The first report is here as a PDF and you’re welcome to download it and read it for yourself.

SA-Report-Mobbs_Chippendale-01.2015

There’s growing research and more diverse research into the impacts of the growing heat in our cities.

Our cities are 6 or more degrees hotter in summer because of black roads, no tree cover and dark roofs.

At least two PhDs are underway into these impacts in Sydney; one by Matthias Irger into the different impacts of different surfaces and buildings on temperatures, and another into the impact on the size and proliferation of spiders – preliminary research by Elizabeth Lowe indicates some are getting bigger.

Research in Perth, WA, shows that many ant populations are extinct due to the urban heat island – it’s often over 72 degrees at soil level on roads there, too hot for the ants to survive.

More on this later in the year as the research becomes available.  Til then, be cool,

M

vimeo.com…

Sustainable Communities Plan

vimeo.com…

Michael Mobbs has a plan to create sustainable suburbs, and he is coming together with Chippendale residents and City of Sydney to make this ha

Face of greed - pedestrians jammed in narrow footpath to make way for Frasers' car park

Trucks, utes and speeding vehicles do left turn here against thousands of pedestrians

Took these photos today of the busy Broadway footpath now jam packed with pedestrians.

At one point the passage is about 1 metre.  The photo of the mum with kid in stroller didn’t come out too well so it’s not here.

Frasers greed is now expressed in the footpaths along its site.  To make way for another car lane to allow cars to turn into the Fraser’s 3,300 car park spaces Frasers are narrowing Broadway footpaths.

Frasers fought the local community to get the car park and when they got the state government to approve it they were taken to court but the environmental impact of the car park and other parts of the project were’nt able to be litigated due to a technicality so now we get the car park.  Good info is on Councillor Harris’ web site, here:

www.chrisharris.org…

At the intersection of Abercrombie and Broadway there’s also a left turn without a pedestrian crossing; thousands of pedestrians cross there day and night and trucks, utes and speeding vehicles travelling at speed on Broadway assert right of way over them when they’re on the road or wanting to cross.

It’d be terrific to see the authors of the traffic reports for Frasers, the red tape folk with no backbone in the RTA and the state government wheeling some prams and wheelchairs across the left turn and on up along the narrowed footpath.

We could have a little competition; what can we rename this exciting passageway?  ”Frasers’ Greedy Strip”, or “Frasers’ Run”, or “Fast money Alley”?

Any suggestions.

As those well known traffic engineers and spin doctors, Roy and HG say, “When too much is barely enough.”

Anyway, when we look at the pedestrian crush we can see what greed looks like at street level.

May the laughter be with us,

M

New lanes being added and footpath narrowed for new 3,300 car park, Broadway

(Apology for pedestrian giving the works the finger in the artwork.)

Frasers will slow city traffic with their new project, and we’re looking at more minutes added to the journey for buses and cars going to and from the city.

The 30,000 students at UTS and Sydney Institute  and the 40,000 + students at Sydney uni and the thousands of citizens who walk the pavement will have their pavement reduced by 1.5 m.  This will increase congestion, aggression and violence in the already jam-packed student throngs and late night crowds there.  Remember when the city widened its pavements to reduce late night violence and the success that followed?

Frasers are putting a right hand turn lane from Broadway to their new project to invite cars to get in and out of their new 3,300 space car park.

To accommodate Frasers’ profit-taking from their site the median strip is being deleted and the footpaths narrowed.

A gift to us from the state government and Frasers.

The new car park will generate over 6,000 new car movements a day.

Thank goodness the Frasers project is ‘sustainable’.  How can it be ‘sustainable’ you may ask when it’s adding several thousand car movements, several thousand tonnes of air pollution, reducing the attractiveness of walking and cycling, and the trees there have been cut down, and the urban heat island increased by a few degrees?

That’s a silly and aggressive question if you did ask it.  Have you no faith?

The developer says the project will be ‘sustainable’; surely you don’t doubt that?

Me, I just enjoy the entertainment and play with words here and I think that’s the real gift of the project; laughter.

Speaking of laughter; if Piers Ackerman from The Daily Telegraph is right, and I think he is, Frasers may end up swimming in its own greed and the city trips may become shorter and the air cleaner;  have a look at this and ask, where will Frasers be if Piers is right:

www.dailytelegraph.com…

May the doubts and the laughs be with you,

M

We’re measuring the urban heat island in two Chippendale streets, Myrtle and Buckland.

In a partnership with Sydney City Council, our community and Professor Peter Newman’s Biophilic Cities project, we’re getting data of the temperature of the streets every five minutes.  Every 25 minutes the data is sent to a computer in Hobart using a data system developed by HydroTasmania called, Ajenti.  Anyone may obtain the data here:

www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov…

For information on Peter’s work:

www.sbenrc.com…

One street runs east-west  - Myrtle; and one runs north-south  - Buckland.  Both have black tar.   At the Myrtle data station there is almost no tree canopy cover and the buildings do not shade the street from the western sun.  At the Buckland street station, there is about 80 per cent tree cover and the buildings shade the road from the western sun.

Data collected from the system by an engineering student at UTS, Mat Faint, shows the Myrtle street data station area is 3 degrees hotter than Buckland throughout the day and night.  Thus, the black road and lack of tree cover and shading from the sun makes the temperature in that area 3 degrees hotter than if it were shaded by trees and the road was a pale colour.  (Think of the red and green bus lanes and of that media used but as a pale colour, or the freeway between Newcastle and Sydney which has pale surfacing for much of its length.)

Solutions, costs, designs and options for cutting the urban heat island in Chippendale and any city are in the draft plan, Sustainable Streets and Communities Plan, which the Council asked me to prepare.  It’s on the web, here:

www.sustainablechippendale.com…

Data in the Plan and research referenced there shows it can be cheaper for building owners and tenants, the local community and governments such as local councils to cool the streets than to cool the buildings.

Recently, Melbourne City Council published its own research showing pale roofs can cut heating costs.

Data from a Victorian Health agency report about the high number of deaths from the urban heat island confirms the Chippendale data; during the Black Friday bush fires in 2009 more than twice the number of people died in urban Melbourne from urban heat than were killed by the bush fires.  Here’s a graph showing the temperatures of some Melbourne suburbs during the heat wave; notice how it gets hotter where tall buildings are concentrated?

Spatial variability of the Melbourne Urban Heat Island (23 March, 2006 at 1:00am) Source: Victorian Department of Health, 2009

So Sydney’s CBD is several degrees hotter than it need be because of the urban design – money spent inside the buildings to make them energy efficient is spent because the buildings are seeking to compensate for the heat forced on them by urban designer, consultants, developers and councils thoughtlessly applying out of date road design ‘standards’.

Despite the data about the damage done by black roads, poor tree cover and dark roofs developers and councils are still building suburbs across Australia so they heat up by 3 to 10 degrees more than they need to.  I wonder what they understand by the words, “world best practice’, if they’re aware of them?  For a recent example of a typical subdivision being built and sold with black roads, poor tree cover and dark roofs – despite the data about the harm done by urban heat islands – have a look at this Google image :

Go the cool streets,

M