Volume 10 Number 2 October 2009

T
Volume 10 Number 2 October 2009
RANS SCAN
A global scan of emerging trends in mobility and the built environment
Photo by Austal
A HIGH-PERFORMANCE Austal ferry on sea trials off the Western Australian coast. (See: < http://www.austal.
com>) This ferry, which can reach 42 knots, is now one of a fleet of similar passenger vessels operating between
Hong Kong and Macau’s Cotai Strip resort. Yet although WA is a world leader in the design and construction of
such craft, the State’s own water transport is under developed. In this issue we look at world trends to create new
“marine highways” and the potential for Perth to give a boost to its own water transport. (See pages 3-8.)
Getting creative about public space
could pay significant dividends
A
RCHITECTURE dictates the look of a city
but it is public space that determines how a
city feels. If it does not feel right, then people
keep to themselves and a city lacks a sense of vitality and that has consequences both for the local economy
and public health. In this edition of Trans Scan we examine the phenomena and the rethinking now taking
place towards public space.
In particularly we look at the suggestions
made by Danish-born urban planner, Jan Gehl, on how
Perth could create public space of “international significance” if it were to “rediscover” the river and treat
itself to a thriving waterfront district. (See pages 1518.) We also report on more general efforts in Australia to link the design of good public space with the fight
against obesity and the encouragement of healthier
lifestyles. (See “Healthy space” page 16.)
But in developing public space of greater vitality it is also worth remembering how the arts can
help in its achievement. Social and political theorist
Benjamin R. Barber has been examining the issue in
the wake of New York’s decision to ban traffic and
create a pedestrian piazza around Time Square. * To
Barber there is an “art of public space” that goes well
beyond blocking cars. He wants to see the arts community given the task of producing “creative public
space” that offers people a “deep sense of commonality, interactivity, connectivity and community”.
* “The Art of Public Space” by Benjamin R. Barber, The Nation.
12 Aug 2009 <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/barber>
Black Saturday - preliminary findings: See pages 12-14
Department of Planning
and
Main Roads Western Australia
TRANS SCAN is prepared quarterly
by Strategic Scan and two agencies
of the Western Australian Government
Volume 10 • Number 2 • October 2009
ISSN 1440 - 8996
TRANS SCAN
A global scan of emerging trends in mobility
and the built environment
Contents
TransScan reports a variety of views. None are
necessarily those of the publishers.
Overview:
• Getting creative about public space
could pay significant dividends 1
Website: <http://www.transscan.com>
TransScan is an initiative of the
Department of Planning and
Main Roads Western Australia
and is produced by
Strategic Scan
PO Box 1484
Victoria Park East
Perth, Western Australia 6981
Tel/Fax: (08) 9362 6248
Email: [email protected]
For information about distribution, please contact:
<[email protected]>
Reassessing water transport
• Has Perth forgotten its rivers?
• How an international airport found sea legs
• Cruising into profit
EVENTS up-date
Black Saturday: Preliminary findings
• Every emergency needs its Plan B
• Could cars be co-opted for a
public alarm system?
Editorial Committee:
Chairman
John Chortis, Department of Planning
Tel: 9264 7777
<[email protected]>
Rethinking public space
• Giving Perth a new face
• Putting science behind cool planting
• Borrowing from Imperial Rome
Dr Fiona McKenzie,
Housing and Urban Research Institute WA
Tel: 9266 1087
<[email protected]>
Dr Joseph Patroni, Department of Commerce
Tel: 9222 3333
<[email protected]>
Kathryn Martin, Main Roads WA
Tel: 9323 4246
<[email protected]>
George Brown, Department of Planning
Tel: 9216 8486
<[email protected]>
Des Lock, Main Roads WA
Tel: 9323 4185
<[email protected]>
Peter Terry, Strategic Scan
Tel: 9362 6248 <[email protected]>
Disclaimer
Strategic Scan takes all reasonable care in the preparation of this
document which represents the results of scanning and analysis
over the past three months from sources listed within, but accepts
no responsibility for any loss which may be sustained by any person
or organisation that relies on information in this document.
7
Safety & health
• Europe divided over new plan to save lives
9-10
• Never mind the roads, what about the rules?
9
• Scooting dangers
10
TransScan is available in alternative formats to assist people
who are unable to read this version.Initial
requests should be made to
Strategic Scan (Tel: 08 9362 6248)
Members
3-8
4
6
12-14
13
15-18
16
17
Adapting to climate
• Back to the future, via the Thirties
18
TRANSNet - Internet review
19
Adapting to climate / Books and reports
• What happens if climate change
brings a money drought?
• How smaller homes would help solve
Australia’s CO2 problems
19
20
About TransScan
TransScan monitors change world-wide and is based on
analysis of information scanned by staff of the Department
of Planning , Main Roads Western Australia, the Department of Commerce and the research organisation, Strategic
Scan. The aim is to stimulate the informed discussion
necessary for the agencies to operate more effectively in a
period of rapid change. The subject matter will often challenge assumptions. At the same time it seeks to familiarise
readers with an ever-changing environment. It is not possible
to predict tomorrow, but it is possible to make calculated
assessments about the future. Fundamental to this approach
is the recognition that the future is here now. When decisions are made on what is thought the future will bring,
those decisions help shape that future. Information which
appears in TransScan does not represent definitive research.
The contents are the result of a scan made in the past few
months. On an ongoing basis, such scans will expose ever
more new and emerging themes.
TransScan
Reassessing water transport
Photo by Billie Fairclough
EARY morning commuters make their way to a ferry at the South Perth jetty. Today the city’s river system is little
used for transport yet many of the city’s mobility problems could be solved if ferries were given higher priority.
Has Perth forgotten its rivers?
W
OULD Perth function
better if it made greater
use of its rivers? There
is increasing evidence both locally and from overseas to suggest
that from social and economic
standpoints, Perth has much to
gain from giving its rivers a more
important role.
In recent weeks the internationally renown urban designer,
Jan Gehl has focused attention on
Perth’s river system by proposing
that a lively new residential area
be built by the waterfront close
to the CBD to enable thousands
more people to live, work, and
study within the central precinct.
(See pages 15-16.)
Added to that there is
now growing evidence internationally that where cities have vi-
able river systems, the waterways
can play an important part in the
adaptation to climate change and
in the alternatives this can offer if a future surge in oil prices
disrupts road transport networks.
(See next page.)
In Perth, much of the
preparatory work for assessing
new river transport has already
been done - at least for passenger ferry services. For example, a
study conducted for the Western
Australian Government in 2000
found that the best time to introduce additional ferry services
would be when major new foreshore developments were complete. (1) The 2000 study was
interested in introducing ferry
services like Brisbane’s CityCat.
(2) It investigated 20 possible
jetty sites along the Swan and
Canning River foreshores and
suggested that riverside developments like those near Burswood,
Canning Bridge, East Perth, as
well as the University of Western
Australia, could provide the passengers to make new services viable.
So is it time to re-examine the 2000 report?
