Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Green housing developments should:
•
minimize the use of resources - atmosphere, water, land and rare or toxic
materials;
•
be responsive to local environment, make open space useful and accommodate
for the lives of non-human others;
•
minimize the need for travel, maximizing low-energy modes of transportation -
for example, bicycles, walking and public transport;
•
keep space public and as far as possible occupied and socially inclusive;
•
design for public safety, with walkways open to view; and
•
be affordable, with sufficient dwellings available for those with special needs.
(Low
et al
., 2005: 70)
Hugh Barton (2000: 89-90) argues that places, neighbourhoods, are best conceived
as open ecosystems, if sustainable living environments are to be achieved and
maintained, and a community's ecological footprint reduced without compromising
choice and opportunity.
The inventor and designer Stewart Brand (1997) has written on 'low-road' buildings
and spaces that people make their own - where they feel free and in fact are free
'to do their own thing'. These spaces become places of personal significance because
of the freedom and psychological warmth they offer as a result of their customization.
Low-road space can become part of the self. Similarly, the anarchist writer Colin
Ward (2002) has written warmly of individuals and movements of people who also
occupy space to build or construct their own places of leisure and respite away from
or in opposition to planning regulations, social conventions, political and economic
power, and mainstream cultural expectations. In many ways, squatter settlements
make homes and place out of necessity; but then, isn't necessity the mother of
invention and cannot the converted garage be a place of immense creativity because
of the freedom it affords? Some alternative communities such as Christiana in
Copenhagen can be interpreted as urban laboratories, testing and demonstrating new
ideas, values and social structures. In November 2006 Christiania's collaboratively
designed
Green Plan
was awarded the Initiative Award of the Society for the
Beautification of Copenhagen. It received positive endorsement from the Local Agenda
21 Society because of its sustainable goals and democratic, participatory design
process and although alternatives themselves may not necessarily be superior to
existing structures and institutions, '
the process of constructing an alternative
in
itself provides a critical benchmark against which to reflect on taken for granted
mainstream assumptions' (Jarvis, 2011: 159).
Self-build more generally has been an important part of many people's desire to
create their own space, often articulated with ecological principles, aims and values.
However, self-build has its own issues and problems, not least with the need for
self-builders to have the requisite time, skills, finances, and understanding of building
techniques, building regulations and planning processes. Nevertheless, creating one's
own space is something that all animals need to do. It is what we call home, and
feeling at home in a space or place is surely the key to caring for it and feeling one
belongs to it. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) writes, home is a place that offers
security, familiarity and nurture, and can take many forms. Architect and teacher
