Hey! Here’s a well kept secret. Did you know that Canberra (tha capital of ‘Osstraalya’ ), was the first and only, truly ‘Sustainably Designed City’ on the Planet? Told you it was a well kept secret.

Want some evidence? Cop this – http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn60011 (Ref), & you can buy it here – http://www.biblioz.com/search.php (it’s not cheap though).

The lesson, from my point of view, is that with all the best design intentions in the known Universe, if we don’t actually adapt our Business Practices/Infrastructure to harmonise with & augment actual sustainable design, we will just keep duplicating the problems that Canberra and every other city on the planet now faces.

What problems you say? In a nutshell? The State Gov’t (& similar) ‘protection rackets’ that put a strangle-hold on local economic development and resource application, by ‘disincentivising’ local development, by taking all the local money away. For example: Canberra had it’s own gravity-fed Hydro-Electricity System. Canberra had it’s own, designed reed-bed-based storm & waste-water fitlration system built-in. This system would then feed clean/potable water into the central ‘lakes’ (there are several lakes strategically positioned in major urban centres), to supplement urban water supplies.

What happpened? Well, we couldn’t have everyone getting almost free water & power could we? Not when we could be making bucket-loads of money out of it ‘for the greater good’! So in our wisdom, we concreted over the creeks/reed-beds and put in standard & uber-expensive water treatement plants. Naturally, the lakes ended up being toxic blobs…they are getting better now, but at great expense.

Thanks for the pointer James (that’s @jamestuckerman for the Twits – Follow him…he’s a good bloke).

Thanks for the article guys..:- )

Cheers

Stephen G