Introduction

A Different Land, Similar Challenges

My first real appreciation of the value of living, working, and researching in another country came in 1996–97 when I lived in the Netherlands. It was a tremendously productive time learning about and understanding in great detail the innovative green and sustainability practices there. That experience resulted in a book called Green Urbanism, which documents the urban ecology and green urban planning work in thirty European cities. Yet, the more essential outcome of my time there was an understanding of the possibilities of a profoundly more sustainable existence, one without dependence on a car, where one's own foot power means gleeful independence and a healthier life. I also learned what a sustainable home could look and feel and sound like.

As unlikely as it seems, Green Urbanism Down Under in many ways builds directly on my time in the Netherlands, and while the lessons are not the same, they are of the same kind. Australia is a nation confronting many serious sustainability and environmental pressures and challenges, but like the European cities I explored, there are many positive stories of hope, of innovative practice, and of concerted positive and passionate work toward sustainability.

Also like my European experience, I've learned more from my time living in a different country than I have from researching the technical details and bureaucratic vagaries of programs and policies. I return to my home country with lots of good ideas, with creative new ways of addressing problems, of building communities, of looking at people and places—many things that I would not otherwise have imagined or seen as possible.

The history and development of Australia and the United States have much in common that makes Australia's parallel sustainable lessons and partial urban and landscape solutions relevant in the United States. Australia is also a large country, though with a much smaller population (Australia has about 21 million residents versus more than 300 million in the United States). Common roots in the legal system and social and cultural legacies of Great Britain also suggest parallels, and an arrival in a new world with a similarly exploitative ethic makes the two countries quite alike in some not so commendable ways.

Many of these historical parallels apply equally today. Ironically, both nations have until recently been governed at the national level by conservative governments that have been antagonistic to international environmental accords and agreements—for example, the United States and Australia were for a long period the only two industrialized nations that chose not to sign the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty. (In 2007, when the new prime minister took office in Australia, one of the first things he did was sign the Kyoto Treaty—encouraged considerably by Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth and by the growing political importance of and popular concern about global warming.)

Both countries remain highly resource consumptive and have similar types of population and development pressures. Whereas the ecological footprint of an average Australian is smaller than that of an American (a bit less than 8 hectares per person compared with about 10 hectares for an American), both countries qualify as mega resource consumers, holding the dubious distinction of second and fourth place, respectively, among the footprints of nations. Although the cars and homes may not be quite as large in Australia, and the energy consumption not as great, excessive patterns of consumption found in the industrialized world are present in both nations. Both nations are heavy consumers with huge per capita footprints (with the Australian mark on the world much lower, of course, because of its relative small aggregate population size). When it comes to global warming, the story is quite similar. Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are immense, just slightly behind those of the United States and second among larger industrialized nations (World Bank, 2007).

Australia, like the United States, is highly urbanized, leading again to useful policy and planning parallels. In fact, an even higher percentage of Australian residents live in cities—nearly 90 percent (compared with about 81 percent in the United States) (United Nations, 2007). This is perhaps not surprising given the hostility of the inland landscapes and rural climate and environment in Australia as well as the country's settling occurring in a more urban period of history. Also like the United States, Australia's population is heavily oriented toward and clustered around the coast (figure 1.1).

The basic governmental structure in place in Australia will look very familiar to Americans. Australia is a constitutional democracy, with a parliamentary governance structure. Debate still rages about replacing the queen as the symbolic head of the nation, but the governmental contours are understandable to Americans: six states and two territories, with many local government authorities (councils and shires) within and beneath them. States are unusually large compared to those of the United States, which helps explain the government's success promoting regional-or metropolitan-scale planning. Nevertheless, the importance of state governments in both nations suggests that much can be learned that would apply in the United States. The impressive efforts at promoting sustainability at the state level in Australia, in particular, have promise for application in American states.

So there are many positive and creative efforts at managing resources, guiding urban growth, and stimulating innovative thinking and action to reduce ecological impact that Australian cities offer to us in the United States. We need not make huge cultural, economic, or political leaps to imagine their application. All of the ideas described in this book are feasible and possible in the United States.

At the same time, of course, certain unique conditions and qualities of Australia, beginning with its special natural environment, make the environmental policy, planning, and sustainability responses different. Australia is an ancient land mass where aboriginal culture has continuously existed for thirty thousand years. Although Australia has a large land mass, and a relatively small population (again, only about 21 million), it faces extreme environmental problems and challenges.

It is the driest continent, with much of its interior a dry desert (though high in biodiversity) and relatively inhospitable for human habitation. Some 80 percent of its population lives in zones that receive less than 600 millimeters of rain per year, mostly along its coastlines. Water, then, has been from the beginning a special concern and limiting factor, and as urban...