Blue–Green Housing
The development of new housing in Australia is having a major impact on the ecosystems and water systems of our cities. When we hear of the rise of ‘urban heat islands’ and the declining ‘urban forest’ in Australia, poor infill development within our suburbs is often the cause. There are models of housing, however, that can harmonise with the environment. We call this ‘blue–green’ housing.
Coordinated and well-designed infill housing offers an opportunity to strengthen ‘blue–green’ systems in Australian cities, including bushland, parks, recreation areas, tree canopy, verges, rivers, waterways and urban drainage networks. These have been called our ‘blue–green infrastructure’ – as vital to our health, safety and quality of life as any other vital infrastructure.
Considered and designed appropriately, our cities and our housing developments can support more people, along with more flora, fauna, water, shade, recreation and amenity.
These challenges and opportunities have been a core focus of a research project undertaken by the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities – a multidisciplinary research network established in 2012 to inform new approaches to urban water management in Australia.
This project on infill housing brought together a range of practitioners and researchers to demonstrate blue–green housing. Drawing together expertise from architecture, urban design, climate modelling and water engineering industries, along with industry, government and community partnerships across Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane, the project crosses a range of scales and disciplines to demonstrate how a water sensitive city can support higher density communities while, at the same time, enhancing environmental values.
In this project, we explore the importance of designing and planning with open space in mind – across scales: from the lot, to the precinct, to the city.
Read ‘Blue–Green housing: designing for sustainable cities’ at Cities People Love
Download the Typologies Catalogue
Team
The CRC for Water Sensitive Cities project has been led by Nigel Bertram (Monash University) and Geoffrey London (The University of Western Australia) and water scientists Steven Kenway and Marguerite Renouf (University of Queensland) with Beata Sochacka, Oscar Sainsbury, Shenbagameenal Surendran, Mojtaba Moravej, Kerry Nice, Tatjana Todorovic, Niloofar Tarakemehzadeh and Daniel Jan Martin
Housing research; Architectural design; Urban design