Nine years on, the arguments for expanding Perth’s
river services are certainly much
stronger and today there is an
even greater likelihood that new
services would succeed. Perth’s
population is larger than it was
in 2000 and ferry services are
an attractive travel alternative to
commuters. New ferries would
Continued next page
3
4
TransScan
A new generation
takes to water
M
ANY of Europe’s new generation
of riverboat captains are given
initial training on simulators like these two students at Germany’s ABI
(Ausbildungsinitiative Binnenschiffahrt
e.V) training centre at Duisburg. * Development of the simulator was part funded
by the European Union and it includes a
fully equipped bridge with helms for both
inland waterway and coastal navigation. #
The EU now sees water transport as a key
to cutting greenhouse gas. It calculates
that in terms of fuel per km/tonne a selfpropelled barge can carry 10 to 50 times
more than a truck and 75 times more than
a cargo aircraft. However the global economic problems have slowed the pace of a
transport switch - with one notable exception. (See: “Cruising to profit” page 6.)
Photo by Schiffer-Berufskolleg RHEIN
Reassessing water transport
Continued from previous page
also offer a valuable addition to
Perth’s tourist infrastructure.
The newly published
Gehl report itself sees Perth’s
future foreshores becoming peppered with jetties over the next
15 years and the “Perth Metropolitan Transport Strategy19952029” predicted that by 2029 ferry services would be responsible
for about 12.5% of the city’s enlarged public transport network.
If as Jan Gehl suggests,
Perth’s central foreshore was to
be opened up for high-density
mixed use development, then
ferry services could become an
integral part of the new “riverside
city” - and that 12.5% share could
be greatly exceeded.
Previous arguments for a
build up of ferry services have included the benefits the city could
enjoy from a reduction in car dependency, lower petrol consumption, and less pollution. In addition more ferry services would
provide an opportunity to intensify land use around individual
ferry piers.
* <http://www.schulschiff-rhein.de/>
# <http://www.dst-org.de/intro_e.htm>
But from a broader perspective, there are now many
other reasons to expand river
transport. TransScan has just
conducted a survey of international developments involving
inland water transport (IWT) (see
below) and found that despite
global economic difficulties cities around the world are now investing heavily in advanced new
ferry and barge services.
From the Danube to the
Hudson, from the Thames to the
Pearl River Delta, transport planners have begun to refer to new
“marine highways” as a solution
to their economic, social and environmental challenges.
Interestingly in many
cases it is Australian technology
that is providing the solutions
- and as the photo on page one
shows, it is advanced new ferries
from Western Australia that are
answering particular challenges
along China’s Pearl River.
Two places where ferries are set to come into greater
prominence are on the Thames
(See: “Olympic boost”) and in
Hong Kong where the interna-
tional airport is about to open an
advanced new SkyPier to ferry
airline passengers to and from
the river delta’s surrounding cities. (See opposite page.)
At the same time waterways - and that includes rivers,
canals, and protected coastal seaways - are receiving considerable
attention for the opportunity they
can offer to remove freight from
the roads and so reduce greenhouse emissions.
In California, government approval has just been
given for a major road-to-water
switch that will eliminate literally thousands of truck journeys.
(See: “Marine highways”)
The reasoning behind
such a move can be explained
by a study released by the US
National Waterways Foundation.
It compared the performance of
America’s barges, trucks and
trains and discovered that as a
means of freight transport, barges
won easily. (3) “One common
15-barge river tow has the same
capacity as 1050 trucks and 216
rail cars pulled by six locomoContinued next page
TransScan
Continued from previous page
Reassessing water transport
tives,” says the study. It said that
apart from the enormous savings
in fuel, there were also significant safety benefits from a switch
to IWT. In terms of cargo moved,
for every person injured by a
barge, 125.2 people were injured
in rail crashes and 2171.5 injured
in truck crashes.
The scan showed:
Olympic boost
Signposts have begun to appear
at key London railway stations
suggesting commuters avoid
the Underground rush hour and
travel instead aboard a far less
congested Thames ferry.(4) The
encouragement to switch modes
is part of a larger plan by the
city’s mayor, Boris Johnson,
to offer added stimulus to river
transport and give London an effective and integrated network of
ferry services in time for the London Olympics in 2012. (5) Even
without the mayor’s help, there is
little doubt that many Londoners
are taking to their new breed of
ferry services. For example, last
year London ferries carried some
5 million passengers - 3 million
more than they did in 2000. Interestingly many of those extra passengers are travelling on Australian-made ferries - the so-called
“River Runners” manufactured
by the Cairns-based Queensland
shipbuilder, Aimtek. (6) Under
Mr Johnson’s plan the aim now
is to boost ferry passenger figures
to 7.5 million annually by 2012.
(7) In that way London will give
itself a viable and considerably
less congested transit system to
carry the tens of thousands of
spectators to the various Olympic venues. The Mayor’s expansion plan includes building more
piers in central London, offering
better signage to the piers, and an
integration of ferry fares with the
rest of the city’s passenger transport services. In particular this
Continued next page
Photos by Hong Kong International Airport
How an international airport
found its sea legs
T
RAVELLERS from Hong Kong International Airport are
seen here boarding one of the airport ferries that provide a
high-speed link to the seven major cities on China’s Pearl
River Delta.
Since the “temporary” pier was installed six years ago it
has handled more than 8.5 million passengers and turned into a
hub for one of the fastest growing ferry services in the world.
By the end of the year those temporary facilities will be replaced with a HK$1 billion installation eight times the current size
and complete an underground automated rail service to the airport’s two major air terminals.
According to the airport authority, the so-called
SkyPier now offers 72 daily ferry services to and from Shenzhen’s
ports of Shekou and Fuyong, Dongguan’s Humen, Zhongshan,
Zhuhai’s Jiuzhou and the port of Macau.
Since July there are also services to the new coastal city of
Nansha. Airlines seem to have embraced the ferry concept. Air
passengers are now even able to complete check-in formalities at
the linked ferry terminals.
5
6
TransScan
Continued from previous page
Reassessing water transport
will mean that ferry passengers
will be able to use London’s inter-modal “Oyster” smart card to
pay their fares. (8)
Photos by Tauck World Discovery
Above: The new luxury riverboat, MV Swiss Jewel. Below, the vessel’s
main foyer.
Cruising into profit
I
F there is one section of the transport industry that has continued to
fair reasonably well during the global downturn it’s the river cruise
industry - at least in Europe. MV Swiss Jewel, pictured above, is a
case in point. Launched in April, the ship is one of a new breed of luxury
riverboats taking to Europe’s inland waterways. This one can accommodate 118 passengers in staterooms and suites and a crew of 29. The
US-based, Tauck World Discovery *, which operates Swiss Jewel has
built two similar ships in the past three years and according to company
spokesman, Tom Armstrong, Tauck has seen a “double digit” growth in
business ever since. “While all sectors of travel have been impacted by
the economic downturn, river cruising remains very popular and a robust part of our business,” Mr Armstrong told TransScan.
But while the riverboat owners have been doing well during the
recession, others on the inland waterways are finding the economic conditions tough going. The latest market report# from the European Commission says with the exception of cruise operators, demand for water
transport has been low. That was in marked contrast to 2008 when a
record 100 new self-propelled barges were commissioned to help meet
the surge in demand that preceeded the global economic downturn.
