Australasia News
Australian Cities needs a green-roof revolution.
EXAMPLE: The unused rooftops of Melbourne’s buildings are a massively underutilised resource that has the potential to create new green space in the central city that is bigger than Royal Park.
Australia Needs To Join The Green Revolution
Rooftops covered with grass, vegetable gardens and lush foliage are now a common sight in many cities around the world. More and more private companies and city authorities are investing in green roofs, drawn to their wide-ranging benefits which include savings on energy costs, mitigating the risk from floods, creating habitats for urban wildlife, tackling air pollution and urban heat and even producing food.
Queensland’s largest green wall has recently been unveiled as part of a $100 million-plus glass-fronted building at Brisbane’s Breakfast Creek Lifestyle Precinct.
K11 Musea is a shopping centre on the Tsim Sha Tsui harbour-front in Hong Kong, designed by an architecture team led by Kohn Pedersen Fox.
The retail development is clad in Portuguese limestone, with 4,600 square metres of green walls and a green roof featuring urban farms.
New research has found a strong link between proximity to urban green spaces and mental wellbeing in city residents.
One of the best ways to promote environmental sustainability is to incorporate natural elements into a building design. This makes the building more energy efficient, because it can purify air and perform other functions with vegetation, rather than machines that suck energy.
Australia managed to secure its top three position across the Asia Pacific region with $15.6 billion to end June but it still has to accelerate domestic green infrastructure investments, according to the London based Climate Bonds Initiative’s annual report “Green infrastructure Investments Opportunities Australia 2019” (GIIO).
The new AILA position statement highlights green infrastructure’s many values, with the potential to fight climate change clearly deserving of more attention and investment.
