the potential for walking but also a single car trip 'to undertake many activities- shopping, childcare, recreation, school work.

Our role as urban designers is try to provide a pattern that can develop and increase in density over time to reduce car dependence.

Problems

The Greenhouse Neighbourhood project assumed a density increase from current 10 to 25 dwellings per Ha. This is much higher than is currently achieved with small lot housing and relies on high proportions of town houses and apartments.

In a market driven by price the additional building costs cannot be recovered from sales in the areas on the fringe. Generally people prefer one storey which is also big ly desirable for aged residents. Ideally they should be able to remain living in the community for as long as possible.

There is a place for a range of housing types. What seems to be happening is that there is a fairly even spread of density through a suburb and variation occurs between suburbs again the "people like us" factor at work.

Before considering how densities might be increased it is important to recall yet again the main reasons for densification - it is not an end in itself.

Focussing on the single objective of reducing car dependence a whole series of benefits follow - walkable secure neighbourhoods, more bush, and more energy efficient housing forms and a better sense of community facilities, more equity through the distribution of employment and services which are distributed through the metropolis.

In order of importance densification should:

• reduce car dependence
• reduce travel distances
• reduce land take
• provide more diverse and more autonomous neighbourhoods

To achieve this there must be

• public transport infrastructure
• subsidisation of higher density housing by reducing the land cost and increasing it for
• larger lots release of land over a longer period allowing densification

Within the denser neighbourhood

• minimal land take by institutions including schools
• multifunctional open space for recreation, water management habitat and school use (NSW
• open space requirements are double Victoria's)
• energy efficiency controls; mandatory gas use for hot water space heating and cooking,
• mandatory high levels of insulation, shading and weather sealing
• water management "leaky tanks" for detention and harvesting, localised sewage treatment

To achieve this there must be

• a pricing policy for energy and water that encourages more efficient usage and
• reduces pay back periods (when will people be able to boost with off-peak for example?)
• compensatory rebate schemes to improve social equity after increased prices

Complicated assessment methods are not necessary. The money spent on assessment would be better spent just doing it. A strong DCP costs a couple of hundred dollars per lot. The DCP should clearly set out the requirements and leave it at that. There is no basis for arguing with the minimal as controls outlined above and the major gains can be expected from transport.

Conclusion

We have a very good idea of what needs to be done, and it can be done cost effectively if decent economic analyses are done which take externalities into account; we just need to political will to do it.

1 Greenhouse Neighbourhood Project Technical Report.

Sustainable Eco Solutions Institute and the Ecological Architects Association
Eco Forum 4 ~ April 1999