Melbourne plans to be a self-sufficient city by 2030
If we have realized anything this year, it is that we need to change our way of living. We generate waste like automatons basing our actions on a continuous waste, and the same happens with the infrastructures that surround us. In Australia, this need for change has also been joined by forest fires and an already distant climate crisis that falls like a slab on the rest of the world. In Melbourne, the expression “renew or die” has been taken literally, and have promoted A New Normal, a project that aims to create a self-sufficient city by 2030.
A New Normal, alluding to this new normality of last year to which we have not yet gotten used to. Melbourne wants to create it in the most literal sense of the words. The Finding Infinity organization is the thinking head of a project that is really going to become the birth of a transformed city, based on sustainability, renewable energies and the elimination of waste . The cost is 100 billion dollars, but the life that awaits them is priceless.
Its main objectives, apart from those already mentioned, are to carry out an economic recovery, secure its own energy and water supply, create more than 80,000 jobs and income in 7 years and make Melbourne the leading city in economic and environmental transition . Such a large-scale proposal could predict a very distant future, but A New Normal intends to implement, at most, by 2030 . Currently, they are in the collection phase (which, they calculate, will be fulfilled when reaching 100 billion dollars).
FROM CONSUMER TO PRODUCER
That is the metarphosis they want to experience. For it, have launched ten key initiatives to embark on the road. But first, they wanted to demonstrate why Melbourne needs a radical change in its form . With 5 million inhabitants, ten thousand square kilometers and more than a million buildings, consume beyond their means and this predicts an early depletion of resources.
In order to visualize the expense, they have used as a measure the Eureka Tower, almost 300 meters high . In terms of energy, Melbourne burns enough coal to fill the tower 100 times a year, oil to fill it 40 times, and enough natural gas to fill it 30 times . If we pay attention to the water, the city consumes so much that it could fill the tower 1,000 times a year. And when it comes to waste, the waste that reaches the landfill could fill it 50 times a year.
THE MEASURES OF THE FUTURE
To combat these figures, first of all they intend to electrify transport . His intention is to halve the number of cars, converting the rest to electric cars and thus save 600 million dollars a year in medical care and 1,400 million in fuel. But like a chain, you have to undo the links one by one, and to reduce the number of cars, they first need to improve public transportation and encourage carpooling . The rest will come alone.
The next step is, not only switch to 100% renewable energy, but create storage that guarantees full accessibility. To do this, they must convert all car parks, whether public or residential, into loading and unloading places vehicular. Thus, they would act as batteries for the city to end up creating a complete storage network.
As for architecture, they have two missions: to electrify it and make it efficient . For the first one, you need cut off gas from 90% of the city's homes who use it. This requires replacing gas heaters, stoves and ovens with electric equivalents, such as heat pumps that run on electricity. For the second, they need to modernize all the buildings compulsorily. When they are energy efficient, will reduce environmental impact, save homeowners and renters money, and make them stronger and healthier , with systems that, for example, improve air quality.
As for architecture, they have two missions: to electrify it and make it efficient
As it could not be missing, another of the proposals is install solar panels on one out of every two roofs in the city . They have calculated that less than 1% of Melbourne's area is required to produce power that supplies 38% of the city. Along the same lines, they claim that Latrobe Valley in Victoria to become Australia's new renewable energy hub . A third of its area, currently dedicated to coal, will go to solar energy, wind farms, and even solar agriculture and wind forestry , with the intention of creating jobs.
One of the fundamental aspects when we talk about sustainability is water reuse . Melbourne is expected to deplete its water resources from 2028, which is alarming to say the least. To avoid it, they want increase the permeability of its streets, treat sewage water to allow it to be used again, and collect rainwater in order to create an inexhaustible source.
The map of the basic services of energy supply in the future Melbourne
Given the Melbourne transports 1,500 tons of food waste to landfill every day , it was necessary to create measures that would comply with the problem. Its objective is to build anaerobic digesters that are distributed throughout the city and that each of them receives 10 tons of waste per day. Through biogas, this organic matter would be converted into energy and fertilizer . But apart from this reuse, they want to raise awareness and inform consumers, the private sector and the government to end the sale of products destined for landfill and learn, through dedicated facilities, to repair and reuse our materials.
All these measures together are focused on the latest proposal, create a positive architecture that combines all resources . The result will be buildings that generate more energy than they consume, treat and export more water than they consume and do not generate any waste . Said like that it seems like a fantastic idyll, but A New Normal has shown its realistic possibilities and has gone from intention to action.
START UP
The irrefutable tests have paraded in the last Melbourne Design Week , which began on March 26 and ended on April 5. There, designers, studios and architects have presented 15 projects adapted to each of the ten proposed measures . The results seem like a trip to the future, but precisely, it is necessary to realize that the future will be sustainable or it will not be.
How self-sufficient Melbourne will be organized
Thus, they have been seen Gas stations converted into car recharging spaces and recycling and reuse of spare parts; trains that become a hotel experience to be able to leave air transport; car parks that leave behind their gray identity to transform into cultural spaces ; multifunctional buildings comprising from basketball courts to coworking spaces ; or heated swimming pools that work thanks to the conversion of waste into biogas.
We should long ago stop seeing these measures as something futuristic, bearing in mind that the climate crisis does not wait . Thus, Melbourne has wanted to break the toxic loop of passivity in which we seem to meet. The rest of the world should imitate their example, a way of life that, more than innovative (also), should already be a reality. That is why they have baptized it as A New Normal, and that is why the end of his project reads: “Welcome to a new normality”.