Week 8-2 Sustainable Roadmap for 2050

By 2050, the world's population is said to be doubled. The main objectives are to abandon fossil fuels as they produce deadly green house gases, to limit natural resources such as crucial metals and minerals for manufacturing and rearranging how we produce, consume and live due to climate effects such as droughts, heat emergencies and high temperatures affecting crop growth and sea level rise.

Solution 1: renewable energy that is closer to users to avoid interruptions from issues such as devastating storms that destroy utility infrastructure in recent years or hacking and to decrease the energy loss over long distance transmission
Solution 2: more mobility with less cars so more sustainable transport such as walking, biking or shared transport using renewable energy (electric or hydrogen powered) for health
Solution 3: more local food with less carbon footprint reducing transport, waste less to save water and energy, carbon taxing on livestock, land-locked fish farming to not disturb aquatic food chain and better choices of food such as easily cultivated Moringa plant that provides many nutrients
Solution 4: renew, reuse and recycle consumer goods to reduce waste by creating a cycle instead of a chain such as local clothes manufacturing, reselling and recycling

I think it is very exciting to be living in a new sustainable lifestyle in the future and I am honestly looking forward to it, hoping things won't go so wrong as we have recognized the problems and solutions many years before 2050. In saying that, action starting today is definitely required as the population continues to increase even today.

Resources:
http://cityminded.org/adapting-adaptation-roadmap-will-live-2050-15334

Week 8-1 Limiting Melbourne's Skyscrapers

After learning about urban heat island effect and that the urban fabric includes walls, which can be 50% of total surface area and 3 times the aerial surface area. Hence, taller buildings take a lot more time to cool down at night due to less exposure to the cool sky, resulting in higher temperatures in urban areas compared to rural areas.

Surprisingly to me, Melbourne CBD is that it is denser than some dense Asian cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Therefore, it is proposing for buildings higher than Government height limits to prove that it provides special value to the city to ensure the sustainable development.

Building industry groups argued that lead developers will invest elsewhere so it will be harder to create innovative ground-breaking projects and property value will decrease with restrictions, which will impact state and local government budget. They added that Melbourne continued to become less attractive due to planning decisions without consultation with the industry.

Melbourne is referring back to Sydney and doubting the industry groups' fears would happen. "[T]he proposal would be up for public discussion, which would be assessed by an independent panel and the Government would make a decision in September."

It would be interesting to see the regulations in a few months. The government seem to be taking in consideration of the industry, having public opinions heard and I hope the building industry's "innovative ground-breaking projects" can prove to be of special value to the city to go over height limits. The biggest problems would be turning away of investors and drop in land prices, which hopefully will not occur. I hope the government account for this so even if the worst case scenario occurs, it can bounce back.

Resources
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-26/proposal-to-limiting-size-of-melbourne-skyscrapers/7357102

Week 7-2 Inspiring New York's High Line

New York City's High Line, a park on a deserted elevated rail line, succeeded with the public and nearby real estate developers and inspired park projects all over the world. It seems that each month, there is a city planning for its version of High Line. Some projects are a knock off of it, such as Singapore's plan for transforming at-grade railway to a series of public spaces so it is not high at all. Another example is Washington's plans for a bridge park over the Potomac River, which is a new construction rather than recycling old infrastructure. As the comparisons are stretching, "High Line" is becoming urban planners' term for a "linear park." Most of them commonly want to cure wounds on a city's urban fabric made by highways, railways or social segregation.

Four recent examples are from different continents. Seoul is turning a vehicle overpass into elevated park instead of demolishing to preserve historical marker for Korea's industrial age and reconnect areas to decrease travel time. Tel Aviv is planning a park on top of Ayalon Highway to reduce noise and air pollution, create easier access and provide leisure facilities and bicycle and pedestrian routes, creating job opportunities. Rome is creating exhibition space under a viaduct left unfinished, where garbage piled to socially activate the space. Philadelphia plans to transform unused Reading viaduct to an elevated park instead of twice as costly demolition to revive the area. High Line deserves the credit for its success in fulfilling its purpose of transforming socially dead areas to active areas and inspiring sustainability all over the world.

Resources:
http://cityminded.org/inspired-by-new-yorks-high-line-if-not-always-copying-it-15251

Week 7-1 Downsizing Royal National Park

The Royal National Park is not only oldest park in Australia and one of the oldest parks in the world, but also it is the first to receive the title, "national park" and one of the closest parks to the city, allowing the experience of untouched wilderness. It is an important breakthrough for wildlife conservation with habitat that provides shelter and food for a wide variety of animals and allows expansion into neighbouring urban suburbs. This made Sydney high in biodiversity compared to other cities in the world.

