Councillor Chris Harris

To nobody’s surprise, Planning Minister Frank Sartor last weekend approved the concept plan for the Carlton-United Brewery site in Chippendale.

Bitterly opposed by the local community, the $800 million high-rise development will treble the population of the small suburb. While most agree Sydney needs more housing stock, critics of this project say it is rampant overdevelopment, designed not for quality of life and environment but for the profits of big developers.

There will be 1,690 apartments over 11 blocks. The tallest tower, eye-to-eye with the reviled UTS tower, will match it at 120 metres.

These apartments will house up to 2,800 residents. In addition there will be up to 4,800 workers each day occupying the commercial spaces. That’s 7,600 people, equal to several small towns.

The development will be so tall and dense that most of the open space will be sunless in mid-winter. Tall buildings generate wind tunnels in the canyons they create, so it is likely that outdoor living will be impractical in winter.

Even the showpiece park in the site’s centre will be 80% in shade by 2pm in mid-winter (see picture), while in many of the blocks, 40% of apartments will receive little or no direct sunlight.

Then there is parking and traffic. This supposedly environmentally sensitive project will host 2,320 parking spots. Now, only four out of ten dwellings in Chippendale own a car. An independent study for City of Sydney recommended a ratio of .57 spots per apartment, recognising the site is public-transport-rich.

But even before Frank Sartor grabbed planning control of the site, the Central Sydney Planning Committee doubled that ratio (with, interestingly, the support of Clover Moore).

That’s when I resigned in disgust from the Committee. Read the rest of this entry »

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made headlines by concluding there is a 90% chance that human activities are the main driver of global warming. The conservative report is laced with terms such as ‘likely’, ‘more than likely’ and ‘very likely’ when assessing the known global indicators such as hurricane intensity, temperature rise and sea levels.

Yet if the blogs of major newspapers are any indication, most advocates of the old fossil fuel economy have not read the report and are still trotting out anti-greenhouse arguments based on pseudo-scientific ‘factoids’.

The report is also conservative because it deliberately does not take into account much of the ice sheet melt now taking place, mainly because the data are insufficient for strict scientific evidence.

But Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has pointed out that the IPCC stopped its data collection at 2005. Since then, ice sheet melt had accelerated alarmingly. Read the rest of this entry »

Several major daily newspapers have reported that Senator Bob Brown and The Greens want to stop Australian coal mining and exports within three years.

Kevin Rudd and John Howard have gone ballistic, labelling this ‘a kneejerk reaction’.

It’s a shame none of them bothered to check their facts. Bob Brown’s actual press release (see below) clearly says we need to develop a PLAN within three years, hardly a kneejerk reaction.

The press release:
9th Feb 07

Australia should develop a plan, in the next three years, to reduce and phase out coal exports, Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

“Neither the Howard Coalition nor Rudd Labor will tackle our biggest cause of climate change - burning coal. Both the parties support burning more, not less,” Senator Brown said.

“This is an extreme position considering the massive economic and environmental crisis the world is facing. The nation should rapidly transform to being the world’s largest exporter of solar power technology, other renewable energy options and energy efficiency technology - creating thousands of jobs and a multi-billion dollar export income in tandem with the replacement of coal,” Senator Brown said. Read the rest of this entry »

Residents of City North are up in arms about government plans for East Darling Harbour, AKA The Hungry Mile or ‘Barangaroo’ as it is to be called.

“Kent Street residents are angry that the Concept Plan exhibited late last year seemed to have taken a course of steroids as many of the buildings had become larger and taller than those shown in the Design Competition winning entry,” said Chris Harris.

“This means many residents would lose much of their western views and afternoon winter sun.”

Tall buildings on the southern end of the precinct particularly appear to flout the guidelines of the Central Sydney Plan which sensibly calls for a stepping down of building heights from the central ridgeline to the waterfront. Read the rest of this entry »