Recycelte Häuser & autofreie Städte: So bauen wir in Zukunft

Not just architecture which needs to get with the program as they say. Governments seem to get fixated, due to popular choices or old fashioned outlooks on a ways of doing things, all continue to appear to have their blinkers on. We here in Australia spend billions each year on roads, projects which never seem to fix the traffic problems, leaving petrol guzzling polluting vehicles sitting for hours in slow moving traffic. We have a country with big distances and outback towns in all states which are dying, through lack of population, due to no jobs and hotter climates. So a government who has the backbone to stop appeasing the car owners and car manufacturers (often there is one person in a car, or worse a 4 wheel drive, one person at a time each travelling in the same direction) governments who need to demand that car sharing is mandatory, who provide superior public transport in cities plus super speed trains with services linking outback towns and areas, so industry will move back out there, so people will want to use the services, people who can move to these country areas whilst still being able to be connected to employment if necessary and connected to their families in our major cities. Another bonus would be much less large vehicles on our highways also. If Japan can do it, why can't Australia? The first government who stops spending our billions on capital city roads and builds super train services, will get my vote. We have to make cars a pariah just like smoking, change peoples minds from cars being a status symbol to one where people become ashamed to own and drive a car!

Also each wet season, up north, we have millions of litres of water falling from the sky, yes we need some to fill up our rivers and Lake Eyre but so much rain which causes catastrophic floods downstream, surely there is some way we can harvest the rain up north, so that we have water supply at hand so there are fewer struggling farmers through drought times, where we have water on hand for towns who now need to buy in water, just for drinking purposes let alone any extra. To me money should be made available first, for: water harvesting, high speed trains, better public transport and wave powered power plants, before billions spend on more roads which only mean more cars!

Footnote: We are a 60's something couple who own one car which travels, no more than 2000kl per
year, we live on an island, when on the mainland, we always use public transport, sometimes travelling
for hours at a time, with shopping trolleys in tow, all whilst using public transport. Admittedly, we no longer need to travel to work, as I am semi retired and work part time from home, my husband no longer works, but we have made choices to get us here, where we feel comfortable with our decisions, hopefully helping the planet in our little way

Informative

Conscious Designing is the only way to true sustainability in architecture.