You can afford the house, but the bills’ll send you broke

Mortgages and rents might be more affordable, but people will really struggle to pay higher bills for transport and energy.

It’s not far from here to the scenario described recently by world-renowned Australian transport planner, Professor Peter Newman, of eco-enclaves for the rich, surrounded by Mad Max suburbs. His warning is clear: unless we start a proper, holistic planning process now, factoring in climate change and peak oil, those who can afford it will move to efficient homes in the inner suburbs, well-catered for by public transport, and the vast bulk of people will simply be shut out.
Business as usual, inefficient housing is not a sustainable solution. We need to link any tax breaks, streamlined development processes, or whatever tools we use, to the construction of highly efficient housing stock – at least seven star. This is not hard to do. The UK is legislating to require all new housing stock and public buildings to be zero net carbon by 2016. For a marginal increase in building costs, you can dramatically reduce energy demand and therefore running costs for the life of the building.

Building on the urban fringe without fast, efficient mass transit is not a sustainable solution. We shouldn’t forget the option of effective urban consolidation, but where we spread, it is vital that housing developments are planned around mass transit. With oil already at US$100 a barrel, and set to keep rising as supply constraints get worse and peak oil starts to bite, we cannot build suburbs where the only transport option is the private car. According to the ABS, transport is right up there with housing in household expenditure. There’s no point providing cheap housing to people but locking them into expensive transport.

Greens (Australia)