Sustainability in New South Wales apartment living has a long way to go but is now urgent

(Image above: High density apartment buildings in St Leonards, Sydney)

(Originally ublished at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainability-new-south-wales-apartment-living-has-long-don-perlgut-pggtc/ on November 3, 2023)

Two of Australia’s greatest challenges are dealing with housing supply and affordability and a growing crisis of climate change, including increasing natural disasters fuelled by a changing climate. Australian Governments take both issues seriously, but not necessarily together. That’s a mistake, one we will pay for decades to come if we do not get it right.

New South Wales and Sydney lead Australia in the housing unaffordability crisis – the lowest in decades. Sydney’s median property price sits at “13.3 times the median income; 35.3% of renters are in housing stress, ranked the sixth-least affordable city” in the world, ahead of even New York and London. Sydney’s chronic housing unaffordability crisis threatens “the future potential of Sydney” at a cost of “talent, innovation and productivity.” The impact falls most heavily on people who are disadvantaged and even moderate income: “more households are in severe housing stress than at any other time in our history.”

In response, “the rubber is finally hitting the road” as the NSW Government promises to prioritise housing development to “turbocharge density,” reports The Sydney Morning Herald. The goal is to increase stock, curtail sprawl and shift “housing growth eastward toward established transport infrastructure”. Priority density locations identified so far include Crows Nest, Bankstown, Kellyville, Bella Vista, Sydenham, Waterloo, Burwood and The Bays precinct. There will be more.

All logical, appropriate and necessary.

But not sufficient. Sydney’s housing development and expansion strategy needs to be connected to sustainability planning, so that the upcoming public and private investment in new housing reinforces, complements and supports environmental sustainability and energy conservation, as well as social cohesion and resilience in the face of anticipated natural disasters such as storms and heatwaves. This means providing well-designed social infrastructure – parks, open spaces, greenery, community centres, cultural facilities, diversified shopping, educational institutions, other community services including places of worship, and informal gathering spots that make a city a proper city that works for people.

Most Sydney councils attempt to address these issues but are subject to density and planning over-rides by the state government. That means that the integration of sustainability and community infrastructure could get lost in the rush to house our expanding population.

Let’s take three sustainability examples: water conservation, solar power and apartment design. Water meters: Only in 2014 did newly constructed apartment buildings in New South Wales require individual unit meters. As a result, in most pre-2014 buildings all apartments receive the same water bill as their neighbours (the total divided by the number of units), irrespective of how much water they use. Thus, the motivation for water conservation in these buildings (including my own, in North Sydney) is severely curtailed. Even if you try to save water, your bill won’t tell you if you did. Sydney Water tells me the estimate for installing individual meters in older buildings will be well more than $1,200 unit, and many buildings will find it impossible to do so. As a result, very few do.

Perhaps even more powerful is that we need to plan for rooftop solar, which experts call “the cheapest delivered electricity in the world”; it can halve the cost of electricity in NSW. But apartment buildings don’t have nearly as much rooftop as houses do. And even when they do, there are challenges to reticulate solar electricity to all the units in buildings that do not already have built-in solar; only a few suppliers specialise in this.

(Chart above: Financial benefits of rooftop solar; source: https://reneweconomy.com.au/rooftop-solar-saves-money-and-batteries-can-wipe-out-bills-labor-pushes-household-savings/)

Thanks to my local council – North Sydney, running a Future-proofing Apartments Program – which quickly analysed our apartment building’s roof (see photo below sent to me via email) and identified how our flat roof was suitable for solar. There are some notable examples of existing “smart green” apartment buildings, but they tend to be prestige buildings with motivated owners committed to – and able to afford – required retrofitting.

(Image above: Apartment building rooftops: courtesy of North Sydney Council)

Finally, there is apartment design. All Sydney has abundant sun and much of eastern Sydney is blessed with cooling summer ocean breezes. Western Sydney, however, faces major heat challenges, which have already reached crisis proportions (which I will discuss in a separate article). Apartments need to be carefully planned to maximise passive design attributes: is there natural and cross ventilation that quickly cools an apartment; are there private places to dry clothes on balconies; are external windows and doors oriented to maximise northerly winter sun and eave overhangs to protect from the worst summer and western sun?

This is our challenge: to relieve Sydney’s housing crisis while placing energy conservation and climate resilience high on the priority list for our communities and the tens of thousands of high-density new units to be built in coming years; to support local government sustainability efforts such as those in City of Sydney; and to project an agreed vision for Sydney that is affordable, liveable and sustainable.

Social Infrastructure: The missing link in Australia’s climate change adaptation strategy

September 2023: Australia records its driest September in history, with an average rainfall of 4.83cm, 70%+ below average. New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia mark their hottest September days ever. In early October bushfires raged, immediately followed by severe flooding in Victoria. June to August 2023 were the hottest months ever on earth. Welcome to the new normal.

The Australian Climate Council warns we have “likely crossed a tipping point for Australia’s temperate broadleaf and mixed forests when a critical level of heat or drought triggers a massive, devastating event.” The Council states: “Climate change is driving a new era of ‘unnatural disasters’ – and as a country we are not prepared to cope…. consecutive, record-breaking events can overwhelm emergency services and devastate communities.”

