'Carbon neutral' buildings and 'low-environmental impact' cities do nothing to combat the effects of climate change or redress environmental degradation, QUT Professor of Architecture Janis Birkeland says.
"Even the best practice 'green buildings' we have today only reduce negative social and environmental impacts relative to standard buildings - they are seldom self-sufficient, and almost never have net positive social and environmental gains," Professor Birkeland, from QUTs School of Design, said.
"The cities of the future will have to reverse the damage already done, as well as reduce future negative impacts.
"Green buildings are conventional designs that are tweaked with energy-efficient technologies. They replace nature - the life support system - with industrial mechanisms. It is an unsustainable process."
In her new book, Positive Development: from Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles through Built Environment Design that will be launched tomorrow at the Subtropical Cities Conference in Brisbane (September 3-6), Professor Birkeland details her vision for 'positive development', a truly sustainable alternative to 'low-environmental impact' building.
"Positive development leaves the urban environment in a better state than before development occurred. It is a new form of architecture that not only produces clean air, soil, water, and food but also has positive ecological gains such as increased biodiversity."
However, Professor Birkeland said she wasn't proposing that we tear down our cities because "that would take too much time, energy and irreplaceable resources. They need to be ecologically retrofitted."
Professor Birkeland explains in her book how existing development could be converted into 'sustainability solutions' that increase nature's free goods and services and improve our lives.
"Every year, poor urban design kills more people than terrorism because cities are several degrees hotter than surrounding natural areas," she said.
"There are many ways that urban design could combat this 'urban heat island' effect, which killed well over 26,000 people in Europe during the 2003 heatwave. One way would be to wrap buildings in 'green scaffolding' that provides a range of climatic and ecosystem functions.
"We could retrofit buildings with elements like vertical landscapes that combine natural air and water purification, fish tanks for aquaponic food production, solar stacks and shower towers to support evaporative cooling, and so on.
"There are many self-funding ways of turning 'dead' buildings and urban spaces into living, breathing entities.
"By providing the infrastructure for nature in cities, we can generate profits, health and natural capital, while creating more public space for people.
"Sustainability is a design problem and saving the planet through design is as fun as it is challenging," Professor Birkeland said.
Media contact: Niki Widdowson, QUT media, 07 3138 1841 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au.
