| Both villan and saviour |
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 Apricale
The focus on transport as the key to a carbon-neutral future is a red herring. There is much debate about green transport, but the need for transport is determined by poor urban design. When good design makes a journey unnecessary it becomes irrelevant whether that journey might have been made by car or by public transport. When you like being where you are there is less reason to always be travelling to somewhere else. Joyless, boring urban environments which offer no stimulation are traffic generators. Most people currently spend most of their time wishing they could escape from their architecture and they need a car to do that. We should blame the architecture for the resulting carbon footprint, not the car. We focus on the car when we would do better to realise that the car is an architectural problem. The usual architectural gimmicks like insulation or triple glazing are not only ineffective in achieving carbon-neutrality but are actually counter-productive because they provide an excuse for not addressing the real issues. The trend among architects to say that they are "going green" needs to be looked at a little more closely. Adding more insulation can be an excuse for poor design. It is easy to forget the joy of going out to sit in the winter sun with a good book. When the result of insulation is an enclosed space with poor air quality resulting from all the toxic materials with which we build it becomes obvious that we are building tombs rather than living spaces. The concept of a very small well insulated winter house which unfolds like a flower to become an expansive summer house presents an alternative to 100mm achitecture. Traditional Korean architecture had a very small well insulated core but this was surrounded by expansive open space and even more expansive courtyards. Spitual ambience was all important. Solar water heating is good, but when it becomes an excuse for a house which is twice as large as it needs to be it makes no contributions towards a carbon-neutral New Zealand. Architectural obesity is a much bigger problem than human obesity, and the architectural profession normally services the obese. Architectural firms who say a "green building" will cost a little more are really saying that making architectural obesity a little bigger will solve the environmental problems. Albert Einstein said "The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking which created that situation." Responsible architecture and responsible urban design could make carbon-neutrality possible. When you work from home you need different architectural design. Constant interruptions make work impossible. Design needs to make it apparent that you are in fact "not available". When children walk to school you need a safe public environment. Streets need to be designed for much more than the movement of cars. A street is not an engineering problem. It is a social problem. If old people are to stay at home close to the community instead of moving to a retirement home they need both isolation from their families and a place where they can gather. Social spaces in our cities, such as the hard stand at Okahu Bay, are currently being destroyed by council planners. The planning process needs to change. When old people are driven out of the city the carbon footprint of the city increases. The way we currently plan and the way we build make it impossible to have a carbon-neutral New Zealand. The footprint being established by the Manukau City Council, for example, on greenfield sites will make carbon-neutrality impossible for at least a hundred years. The built environment does not change quickly. The environmental mistakes curremtly being made by local government all over New Zealand will be around for at least a hundred years and probably much longer. Radical change is needed. When the people finally arrive, long after the planners and developers have left, there is very little they can do to make their lives carbon-neutral. An efficient use of resources suggests we should focus on the built environment above all else. The problems are here and the solutions are here. |
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