* <http://www.tauck.com>
# “Inland Navigation in Europe: Market Observation 2008 (2)” European Commission (Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine) July 2009 <http://
www.ccr-zkr.org/>
Barge Games
London’s plans for river transport to serve the Olympics also
include a river freight program
to ensure a large proportion of
building material is carried by
barge rather than truck. One of
the main Game’s venues will be
Stratford on Avon - a town amply
served by waterways. The UK’s
Olympic Delivery Authority is
now having waterways into the
town upgraded to handle largescale barge traffic. (7)
Space to build
Sigurd Grava, Professor Emeritus
of Urban Planning at Columbia
University and long time advocate of river transport, describes
inland waterways as frequently
“the only underused or underutilised surfaces within the
boundaries of contemporary cities”. (9) He certainly believes the
time is ripe for a revival and it is
a belief shared by many across
North America and Europe. The
European Commission now sees
“significant potential” for increasing the modal share of inland waterway transport “due to
the fact that congestion on roads
will increase and rail capacity is
limited, while waterways offer
free capacity”. Most importantly
the commission points out that
during climate change the impact
on the environment will be lower
from building up water transport
than any other form of transport.
The EU is now has a Europe-wide
program called “Marco Polo” to
encourage a switch from road
transport to rail, coastal ships and
services on inland waterways.
(10) The EU has also just compiled its first collection of “good
practice” examples of where such
a switch has worked. (11) For
Continued next page
TransScan
Continued from previous page
Events
up-date
13th National Sustainable
Economic Growth for Regional
Australia Conference (SEGRA)
27–29 Oct 2009
Kalgoorlie-Boulder, WA.
<http://www.segra.com.au/segra/>
Fire Australia 2009 conference
and exhibition
28-29 Oct 2009
Hobart, Tas
<http://www.fireaustralia.com.
au/general-category/conferenceprogram-overview.html>
Australasian College of
Road Safety Conference
5-6 Nov 2009
Perth, WA
<http://www.acrs.org.au/>
Australian Intelligent Transport
Systems Summit 2009
18-20 Nov 2009
Melbourne, Vic
<http://www.itssummit.com.au/>
State of Australian Cities 2009 24-27 Nov 2009
Perth, WA
< h t t p : / / w w w. p r o m a c o . c o m .
au/2009/soac>
6th National Housing
Conference
24-27 Nov 2009
Melbourne, Vic
<http://www.nationalhousingconference.org.au/melbourne2009>
Urban Transport World
Australia 2010
22-25 Feb 2010
Sydney, NSW
<http://www.terrapinn.com/2010/
utw/>
Disclaimer: The inclusion of items
in this column does not represent
endorsement by the publishers.
Reassessing water transport
example, in Finland manufacturers have successfully diverted an
annual 200,000
tonnes of paper
shipments from
road to inland
waterways.
In the Netherlands, the
Dutch are
pioneering
a new breed
of “inland containership” and in France, Airbus has
designed special roll-on roll-off
self-propelled barges to collect
and deliver aircraft components to
the assembly centre at Bordeaux.
(One special Airbus requirement
was that the barges be designed
to squeeze under Bordeaux’s
unusually low and narrow stone
bridges.)
Recycling business
A key to encouraging greater use
of waterways is the willingness
by planning authorities to allow
new forms of industrial developments at waterfront locations
- that is according to a European
Commission report. For example
in London there is the chance of
eliminating up to 100,000 truck
journeys a day from the city’s
roads but it will require siting a recycling centre beside the Thames
and building riverside collection
and distribution points for service by barge. According to the
EU’s “best practice” report, the
proposed recycling centre will be
able to handle 1.6 million tonnes
of waste a year and all those
thousands of daily truck journeys
could be whittled down to just 25
trips a day by barge. (12)
Food options
What started as a multi-million
dollar clean up of New York’s
Hudson River could end with
the State developing a new transport hub to divert road freight to
barges. The opportunity
has arisen because
the clean up has
required
building
a modern riverside
transport hub at Fort
Edward - a small town
north of Albany. Today PCB contaminants
dredged from the river
floor are being barged
to the facility and taken
away by rail. But when
the clean up is complete
in six years time, urban
planners from the State
University of New York College (SUNY) believe the facility
should be converted into a European-style “freight village” # to
offer a greener option for distributing New York’s food supplies.
“The whole idea is to cut the carbon footprint of cargo transportation and the best way to do that is
to make the connection between
rail and water transport and what
gets phased out is trucking,” says
SUNY’s Associate Professor of
Landscape Architecture, Emanuel
Carter. (13) SUNY have drawn
up a detailed feasibility and subContinued next page
# Footnote: “Freight villages” or
“Urban Consolidation Centres”
have been promoted in Europe since
early 2000. They are not just intermodal hubs but designed as a consolidation point for goods before
final delivery in “clean-green vehicles”. The concept is based on the
fact that deliveries in inner urban
areas produce a disproportionately
large amount of greenhouse gas.
Australian freight consultant, Elizabeth Grace Boulton, has recently
urged Australian States to investigate the concept - and to link such
freight villages to waterways. See her
article: “Sustainable freight village
concept” in Transport and Logistics
News <http://www.tandlnews.com.
au/2008/07/14/article/Sustainabledirections-the-freight-village-concept/RWJOJXESJY.html>
7
8
TransScan
Reassessing water transport
Continued from previous page
mitted it to New York planning
authorities.
Marine ‘highways’
In California, officials at the
Bay Area Air Quality Management District are becoming so
concerned by vehicle emissions
that they have just approved a
switch to river barges to carry up
to 50% of the agricultural cargo
being dispatched from the farming town of Stockton to the Bay
region’s port of Oakland. (14)
They are calling the new route a
“marine highway” and as such it
will be one of the first of its kind
in the US. When services begin
next year, the barges pulled by
low-emission tugs will be aiming
to eliminate up to 4900 truck trips
a week. The modal switch will
eventually mean a cut in emissions of about 15 tonnes a year.
Swapping cars for ferries
Building high-density housing
developments around rail stations
has long been a popular planning
concept for weaning commuters
away from their cars. But would
the idea also work if such developments were built around ferry
piers? Robert Yaro, president of
New York’s Regional Plan Association is sure it would and is
now pressing for a network of
new ferry services to help revitalise the city’s often blighted waterfront. (15) He says there are many
areas of city waterfront that are
far from subways and rail services and giving ferry access would
do more to boost development
than by offering a bus service.
Ferries and meatballs
New York has also discovered
that retailing can revitalise the
waterfront as well as encourage
ferry services. (See too above:
“Swapping cars for ferries”.) In
this case, Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, is sponsoring a “free”
ferry service between Lower
Manhattan and the company’s
new waterfront store in Brooklyn. The idea is to use the ferry
as a lure for potential shoppers.
But according to one newspaper
report, passengers are not obliged
to buy anything to qualify for a
ticket on the round trip. In fact
they can just enjoy the 40-minute
free cruise. However if any passenger feels hungry when they
reach Brooklyn, IKEA is selling
its Swedish meatballs, lingonberries and mashed potatoes to ferry
travellers for US$6.28. (16)
Workboats and chips
While IKEA is integrating meatballs into its ferry services (See
above) in the UK, British Waterways is trying something similar
with fried fish-and-chips - well
almost. In this case fish-and-chip
cooking oil is being integrated
into the fuel cycle and turned into
biofuel for workboats. (17)
References:
(1) “Additional Ferry Services on the Swan and Canning Rivers” by the former Ministry for Planning in association with the
Department of Transport and Swan River Trust Oct 2000.