Despite its significance, the Royal National Park forests are currently under threat of developers, planning to cut down more than a thousand trees on an untouched bushland, which is an essentially home to birds, possums and sugar gliders. It will take 80 years for the trees to mature enough to support the current wildlife. Even then, plenty of the Red Bloodwood trees, which provides most of the canopy in Spring Gully, formed strange growths, 'mallee', which is very rare for this species. In addition, it is a home to many threatened species, Pigmy possum, Red-crowned Toadlet, Giant Burrowing Frog and Broad-headed Shake.

The developer's objective is to create ecotourism by installing office, tents and kitchens, while claiming that there are no threatened species. This may seem harmless on the surface but eventually 15.5 hectares of unaltered bush will likely be wiped out with the tactics of series of small development at a time. Ecotourism can be an excellent idea and aid conservation efforts when rightly done. If the developer sincerely cared about conversation, he would buy an already developed site, not wiping out the trees in a national park with threatened species.

It always make me wonder how far human greed can go in terms of harming other species. On the brighter note, Spring Gully Protection website is working on an objection proposal to stop this crime against nature and not compromise their oldest relics. I have also lodged my objection and shared with my friends so our voices will be loudly heard. It is a pity that I personally have not visited the park, so I will be doing so in the near future in case the worst case scenario comes.

Resources:
http://gumnutnaturalist.com/destruction-of-one-of-the-oldest-national-parks/

Week 6-2 Wet 'n' Wild Sustainability

While studying sustainability course, I remembered about Wet 'n' Wild water park that I visited a few years ago. I wanted to find out how they are using a huge amount of water and passed the council's requirements as Sydney is pretty strict on sustainability regulations.

The park in Sydney focuses on water efficiency and sustainability by saving 50 million litres of water by using rainwater, recycled water and special filtration and irrigation technologies in the initial design and construction phase. Another initiative is that the park in Gold Coast recycles into separate bins of beverage packing and cardboards, diverting from landfill along with Queensland Government's "Do the Right Thing, Use the Right Bin" message.

In addition, empty Coke and Mt Franklin water bottles went to specified bins. Coca-Cola donated 5 cents for every bottle collected and assisted in further training of lifesavers and surf safety campaign in June 2010. The recycling was also implemented to all Warner Village Theme Parks in Queensland. As a result, the park changed behaviours of their customers, including young generation that will take charge later on to adopt positive habits at homes, schools and etc.

Overall, they have significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions, which I find every impressive. It also shows even contributing to areas of sustainability that doesn't have directly relate to the function while working together with the government. other corporations and getting the community involved can create a ripple effect.

Resources

http://www.holidayswithkids.com.au/blogs/wetnwildsydney

http://www.sustainabilitymatters.net.au/content/waste/news/wet-n-wild-rides-the-recycling-wave-59309137

Week 6-1 Mobility for Elderly

Life expectancies in developing countries may continue to increase and so does retirement age but it is truly heartbreaking to hear senior citizens living alone, not being taken care by anyone or not being able to go to places as often as they want. America has a statistics that 20% of senior citizens cannot drive because of reasons including lack of access to a private auto mobile, poor eye sight and difficult access to public transport. Therefore, they become isolated, not being able to get to essential medical appointments, errands, family and friends.

Seven services (Freedom in Motion, Lyft and National Medtrans Network Partnership, Lift Hero, SilverRide, National Volunteer Transportation Center, Via & Uber and AARP “Life Reimagined” Partnership) for elderly citizens listed in Shared Use Mobility Center website are an excellent solution. Their greatest innovations include:
1. Charging according to the customers' income
2. Providing door-to-door assistance, such as carrying bags or assisting with equipments, going as far as using medical professionals
3. Providing different platforms (mobile app, online services, booking in person or phone call) to suit customers' wishes
4. Providing additional services, such as monthly outings to museums and concerts to help seniors go out, enjoy and meet other service users
5. Paying by credit card so there's no need to carry cash around
6. Sharing rides to reduce carbon footprint
7. Seeking volunteer from the community to serve as drivers, including elderly themselves if eligible

I think America has came far in terms of providing mobility for elderly including disabled and low income residents. There is room for improvement with more community involvement. I hope the rest of the world would try to do the same since for a healthy community in terms of social sustainability, no one gets left behind.

Resources:
http://sharedusemobilitycenter.org/news/7-new-services-expanding-mobility-for-aging-americans/

Non Teach-2 Noise Pollution Policy

Noise Watch Australia, recognises that noise pollution is a big issue in Australia than it deserves and is ignored by politicians. Noise interferes with economic, environmental and social aspects of life. It brings unwarranted and unpaid-for risk that can't be afforded and is harmful to both psychological and physical health so we need to ensure integrity and health of the people.

