Retrofitting The Suburbs For Sustainability  

Following on from my mention of permaculture and Bill Mollison this week, here's an article from the co-originator of the permaculture idea, David Holmgren, on how to adapt suburbia to a sustainable way of living (pdf).

The suburbs of our Australian cities have, in the main, become sterile wastelands, lacking in any true spirit of community, impoverished of local resources, and filled with fearful people whose daily efforts are focussed elsewhere. What has happened to the Australian “suburban dream”?

To find the foundation of the so-called ‘suburban dream’ and the reasons why it has proved illusory, we need to look back to the post World War II economic boom of the 1950s. At that time, Australia was riding high on the sheep’s back, with wool prices around $2.40 per kg, and there was also cheap and abundant fossil fuel and timber. Furthermore, the government of the period provided widespread war-service housing, low-interest loans, and substantial public infrastructure such as roads and utilities to facilitate suburban growth.