When you are creating a new urban community on a greenfields site, you are not forced to take a piecemeal approach to urban development as when you are working with an existing community or suburb. While this means you have a clean slate to work with and a potentially more flexible framework, it also means you have significant responsibility in ensuring the master plan incorporates social, economic and environmental outcomes. 

Gone are the days when a developer could simply subdivide and sell. As Guy Gibson, General Manager for Affordable Housing and Sustainability of Lend Lease Communities says, it’s about undertaking projects that will create real community. “It’s about creating relatively self-contained communities,” he says. “The idea is to build a whole town or suburb with complete services and opportunities for people to meet their needs in the local area.

“The physical environment is one outcome and aesthetic. But at the end of the day, the environment is only a framework in which social and economic activity takes place. You want to be able to nurture the establishment of human activities and institutions.”

While a blank canvas may give the impression it would be relatively easy to simply mandate relevant sustainability principles in the master plan, the reality is that communities come down to … people. So creating a successful new community is really an exercise in collaboration, education and negotiation. 

Gibson points to Delfin Lend Lease’s Mawson Lakes in the northern suburbs of Adelaide where best practice principles of sustainability have been embraced. Situated on 620 hectares, planning began in 1997 and various stages have been developed and released since then.  The whole project is expected to be completed in 2010. 

Delfin Lend Lease – part of integrated property group Lend Lease – focuses on development of large scale urban communities.

“Mawson Lakes has an energy rating score sheet which aims to reduce domestic energy consumption by 50% compared to the Adelaide average,” says Gibson.  This is being done through a number of strategies.  According to Gibson, it was the first project in South Australia to mandate wall and ceiling insulation and solar hot water systems. Solar powered lighting is also used in selected public areas.

“It also has an innovative water recycling system whereby stormwater and effluent is treated for use in garden and toilets as well as to irrigate the public domain,” says Gibson. “The aim is to reduce the use of mains water by 50% compared to the Adelaide average and to reduce the reliance on water from the River Murray and Mount Lofty Ranges.”

Mawsons Lakes - a sustainable community

However, while the infrastructure for sustainability can be put in place, its success often comes down to human behaviour. “Over the next 20 years, the big challenges are going to be the behaviour of households that occupy our new suburbs and housing,” says Gibson.“We’re now applying pretty good techniques for improving sustainability of our communities at the level of an entire neighbourhood.We’ve got a good menu of techniques that will improve sustainability outcomes in land sub-division and the development of suburbs and satellite towns.

Embracing sustainability

“The environments we create are ‘enabling environments’. At the end of the day, it’s how human beings behave in that environment that will determine how sustainable they will be in the long term. And it’s not just the water, energy and waste – we also create bike tracks and pedestrian areas but that relies on people’s motivation not to drive the car to the local shop.”

It’s not just the occupants that need educating and encouraging. Gibson points to the supply chain – such as builders and material suppliers – who are an integral part of creating sustainable outcomes. “We’re trying to influence builders of homes and also the smaller developers who ultimately come onto our sites to create shopping centres, for example.”

Despite having the best intentions for sustainability, institutional factors can sometimes present obstacles in achieving an efficient outcome. Gibson points to the fragmented authorities and departments associated with water as an example. “The way that water tends to be managed in Australia involves a multitude of organisations who operate in discrete silos,” he says.  “One agency may be responsible for water supply, another looks after wastewater treatment, yet another stormwater management and another for water quality.  Then there are some agencies that are corporatised while others are government departments. In this kind of environment, it’s difficult to implement solutions that need a whole-of-water approach. Typically, the water cycle is not managed in this way so most water initiatives in the country face these sorts of institutional barriers. 

“It’s a matter of bringing all the different players together – some of whom don’t necessarily have shared objectives.”

Starting with a blank canvas also means there is a need to create infrastructure and community facilities –such as roads, schools, community centres and public parks. Once again, while a blank canvas implies the ability to factor in the required infrastructure – vital for a community to function and survive – funding this infrastructure has evolved from the government footing to the bill to users paying for it directly. “Over the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve seen an increasing reliance by local and state government on development contributions as a way of funding infrastructure,” says Gibson. “So that means water, roads and parks are paid for by the developers and therefore, ultimately, paid for by the buyers of the blocks of land. There used to be a distinction between user-benefit infrastructure and social-benefit infrastructure.

“Social-benefit infrastructure includes schools, community centres, health care centres,major roads, public transport, universities, hospitals and TAFEs. The principle was that these should be funded through progressive forms of taxation across all the people who benefit from that infrastructure. In the last 10 years, there’s been an erosion of that distinction – more social-benefit infrastructure is being required to be funded by the purchaser of the block of land when they buy it. So now we find state and local governments across the country between them charging levies on lots of up to $70,000.

Obstacles and challenges

“Federal, state and local taxes and charges are becoming the second biggest component of a house and land package, with land being the least expensive component. It’s undermining the capacity to provide affordable housing.”

Navigating complex frameworks to deliver sustainable outcomes for communities appears par for the course.  And so is catering to the behaviour of human beings who will ultimate make up the community. However, Gibson is passionate about Lend Lease’s role in making this happen. “The inter-relationship between the physical environment and people’s behaviours is very complex,” he says. “I take seriously that we’re producing for people environments that are durable. For the people who buy into our projects – who will have families and go to local schools and shops and parks – I want to be able to influence their lives and lifestyles by virtue of how we create sustainable communities that allow them to live, learn, work and play.”

www.lendlease.com.au