(2) CityCat services, Brisbane City Council <http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_1231>
(3) New national study compares freight transport by barge, truck and train” 8 July 2008 US National Waterways Foundation
media statement.<http://waterwayscouncil.org/study/NWF%20TTI%20Study%20wire%20release.pdf>
(4) “Boris Johnson to open up boat services to Oyster cards” The Guardian 6 April 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/06/boris-johnson-river-thames-transport>
(5) “By the River” Greater London Authority policy document April 2009 <http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/publications/2009/docs/by-the-river.pdf>
(6) Aimtek <http://www.aimtek.com.au/>
(7) “By the River” Greater London Authority policy document April 2009 page 6 <http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/publications/2009/docs/by-the-river.pdf>
(8) “What is Oyster” Transport for London written and recorded commentary on how the smart card system works. <http://
www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/oysteronline/2732.aspx>
(9) “Urban transport systems: Choices for Communities” by Sigurd Grava McGraw-Hill 2002.
(10) EU Marco Polo program <http://ec.europa.eu/transport/marcopolo/home/home_en.htm>
(11) “Platina: Good practices report 1” European Union 15 June 2009 <http://www.naiades.info/page.php?id=100&path=95>
(12) “Platina: Good practices report 1” European Union 15 June 2009 pp141-142
<http://www.naiades.info/page.php?id=100&path=95>
(13) “Fort Edward Distribution Center” SUNY-ESF June 2009 <http://www.esf.edu/ecenter/goinggreen/ftedward.htm>
(14) “Air District funds innovative marine highway project to cut diesel pollution” Bay Area Air Quality Management District
media statement 5 Aug 2009 <http://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/Files/Communications%20and%20Outreach/Publications/
News%20Releases/2009/marinehwy_090805.ashx >
(15) “Reflections on Waterfront Usage” by Robert Yaro Regional Plan Association July 2009 <http://www.rpa.org/2009/07/
spotlight-vol-8-no-13-reflections-on-waterfront-usage.html>
(16 ) “Water taxi to IKEA in Brooklyn doubles as a free cruise” Dallas Morning News 22 June 2009 <http://www.dallasnews.
com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/travel/thisweek/stories/DN-nywatertaxi_0621tra.ART.State.Edition1.4af292e.html>
(17) “Canal cleans up with biofuel boat” British Waterways media statement 15 July 2009
<http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/newsroom/all-press-releases/display/id/2473>
TransScan
Safety & health
Europe divided over new plan to save lives
A
LTHOUGH its implementation is controversial, Europe intends to
roll out an automated system of
road crash surveillance that EU
officials believe will cut the continent’s annual road toll by up to
2500.
Key players like Britain
and France are disputing whether
so many lives will be saved and
argue the cost benefits of the rollout cannot be justified. (1) But
most EU members like Germany,
Italy and Spain support the pro-
posals and even non-EU members
like Switzerland and Norway say
they want to join to make the system pan-European.
Just before this edition of TransScan went to press,
the EU’s Telecommunications
Commissioner, Viviane Reding,
warned reluctant signatories that
the Commission was now prepared to make compliance compulsory to ensure the system was
fully operational by 2014. (2)
The system causing the
controversy is known simply
as “eCall”. (3) Its uses satellite
navigation, mobile communications and a “black box” fitted to
vehicles to automatically inform
emergency services when and
where a crash has happened. (See
diagram next page) Advocates
say that in an emergency eCall
will drastically reduce response
times and enable an ambulance
to be dispatched in minutes.
EU studies suggest
eCall will cut response times in
Continued next page
Never mind the roads, what about the rules?
T
HE World Health Organisation does not
say where in Africa
this scene (right) was photographed but it serves to illustrate how poor infrastructure
is heightening the international road toll.
WHO has just published the first global assessment of road safety* and has
found that half the 1.27 million people who die on the
roads each year are pedestrians, motorbike riders or
cyclists. More than 90% of
those fatalities occur in low
and middle-income countries
and invariably a critical factor is a lack of paved roads
and separate footpaths.
But WHO is not just
urging the world to build
more infrastructure. It also
wants low and middle-income
countries to at least introduce road safety laws. “We
found that in many countries, the laws necessary to protect people are either not in place or are not comprehensive,” says WHO’s director-general, Dr Margaret
Chan. “Even when there is adequate legislation, most
countries report that their enforcement is low.”
The WHO study found that less than a third of
the 178 countries surveyed had laws to reduce speeds
in urban areas, less than half had 0.05 blood alcohol
limits to reduce drink-driving, and while 90% of countries had helmet laws only 40% had laws that covered
both rider and passenger. Dr Chan says if there is not
greater effort to promote road safety then on present
trends the world’s road toll could top 2.4 million annually by 2030. WHO has also warned that in high-income countries like Australia where the road toll is now
relatively low, that there is no room for complacency.
Even the world’s top performers have “stagnated” in
creating a truly safe road transport system, says WHO
director, Dr Etienne Krug.
* WHO’s “Global status report on road safety” June 2009
<http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241563840_eng.pdf>
9
10
TransScan
Safety & health
How Europe’s eCall system will identify crash victims
Satellite tracking
Most appropriate PSAP
Vehicle in
incident
Voice (112)
MSD
Continued from previous page
rural areas by 50% and trim 40%
off the time casualties in an urban
area will need to wait for a medical team. The studies have found
the cuts in response time will be
enough to save 2500 lives a year
- when all vehicles are fitted with
the black boxes.
Currently across Europe
about 40,000 people are killed
each year in road crashes while a
further 1.8 million people are injured. The economic loss caused
by the toll is estimated to be more
than €160 billion (AUD $272
billion).
Once the black box roll
out starts, eCall’s black boxes
will also make it possible for individual vehicles to be identified
for electronic toll collection. German researchers also want eCall
used to create a mobile alarm
system to warn the public of any
pending disasters like wildfires.
(See page 13)
The scan also showed:
Mobility scooting dangers
They may be a good way of keeping the elderly mobile, but motorised scooters seem to be taking a
high toll in deaths and injuries.
According to Peter Kell, deputy
chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission,
scooters have been involved in
71 deaths and “hundreds” of in-
Voice (112)
MSD
Illustration by European Commission
THIS is how eCall works. (See page 9) If a crash occurs, in-vehicle
sensors will automatically trigger an “eCall”. If the vehicle occupants are able to speak, they will be able to talk to an emergency
service operator via a so-called 112-voice connection. (“112” is to
become Europe’s new emergency phone number.) Simultaneously
the vehicle’s eCall black box will transmit the “minimum set of
data” or MSD to enable the vehicle’s location to be pinpointed.
The MSD will include the time of the crash as well as the vehicle’s
location as indicated by navigational satellites. Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) are the physical location where the emergency calls are received and the information passed on to emergency services. The PSAPs will be able to link through to private
organizations like General Motor’s OnStar service. (See too: “No
car chases?” page 11).
juries nationwide since 2000. (4)
The ACCC is now taking the lead
on the issue. It is forming a reference group drawn from injury
research organizations, State and
Federal government agencies
and representatives of older consumers, and intends to conduct
hearings. “The group may also
consider the need for driver training, medical check-ups, wider
use of helmets and an Australian
Standard to provide design and
testing requirements for motorised mobility scooters,” Mr Kell
says. “We will develop a national
consumer education strategy for
users of these scooters. However,
the rate of death is alarming and
users may not appreciate the risks
involved with the scooters.” As a
starting point, Mr Kell is urging
all scooter drivers to wear a bicycle helmet.