Climate change – now driven by an El Niño event in Australia – means more heatwaves, increased fire danger and extreme weather. Have we prepared adaptation and survival plans? The Productivity Commission estimates we spend “97% of its disaster funding on mopping up and just 3% on getting ready.” So, the short answer is “no”.

And what does “getting ready” mean? Bushfire preparation, resilient communications for emergencies and natural disasters, workplace emergency training and skilled emergency first responders.

Something is missing: a national plan to develop Australia’s social infrastructure that provides shelter, support and community connections during climate events and natural disasters. The planning for social infrastructure – community centres, showgrounds, universities, schools and libraries – is often left to local councils, but needs to be elevated to state and national policy levels, with a direct connection to disaster preparedness. By contrast, current Australian plans mostly emphasise “social recovery” and not “social preparation”.

During extreme weather events, “Hard infrastructure breaks down. Power goes out, transit breaks down, water may not run. Social infrastructure in a disaster can make the difference of life and death,” writes sociologist Eric Klinenberg.” Klinenberg emphasises the value of public libraries as social infrastructure in US cities, including as shelter from climate events. A fascinating fictional parallel to his work takes place in the 2004 science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow. At one point, the film’s major characters take refuge in the New York Public Library from a storm’s massive deep freeze and major tidal waves. Almost on cue, in 2012 Hurricane Sandy resulted in New York City’s highest storm surge on record, with 17% of city flooded, equating to 130 square kilometres. Art imitated life and then life imitated art again.

During the February 2022 Lismore floods, Southern Cross University’s local campus showcased the classic social infrastructure role, becoming “the primary emergency evacuation centre, with more than 1000 people gathered”. It also became the home for police, other emergency and community services, a state government business hub, a major food distribution centre, more than 500 ADF personnel landing Blackhawk helicopters on the rugby ovals and 3 re-located schools with more than 1800 students. It functioned as a model safe gathering point that coordinated recovery and helped the community to remain connected.

Awareness of the value and importance of social infrastructure in response to climate events is growing. Drawing from his experience in the Lismore floods, Sam Henderson (Northern Rivers Community Foundation) highlights “the indisputable value” of what he calls “soft infrastructure … the intangible asset of community cohesion, preparedness, and commitment that plays an instrumental role in disaster response, recovery, and regeneration.” He regrets the spotlight placed “on the ‘hard infrastructure’ side of disaster management” during the recent Australian Disaster Resilience Conference – a reminder of the Productivity Commission’s findings on the unbalanced investment in emergency management. “When the hard infrastructure and services were delayed in arriving during these crises, it was the community response [in the Lismore region] that saved lives,” he writes. “It’s time to shift the paradigm in disaster management. We must rebalance our priorities and allocate resources more equitably between hard and soft infrastructure.”

The University of Sydney’s Environment Institute has also begun to use the language of social infrastructure. Visiting Professor Daniel Aldrich says diverse social networks matter during climate crises, and these “networks can be deepened and broadened by building ‘social infrastructure’ such as parks, libraries, cafes, community spaces, and places of worship.” Japan’s disasters “showed how both the social infrastructure and intangible social bonds in coastal Tohoku communities helped people survive and thrive” after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

It’s not just flooding. Adapt NSW’s website notes that Australian heatwaves “have been responsible for more human deaths than any other natural hazard, including bushfires, storms, tropical cyclones, and floods. During the 1939 Black Friday bushfires, 71 people died in Victoria. But at least 420 people died in the heatwaves leading up to those fires …. Similarly, 173 people died during the 2009 Victorian bushfires, but an additional 374 people died in the heatwave before the fires. Western Sydney’s Penrith – home to hundreds of thousands of residents – was the “hottest place on earth” on 4 January 2020, reaching a high of 48.9 degrees Celsius – surpassing it’s 2018 “hottest place” record of 47.3 degrees.

Natural disaster, environmental and climate impacts are also social justice matters, “making existing inequalities and injustices a whole lot worse.” Vulnerable and disadvantaged people experience the worst outcomes in natural disasters: “The people who are most vulnerable in ordinary times are often the same people who are vulnerable in disasters.” The US Urban Land Institute reports poorer US communities “can be up to 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) hotter than wealthier neighbourhoods because of historic public disinvestment in green space and tree canopy.” The geography of Australian cities such as Sydney show more heat and flooding in more disadvantaged locations, with upper income suburbs closer to the coast less impacted: “Climate change impacts in Australia show that geographies of heat risk may also coincide with spatial patterns of relative socio-economic disadvantage,” reports the University of Sydney. So let’s add “heat inequality” to income, wealth and other inequalities experienced by Sydney-siders.

Social infrastructure functions not just a response to climate impacts, but can reduce environmental vulnerability through careful open space planning, such as trees and planting that bring down carbon footprint and lessen the need for cars.

Social infrastructure also just makes sense: The residual benefit of “investing in climate security through social infrastructure is … that we could dramatically improve the quality of life in these places all of the time, regardless of the weather.”

(This article will soon be reprinted, in a shortened form, by John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal.)