I hate the word almost as much as ‘going forward’. It’s become one of those overused and undefined regen words that has me reaching for a Macdonalds.
Yet the struggle for it gets me out of bed each morning. It’s not just the eco bit, it’s how you create the better world. A Camberwell preoccupation, as a small scale developer, is how you can take the fundamental ideas of the eco village movement and apply them to urban market realities, at scale and in a way that tackles community demoralisation (solutions to world poverty come later in the morning).
Hugh Barton’s book is a good shot at defining a sustainable community, but what can a company like Camberwell do to get us there? We’re not the first developer to think about this after all (BioRegional Quintain and Blueprint would be two to mention), but there’s not too many developers who are sticking the people and the buildings bit together. Too much of the industry’s instinct is to put up beautiful eco -buildings and then leave.
Our answer is to concentrate on one crucial aspect of sustainability – the creation of neighbourhood based business, cultural and community networks; housing them in great building and staying around for a couple of years after physical completion, working with a community partner to make them a success.
But to make an impact you can’t do this stuff on your own. Our challenge over the next year is to find the investors, developers, public service leaders and cultural innovators who want to make that terrible word sustainability a reality.
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