From oil dependence to local resilience

Building Sustainable Urban Communities

The Department of Internal Affairs has put out a discussion doc on Building Sustainable Urban Communities and want responses by 28 November.

If you are interested the link is http://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Resource-material-Sus...

Tags: DIA, submission, urban_development

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Permalink Reply by Laura too on September 25, 2008 at 10:01

Without reading the link I have some thoughts about this:
How can any urban community be "sustainable" in the long run??
If the water doesn't come out of the tap any more
and the sewage is not going into the hole in the wall any more
and if the electricity does not come out of the socket in the wall any more ... how sustainable can this be?

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Newman on October 1, 2008 at 12:08

The water will still come out of the sky or the ground (well maybe not round canterbury!), we can capture and store it. The sewage can be disposed of in controlled ways within the urban space - it doesn't have to go long distances. Every roof can have its own water and solar capture systems. Every spare lot, lawn, etc can be producing food. Much as it goes against my dream of coming to NZ to 'get away from it all', the urban community (in its many forms) seems the viable one to me for the forseeable future. Urban doesn't have to mean what we have now. We can redefine it. Or have I misunderstood what you mean by sustainable?

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Permalink Reply by Laura too on October 9, 2008 at 18:37

Hmmm - NO replies at all ????

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Permalink Reply by Arven M. Nabuya-De La Cruz on October 11, 2008 at 0:36

I think we can only buld a sustainable urban communities by addressing the issue of sustainable rural development (i dint know if its relevant to NZ). In the philipines, the number of non-government organizations, foundations, peoples organizations, faith based charitable institutions and and community based government organizations espousing transformational work has quadrupled in the last 40 years buut we end up quadrupling the number of slum communties throughout the country. The reasons is so many of course. But aside from its currupt burocratic systems, one of the major reasons is the neglect of sustainable rural development. Citizens from rural areas migrate to urban areas in search of greener pastures. And since the demands for work, food and housing could not be met by unsustainable urban development, Filipinos are now migrating abroad including NZ.