Noise Watch Australia lays out a few policy recommendations. First of all, choose a weighing scale that measure frequency and not just dB(A), which only concentrates on middle frequency of people's hearing. It is because high frequency noise damage our hearing more than equivalent pressure middle frequencies and low frequency travels further and penetrates barriers easier than middle frequency. Moreover, very low frequency causes more health issues. Therefore, middle frequency causes least problems so inverse of A weighed curve would be be more proper.

Relevant authority should give directions for complainants to approach perpetrators because in reality, the complainants don't feel that they could have a civilised conversation with the perpetrators. Several cases went out of control, resulting in one party taking criminal actions against the other. There were even many murder cases in Australia due to noise problems. Maintaining anonymity of complainant is necessary to prevent revenge. There should also be only one organization responsible for a one type of noise because currently, there are many organisations that has power to act on a particular noise problem, but neither takes the responsibility.

Rules and actions should be directed at reducing noise level at or near the source, not near the recipient locations. There are many compelling reasons; firstly, it is usually more effective and cheaper to reduce noise at or nearby source and noise producer should be liable instead of recipients for the noise reduction cost. Mostly, there are multiple recipients per noise source even if they don't complain. Unrestricted noise increases background noise, even if not offensive to immediate surroundings.

The Commonwealth Government outlined ADR 83, where after a phasing in period, applies to all road vehicles manufacture from 2008. However, modification after market exhausted is not prevented so assurance is needed that they continue to comply so that noisy vehicles can be resolved in the long run. This should be enforced by a specialised unit in the state police force because the matter had been given low importance by State Police compared to their other priorities. This gradually makes the matter worse with widespread quality of living and sleep issues. It is inefficient to wait for public complaints for a police to act as offenders can be easily detected. This solution "is unlikely to be reversed again because of the effort and cost of rectification."

Noise pollution, just like light pollution are not taken seriously in the society although it effects us everyday. The faster we can get these policy changes, the better the people's health and finance will be. If the policy doesn't become stricter, the noise pollution is only bound to become worse.

Resources
http://noisewatchaus.org.au/read.htm

Non Teach-1 Light Pollution & Insomnia

HealthDay reported that a new research suggests people living in more lit up neon signs and street lights neighbourhoods are more probable to report on sleep issues. The scientists presumed that intense outdoor illumination in the evening lowers the quality of sleep, though the study didn't outline cause-and-effect. People with high night light exposure in a country were 13% less satisfied with their sleep quantity and quality than those in low-lit areas.

George Brainard, a professor of neurology and neuroscience and director of Light Research Program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, explained that light exposure at night can have strong biological and behavioural effects. However, he cautioned that due to busy and vibrant nature of urban areas, people there sleep less as they stay up later. The culprit could be the bright light at home and not street lamps.

National Sleep Foundation stated that human's sleep patterns are regulated by 2 systems. One is sleep/wake cycle, also known as natural circadian rhythm, that causes alertness or sleepiness according to the time of day. Secondly, after staying up for more than 16 hours a day, rest is needed and sleep/wake homeostasis will be triggered. Also, levels of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone, increase in the evening but light exposure delays its release.

In the past eight years, the researchers telephone interviewed almost 16,000 people on medical and psychiatric disorders, quality of sleep and sleep habits. The Defence Meteorological Satellite Program data was used for the amount of night light exposure. Night light exposure was 3 to 6 times more intense in urban regions with more than 500,000 people than in small rural regions. The people with high light exposure slept 10 minutes less per night on average than those with low light exposure. They were also more probable to have impaired functioning and excessive sleepiness, report fatigue and wake up in confusion during the night.

The study showed population-level effects of light exposure to sleep patterns by areas, disregarding if individuals wore eyeshades or closed their bedroom window shades before bedtime. It was diluted by number of people in the region and would only made a difference if everyone darkened their bedrooms every night, which was not the case.

International Dark-Sky Association, a non-profit organization for reducing negative impacts of artificial light including effects on human health, revealed that street lights cause most global light pollution. Cities increasingly switching from yellow incandescent lighting to more economic blue LED lighting might implicate sleep so best colour of LED should be explored.

Brainard suggested for now, the city dwellers should invest in dark-out curtains, remove night light and turn off display screens to get better rest at night, adding "The darker the sleep environment, the better." As someone who has lived in both low and high night light areas, I definitely agree that street lights are a factor, as well as the lifestyles, including usage of electronics with display screens.

Resources
http://news.health.com/2016/03/02/sleepless-in-the-city-nighttime-light-pollution-may-be-to-blame/