Drug problems
One factor contributing to the high
toll suffered by scooter users (See
previous item) could be medication - at least if new US research
is an indicator. A study conducted
by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has found a large majority of motorists over the age of
55 are unaware of the potential
dangers of driving while on medication. (5) The study found that
78% of respondents 55 and older
took one or more medications yet
only 28% had some awareness of
the impact the drug might have on
driving performance. The study
found that the older a person got,
the more likely they were to be
on medication - and the less likely they were to be aware of the
risks of driving impairment. The
Continued next page
TransScan
Continued from previous page
foundation is now urging doctors
to educate their patients on the
potentials of driving impairments
and “help them make safe driving
decisions”.
No car chases?
High-speed car chases could
become technically impossible
within a few years. Instead police will have the ability to use
a remote signal to slow the offending vehicle - or even prevent
it from starting in the first place.
Tests on the system have already
begun in the US where General
Motors is introducing the “ignition blocking technology” as
part of its “OnStar” service of invehicle communications and security. (6) GM says the idea is to
use the technology to cut down
vehicle theft, which in the US sees
one car being stolen every three
seconds.
Model behaviour
A person’s choice of car is supposed to say a lot about their personality - and perhaps too about
their behaviour on the road. A
US ratings company specialising in auto insurance decided to
examine the theory by identifying which makes of vehicles are
involved in the most driving offences. The company, Quality
Planning, used for its investigation 2008 data on US traffic violations and based its calculations
on the number of violations each
model was involved in for every
100,000 miles of driving. (7) The
researchers found whatever the
preconception, it was not high
performance cars that topped the
list of violation. In fact the vehicle that attracted the most tickets
for traffic offences was the Hummer H2/H3 - the civilian versions
of the military “Humvee”. The
Hummers attracted more than
four times the average number of
tickets. “The sense of power that
Hummer drivers derive from their
vehicle may be directly correlat-
ed with the number of violations
they incur,” says Quality Planning’s president, Dr. Raj Bhat.
“Or perhaps Hummer drivers, by
virtue of their driving position,
are less likely to notice road hazards, signs, pedestrians, and other
drivers.” At the other end of the
spectrum, drivers of Jaguar XJs
appeared the best behaved.
Lights off
A TransScan report on how a German town was trying to reduce its
road toll by banning traffic lights
(8) included a footnote mentioning that the world’s first traffic
lights had been installed outside
Parliament House, London in
1868. Now that very same part of
London - Westminster - is to be
made the centre of another experiment in switching off the lights.
In one of a series of experiments,
the junction by Westminster
Abbey will go without traffic
lights for six weeks while CCTV
monitors the results. (9) “We will
be creating a bit of indecision in
all road users’ minds to create a
safe environment, “ said Martin
Low, Westminster City Council’s
head of transportation. “When
Safety & health
Photo by Ian Britton/FreePhoto.com
Who needs traffic lights? London’s
City of Westminister is to conduct a
traffic management test without them
- to see if the extra tension really
does make people take more care.
(See: Lights off”.)
lights are out we have noticed
that drivers are far more considerate and show more care and attention than they are when they
have the reassurance of traffic
lights.”
References:
(1) “eCall” UK House of Commons Hansard Written Answers 5 Mar 2009
<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090305/text/
90305w0003.htm>
(2) “Last call to implement car safety system voluntarily” EU media statement
21 Aug 2009 <http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/
1245&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en>
(3) “eCall: Time for deployment” Communication from the Commission to the
European Parliament 21 Aug 2009
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/esafety/doc/comm_20090821/
com_2009_0434_1_en.pdf>
(4) “Experts to discuss mobility scooter deaths” Australian Competition and Consumer Commission media statement 27 Aug 2009 <http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/890198>
(5) “Senior safety and mobility” AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety media statement 11 Aug 2009 <http://www.AAAFoundation.org>
(6) “Ignition block system remotely disables stolen vehicles” Medialink July 2009
<http://www.mediaseed.tv/Story.aspx?story=36845>
(7) “What You Drive Defines Your Driving Style (Sometimes To the Detriment
of Others)” Quality Planning media statement January 2009 <http://www.qualityplanning.com/>
(8) “No more traffic lights” TransScan Feb 2009 <http://www.transscan.com>
(9) “Traffic lights to be switched off in safety experiment” Daily Telegraph 29 Aug
2009
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6106891/Traffic-lights-to-beswitched-off-in-safety-experiment.html>
11
12 TransScan
Black Saturday: Preliminary findings
Regeneration begins in
Victoria’s burnt forests.
Photo by Keith Pakenham,
CFA Public Affairs
AS cities expand, peri-urban areas create special challenges for planners - as the Victorian bushfires have
dramatically illustrated. TransScan’s June edition featured a special report on Black Saturday - including the statistic that up to half of Australia’s vegetation fires occur on the urban fringes. In this edition we
look at the Black Saturday Royal Commission initial findings - and ideas for novel disaster alarm system.
Every emergency needs its Plan B
T
HE first recommendations
flowing from Victoria’s
Black Saturday Royal
Commission show that if communities are going to withstand a
new era of ever-fiercer bushfires
then authorities will need to develop many more “Plan Bs”.
For example, next time a
public building is planned for an
area prone to bushfires, the Royal
Commission wants consideration
given to designing it to double as
a community refuge in a bushfire
emergency.
That was also one of the
recommendations that came out
of the Ash Wednesday enquiry
back in the 1980s. More recently
it is an idea that has been downplayed on the grounds that such
refuges make people less self reliant and in an emergency more
likely to risk leaving their threatened homes as late as possible.
But the Black Saturday
Royal Commission makes it clear
that the events of February which
left 173 people dead and thousands homeless (2) have marked
a significant change in the way
future bushfires may behave
- and the way people caught up
by such infernos respond. Among
the 51 recommendations of its Interim Report, the Royal Commission presses for more refuges to
be identified or built pointing out
that the “current lack of refuges
fails to provide for those who
find themselves in danger when
their plans fail, are overwhelmed
by circumstances, change their
minds, or have no plan.”
Among those recommendations directly effecting planning authorities are:
• That community refuges be
identified and designated.
• That State and Federal Governments begin talks on the use
of remote imagery to support
bushfire suppression operations.
(Note: In the light of the West
Atlas oil spill off the WA coast,
remote imagery discussions
might usefully extend to include
other large scale disasters.)
• That statewide wildfire areas
be identified and that a new
system of “township protection planning” be introduced to
better determine the resources
a community might need in an
emergency.
The Interim Report says
that Victoria’s lack of refuges
also threatens those people who
are away from their homes such
as employees, visitors, tourists,
travellers and campers. “Any option, which reduces the risk to
people in these circumstances,
warrants consideration by the
State,” says the report.
The report does suggest
that individuals should identify
their own “safer places” where
they can retreat to if a Plan B is
needed. “These arrangements
could include options like their
own in-ground swimming pool
or a neighbour’s ploughed paddock,” says the report.
Mention of private options prompted Victoria’s Building Commission to issue its own
“community information sheet
on bushfire bunkers”(3) saying
that there is “no technical standard currently in place for bunkers”. The information sheet says
there is “no conclusive research”
on whether bunkers actually save
Continued next page
TransScan 13
Black Saturday: Preliminary findings
Continued from previous page
lives and anyone considering
building one needs to take into
consideration not only its location and construction but whether
“you and your family are psychologically ready to stay in the bunker during a fire.”
The bulk of the Royal
Commission’s recommendations
on matters affecting planning,
building design and land use will
be contained in its Final Report
due to be published July 31 next
year after a further 28 weeks of
public hearing. Meanwhile the
Interim Report is largely de-
signed to influence bushfire management before the onset of the
next bushfire season - and that
includes initial steps to improve
the refuge situation.
