The poor old Australian state of Victoria needs a pick me up after weeks of bush fire devastation and its cosmopolitan capital, Melbourne, looks set to give it just that.
An exciting new vision for the future has been unveiled by the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, a State Government funded thinktank and it could the first step to a whole new way of life.
The Lab has come up with ideas for a new environmentally friendly suburb, which will include no cars, an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions and the ability to grow its own food.
An exhibition of the proposals from 200 university students for the rather unoriginally named ‘Eco-City Melbourne,’ is already on show in Melbourne for the public to view.
An ideal site for the new suburb has already been identified on land owned by VicTrack, the Government body that owns the state's rail assets, which lies just two kilometres from the centre of Melbourne.
The site, which is known as E-Gate, is the last major development area left close to the city centre, and, when the current lease expires in 2014, Major Projects Victoria will work with VicTrack to discuss new possibilities for the land.
The Lab’s Director Professor Chris Ryan said that a new sustainable suburb could be created at E-Gate, including a ban on cars.
“The site is made for walking, cycling and we are going to provide free, small, electric vehicles that can be picked up by any resident on the site and roamed around on,” he said.
The carbon this would save would equate to the removal of up to 5,000 cars from the proposed suburbs roads.
Mr Ryan added, “The site is only a 25-minute walk to Melbourne’s central business district,” he added.
The medium-density suburb would have buildings of up to eight storeys and a centralised heating and cooling system. There would also be urban wind towers and solar panels to produce electricity.
The ‘burb would even be able to produce food, with mini urban-farms and a high tech ‘multi-storey farm,’ – a huge car park covered in glazing in which vegetables can grow under natural light. This may sound far fetched, but it has already been trialled successfully in China and Japan.
The Australian Government said that, whilst it had no firm plans for the site and the ideas were part of a range of views being canvassed; ecologically sustainable development was ‘no longer considered an optional extra but a necessity.’
So, watch this (green) space…
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