The Interim report says
the Victorian Government is currently working to identify “neighbourhood safer places” and educate the public about their use
before the next bushfire season
begins.
The Interim Report has
also given considerable emphasis
to the need for better quality and
more timely warnings and information about bushfires and found
that during Black Saturday 80%
of calls to the Victorian Bushfire
Information Line went unanswered. The Interim Report is recommending a greatly improved
telecommunication system, the
re-introduction of warning sirens
and an extension of official warnings onto commercial radio and
TV.
Elsewhere
TransScan
has found developments overseas
where significant advances are
being made in emergency warning systems. German researchers
are now advocating the sounding
of remotely controlled car horns
Continued next page
Could cars be co-opted for a public alarm system?
W
ITH climate change threatening increasingly fierce bushfires has the
time come to roll out an alarm system
of public sirens? In the wake of Black Saturday
there are many Victorians who want to see the
return of the fire sirens that used to pepper country towns. But would such systems - and such
old technology - really be effective?
There has been a similar debate in Europe where some have been arguing for a return
of the old air raid sirens to give the public warning of floods, large fires or serious industrial accidents like major chemical spills.
Reactivating a siren system would not
be cheap and in Germany it has even been calculated that the cost of a fully operational, 24/7
nationwide siren network could cost “several
100 million Euros”.
But a group of German researchers
from the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological
Trend Analysis may have come up with a cheap,
if controversial solution. They want to create a
Europe-wide alarm network using the horns of
parked cars. (a) The institute says the infrastructure for such a system is already due to be rolled
out in the shape of Europe’s just as controversial
“eCall” system. (b) (See too: “Europe divided
over new plan to save lives” page 9.)
Although “eCall” is specifically designed to help emergency services respond faster to road crashes, the Germans believe eCall’s
Continued next page
14 TransScan
Black Saturday: Preliminary findings
Continued from previous page
as an alternative to fixed location sirens (See
page 13); while in the US tests have begun on
a new all-emergencies website that allows public participation and minute by minute updates
(See: TRANSNet page 19).
Although the Royal Commission will
be investigating building standards in detail
during its next set of hearings, the Victorian
Building Commission has issued a series of
interim papers on building in fire-prone areas.
(4)(5)
Photo by Keith Pakenham, CFA Public Affairs
References:
(1) Royal Commission Interim Report Aug 2009
<http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/InterimReport>
(2) “All the pointers suggest major policy changes
are needed” TransScan’s Black Saturday Report June
2009 pp 3-8 <http://www.transscan.com>
(3) Community Information Sheet: Bushfire bunkers
Victorian Building Commission 20 Aug 2009 <http://
www.buildingcommission.com.au/resources/documents/Bushfire_bunkers_Fact_sheet.pdf>
(4) “Building Amendment (Bushfire Construction)
Further Interim Regulations 2009” Building Commission, Victoria 1 Sept 2009
<http://www.buildingcommission.com.au/resources/
documents/BCPracticeNotes09-42.pdf>
(5) “Building Controls for Bushfire Safety-Interim”
Victorian Building Commission Aug 2009 <http://
www.buildingcommission.com.au/resources/documents/BCPracticeNotes09-42.pdf>
Continued from previous page
Co-opting parked cars for public sirens
car mounted “black box” could easily double as
a device that would allow the car’s horn to be
activated remotely.
As the German researchers envision
it, the eCall system would let operators at civil
protection agencies use GPS satellites to pinpoint all parked cars in a disaster threatened area
and then at the press of a button activate all the
car horns as a public warning to anyone in the
vicinity.
According to Guido Huppertz, one of
the researchers, the big advantage of using car
horns is that everyone can hear the alarm sound.
He says others people have suggested alarm systems based on mobile phones - but such a system
would only work if everyone carried a mobile
phone.
Mr Huppertz said the research team had
calculated that in Germany’s case, using car
horns would make for an effective nationwide
alarm system if just 14% of the nation’s cars
where fitted with eCall black boxes.
He said that assuming the eCall rollout
starts at the end of next year, then within two to
four years there would be sufficient black boxes
installed to form a national alarm network.
(a) “Car horns warn against natural disasters”,
Fraunhofer Institute media statement 20 July 2009
<http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/researchnews/2009/july/car-horns-warning-system.jsp>
(b) Briefing on eCall: <http://www.esafetysupport.
org/>
TransScan 15
Rethinking public space
How Danish architect,
Jan Gehl, envisions Perth’s
future: a city where people
live and congregate
by the river.
Illustration by
Gehl Architects
Does Perth need a new face?
“THIS city has a fabulous setting … but still you could spend a full
fortnight in Perth without realising it’s a river city. If anything could
make Perth special in the world, it would be as one of the world’s
most wonderful riverside cities.”
I
Jan Gehl, architect and international consultant on urban design
speaking on ABC Radio about his
new report on Perth.
F a modern city wants lively
streets and a “vibrant public
realm” then it must provide
attractive public space, says Jan
Gehl, the Danish-born urban planner largely accredited with giving
Copenhagen the world’s largest
car-free shopping precinct.
After months re-examining Perth’s city centre* to find
what might be needed to meet
* Footnote: The boundaries of the
core study area were Aberdeen Street
(north), Swan River (south), Victoria
Avenue (east) and the Mitchell freeway (west) - an area of 2.2 million
square meters. Put another way, to
walk across the “core” takes about
20 minutes.
changing lifestyles, Gehl has prescribed a series of “people first”
strategies that would turn the riverfront into a major destination,
encourage more people to live
within the CBD, and progressively squeeze out private cars.
“As today’s citizens have
more options on how to spend
their time, they will only spend
it in the public realm if it is of
high quality and accessibility is
easy and convenient,” he wrote
in his report to the City of Perth
and Department for Planning and
Infrastructure. (1)
Jan Gehl was last commissioned to assess Perth’s citylife in 1994 when he characterized the city centre as offering
“an over-sized shopping mall
- dominated by commercial activities during the days and very
inactive, closed, and uninviting
during the nights.”
A lot has changed in
15 years since, and in line with
Gehl’s earlier recommendations,
the environment for people has
been greatly improved. In his
report card on progress he notes
that footpaths are wider, there are
more trees and Perth has developed a lively café culture. The
number of city cafés and restaurants has increased 190% and
lots more people call the city
home. The city now has seven
times more residents than it did
in 1994, more student institutions and many more places to go
at night. And most importantly
from Gehl’s viewpoint there are
also lots more public places to sit
- bench space is up 47%.
But Jan Gehl believes
there is still much to do - espeContinued next page
16 TransScan
Rethinking public space
Continued from previous page
cially if Perth is to adapt to people’s changing attitudes.
As he states in his latest study: “In western cities of
the 21st century, public life can
no longer be taken for granted!
As cities experience declining
densities, suburban sprawl, increased commuting and more
knowledge intensive labour, still
fewer people depend on urban
public space for their day-to-day
living. As much public space has
lost its original function, e.g. as
market or meeting places, and as
increasing amounts of cars have
pushed out more “soft” social activities, cities all over the world
have lost valuable public space
and have only then realised that
public life disappeared with it.”
To help Perth reverse
the trend and bring more “public
life” back to the city, Jan Gehl is
recommending that Perth make
the most of its unique setting and
“bring people to the water” and
improve connections to Kings
Park - an area largely split from
the “city core” by the freeway.
But Gehl sees the waterfront as key to solving Perth’s
demand for vibrant public space
and has recommended that a “waterfront district” be created with
a mixed development of apartments, shops, cafés, restaurants
and interesting public squares.
He also wants more educational
institutions and students brought
into the city to help promote a
24/7 atmosphere and end what he
sees as the city’s existing “monofunctional” character.
He finds new high rise
buildings are beginning to threaten the city’s existing “people
friendly areas” and wants the
planning authorities to encourage
more bicycle use - both as a form
of transport and recreation.
The scan also showed:
Healthy space
Jan Gehl’s arguments for higher
quality public space are backed
up in an Australian report by a
multi-disciplinary group of planners and health professionals.
They claim that today’s built
environment rarely encourages
active lifestyles and instead reinforces sedentary behaviour
and car dependency. The report,
“Healthy Spaces & Places: A national guide to designing places
for healthy living” is described as
a “unique collaboration” between
the Australian Local Government Association, National Heart
Foundation and the Planning Institute of Australia. (2) The three
organization have even joined
forces to create a “Healthy Places” website (3) to promote the
report and its concepts. Interestingly many of the report’s photos
illustrating good practice feature
Perth. But the report’s main thrust
is to show how well planned cities can improve people’s health
and reduce the $58 billion annual
health bill caused by obesity.
Locational privacy
One aspect of public space not
covered in the Gehl report is
how the wonders of 21st Century
technology are likely to increasingly encroach. The US-based
international civil liberties group,
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been examining potential problems and finds that the
next ten years will be critical in
deciding the loss or retention
of “locational privacy”. By the
foundation’s definition locational
privacy is “the ability of an individual to move in public space
with the expectation that under
normal circumstances their location will not be systematically
Continued next page
Putting science behind cool planting
S
TREET trees may help to keep the urban environment cool,
but are they also trapping vehicle pollution? Swiss and
German scientists have been using a wind tunnel and street “model”
(pictured left) to investigate and have discovered that there is indeed an optimum position for planting street trees to make sure that vehicle pollution
does escape more effectively. They carried out their wind tests on models
of so-called “urban canyons” - city streets with densely packed tall buildings and trees planted along a central line. (The green frame at the centre
of the photo left is a wind tunnel tree.) According to a media statement from
Karlsruhe University, the wind tunnel tests showed that if trees are too close
together, their leaf canopies trap the upward flow of pollutants.* “Trees
separated by at least the width of their crowns enable pollution-carrying
eddies to form and allow the air at street level to clear much more quickly
especially when traffic is not at a standstill,” says the statement.
Photo by Karlsruhe University
*“Spaced out trees reduce urban pollution” Karlsruhe University media statement
20 July 2009 <http://www.ifh.uni-karlsruhe.de/science/aerodyn/CODASC.htm>
TransScan 17
Continued from previous page
and secretly recorded for later
use.” It is not the now ubiquitous
CCTV that the foundation is worrying about. According to its report (4) a bigger problem is going
to be the information collected
by monthly transit swipe-cards,
electronic tolling devices, mobile phones, electronic services
that tell you if a friend is nearby,
free Wi-Fi services that alert local
businesses if you are passing by,
electronic swipe cards for doors,
and parking meters that can be
paid by texting cash. As the report
sees it, the problem arises when
all the information collected by
the innocuous gadgets is brought
together and analysed. The results
make private surveillance cheap.
For example, wayward spouses
can be tracked - and so too can
the individual sales personnel and
negotiators of business competitors. The foundation says there is
a solution - without rejecting the
clear advantages that can come
from the new devices. Its report
recommends that governments
require all such devices be fitted with the same type of cryptographic protocols that make it
safe to use ATMs or buy things
on line. In that way people would
be able to pay for their bus fare,
talk on their mobiles and tap into
a Wi-Fi service without creating a
telltale path that can be followed
months later.
Market space
One of the most ancient uses of
public space has been as a venue
for traditional markets and a UK
Parliamentary Committee is recommending that government and
local authorities do much more
to ensure that markets survive
and prosper in the 21st Century.
(5) In a newly published report
on English markets, the committee says while the economic
benefits of markets may be obvious, they also play a significant
role in encouraging social coheContinued next page
Rethinking public space
Artist’s impression by Cepezed
Borrowing from Imperial Rome
A
LMOST 2000 years after the Romans built the first one,
Dutch architects are now proposing a more contemporary
version of the Colosseum. They want to build it as part of
The Hague’s 2018 bid to become Europe’s “Capital of Culture”.
Their idea is to construct the new icon from scaffolding on a site
known as the Malleveld - a 10 hectare grassed area on The Hague’s
main approach road. In AD 70 when Imperial Rome started to
build the original “Flavian amphitheatre” it was designed to be the
largest public arena of its kind in the world and able to seat 50,000
people. The more modest Dutch version will accommodate around
5000. But whatever the new structure lacks in size, its Delft-based
architects, Cepezed,* are convinced it will be a crowd-puller. They
say the façade will feature a giant reproduction of M C Escher’s
“Metamorfosis II” - the work in which stylised fish intriguingly
metamorphose into the Italian town of Atrani. Dutch-born Esher
completed his work in 1940, shortly after escaping Mussolini’s
Rome. (Interestingly Escher was also a great fan of the Colosseum
and while living nearby, featured it in a woodcut print.) According
to Cepezed, if The Hague wins its bid and the new colosseum goes
ahead, then the structure will be made so that it can be quickly
adapted to stage live concerts, exhibitions and fairs. No mention
of gladiators, lions and Christians though …
* <http://www.cepezed.nl>
18 TransScan
Adapting to climate
T
HE house pictured below
may look old but in fact
the 1930s-style, typically
English “semi” has only just been
built. Inside it bristles with more
than 100 sensors to monitor temperature, humidity and energy use
as researchers seek to discover the
most efficient ways to adapt such
houses to climate change. Before
the house was built, Britain’s Not-
Photo by Nottingham University
Rethinking public space
Continued from previous page
sion, town centre regeneration,
the promotion of healthy eating
and in reducing environmental
impacts. Among other things, the
tingham University had to obtain
special planning permission to ignore 80 year’s of improved building standards so that it could be
constructed with single glazing,
no insulation, open fires and no
hot water. But as researchers explained to Nottingham Council,
the house had to be built that way
so they could identify the most
cost efficient method of turning it
into a “zero carbon home”. Today
Britain still has around three million “semis” in use and together
their energy inefficiency is one
of the main reasons that almost a
third of the country’s CO2 emissions comes from housing. The
University hopes its research results will guide future refurbishments.* Meanwhile researcher
Changhong Zhan and his wife
Baowei Liu (pictured) have taken
up residence to ensure the house
receives “typical” use. “In general it’s a bit uncomfortable living
here,” says Mr Zhan. “We have
no central heating, only electrical heaters and to prevent cold
committee wants local councils
to ensure markets are included in
their strategic plans and calls on
the government to promote markets nationally. A more off-beat
recommendation is that councils
that have town “twinning” agree-
References:
(1) “Perth 2009 - Public Spaces Public Life” by Jan Gehl June 2009 <http://www.
planning.wa.gov.au/Plans+and+policies/Publications/1921.aspx>
(2) “Healthy Spaces & Places” published jointly by the Australian Local Government Association, National Heart Foundation of Australia, and the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) Aug 2009 <http://www.healthyplaces.org.au/userfiles/file/
HS&P%20An%20overview.pdf>
(3) “Healthy Places” website <http://www.healthyplaces.org.au>
(4) “On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever” by Andrew J.
Blumberg and Peter Eckersley Aug 2009 Electronic Frontier Foundation
<http://www.eff.org/files/eff-locational-privacy.pdf>
(5) “Market Failure: Can the traditional market survive?” UK Parliamentary
Communities and Local Government Committee report July 2009 <http://www.
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmcomloc/308/30802.htm>
(6) Climate and public space, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment website <http://www.cabe.org.uk/public-space/climate-change>
Photo by Nottingham University
Back to the future, via the Thirties
Changhong Zhan and wife
Baowei Liu: chilly research.
air coming into the room, we
squeezed papers into gaps of windows and doors.” Recently the
researchers tried pressurising the
house to discover just how much
warm air was being lost. But it
proved impossible. As fast as
the air was pumped in it escaped
through all the gaps... (Read what
Australia is doing page 20.)
*
<http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/
sbe/creative_energy_homes/eon_
uk_home/index.html>
ments with overseas towns consider expanding the arrangements
to include “market twinning”.
Climate interventions
In the future public spaces will
have a major role to play in combating the effects of climate, according to Britain’s government
sponsored Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. The commission believes
that with proper planning public
space can be used to moderate
rising temperatures within cities
and prevent flooding. To help local planning authorities to identify
the potential, the commission has
created a website detailing case
examples - such as tree planting
and “urban forests” to reduce the
effects of heat islands. (6)
TransScan 19
Adapting to climate / Books & reports
What happens if climate change
brings a money drought?
“Adapting Cities to Climate Change: Understanding and addressing
the development challenges” Edited by Jane Bicknell, David Dodman
and David Satterthwaite, published by Earthscan, London UK. 398
pages. Soft cover £24.95 <http://earthscan.co.uk>
W
HEN it comes to climate change, its not
only extreme events
that pose a threat to urban communities. There are also numerous indirect risks like shortages
of freshwater or shortages of
other resource local people need
to earn a living. But according to
David Satterthwaite and his coeditors another equally worrying
climatic side effect could be the
withdrawal of investment.
“It is possible to envisage a trend in new investment
by large companies and corporations away from cities and city
sites most at risk from extreme
weather disasters and sea-level
rise,” Satterthwaite writes in his
introduction to “Adapting Cities
to Climate Change”.
“They (the corporations)
have long been adept at shifting
production to locations where
profits are maximised and it is
easy for them to factor in risks
from climate change. But it is difficult to conceive of how many of
the largest successful coastal cities most at risk from storms and
sea-level rises will manage.”
Satterthwaite is talking here of cities like Mumbai,
Shanghai and Dhaka, which in recent decades have attracted huge
amounts of international investment. Each of the cities has populations of more than 10 million
- and few of those people would
find it easy to move away. Consequently any drop in investment
would have serious consequences both to local economies and
social structures. Satterthwaite,
like his fellow editors are all associated with the International
Institute for Environment and
Development, an independent
London-based research organization specialising in sustainable
development.
Their book is one of the
first to offer practical guidance to
city governments on how to shield
their communities from the ravages of climate change. Although
the book is directed towards low
and middle-income cities - with
all the inherent problems - the
challenges it encapsulates makes
the book a worthwhile read for a
far broader planning audience.
For example, the writers
make it clear that the real battle
can only be fought at the local
level - and that applies whether
the city is a modern, high-income
urban centre or one where the
bulk of the population live illegally in unplanned shantytowns
on unprotected flood plains.
The key is local empowerment - making sure enough
people locally understand the
challenges, know how to identify
local vulnerabilities and have the
power to intervene. The authors
in fact rate such empowerment
as of greater importance than a
foreign-subsidised piece of infrastructure no one locally knows
how to operate. Australia has had
examples of that particular problem in some of its remote aboriginal communities.
Continued next page
TRANS
Net
A regular review of Internet sites
covering mobility and the built
environment
WHILE Australia is searching for new ways to keep people informed in emergencies,
America’s Emergency Operations Centre has started trials
of its online EMICUS network
- a fascinating service that
lets people use Twitter to post
“instant” on-the-spot reports
from effected or threatened
disaster areas. Take a look at
<http://www.emicus.com/>
and click on “News & Hurricane Tracker”.
JAPANESE and US researchers have just published what
is claimed to be the most
complete terrain map yet of
the Earth’s surface. It comprises some 1.3 millionsatellite images and is expected to shed new light on
everything from algal blooms
to volcanic eruptions. Access
is free through <http://www.
science.aster.ersdac.or.jp/en/
index.html>
THE research team at Nottingham University (See “Back to
the future …” page 18) have
just posted an animated film
clip of their 1930s “semi” to
show how it might be given
a low-carbon facelift. See it
at <http://www.nottingham.
ac.uk/sbe/creative_energy_
homes/eon_uk_home/index.
html>
Disclaimer: The inclusion of these sites
does not mean endorsement by the
publishers. They have been selected
for interest value only.
20 TransScan
Adapting to climate / Books & reports
Continued from previous page
THE average Australian home needs downsizing. An illustration from the
“Hybrid buildings” report - source: Swinburne University.
How smaller homes would help
solve Australia’s CO2 problems
“Hybrid Buildings: Pathways for greenhouse gas mitigation in the
housing sector” by P.W. Newton and S.N. Tucker, published by the
Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology
130 page report, free download from
<http://www.sisr.net/publications/0907newton.pdf>
W
HILE UK researchers have been using a
mock-1930s house to
calculate how best to cut CO2
emissions from the bulk of the
country’s housing stock (See
page 18), researchers in Melbourne have been conducting a
similar but computer-based exercise on Australian houses. Their
results - and “inconvenient” recommendations - provide a foretaste of the policy decisions State
and Federal Governments will
need to take if housing is to play
its part in reducing the nation’s
carbon footprint.
The inconvenient recommendations are based on the inconvenient fact that Australia’s
housing sector is responsible for
an ever-increasing carbon footprint that is not simply produced
by a growing population. While
the size of the average household
continues to decline, the space
that household occupies is on the
increase. Between 2001 and 2006
the average floor space of the average new home climbed by 11.5
Track the trends with . . .
T
nline
O
http://www.transscan.com
RANS SCAN
Printed on Australian recycled paper
square metres. That extra space
needs heating and cooling with
the result that an extra 23.6 thousand tonnes of CO2 gas is now
being pumped into the atmosphere annually.
As the authors explain,
Australia’s housing is responsible for 20% of the nation’s total
greenhouse emissions and left
unchecked, it is forecast to grow
another 34% over the next 20
years.
The authors’ solution is
“hybrid buildings” - houses and
apartments that are able to supply all their own power needs
and generate it with low or zero
emissions. While that may sound
a tall order, Newton and Tucker
have found that the existing 5star rated house is capable of
such conversion - although 7-star
rating would be better.
The big challenge is
achieving a new mindset - both
among the general population
and government authorities who
will need to draw up the new
codes. Actually living in a hybrid house will require winding
back personal energy consumption and leading a “simpler life”.
Basic to that simpler life will be
living in a smaller home. (The
authors suggest turning back the
clock 25 years to when average
floor space was 167 sq metres.)
The new low-energy
household will also have to
make do with a basic set of
“best-of-breed” domestic appliances and avoid powerguzzling gadgets.