State of the Environment

2006

Human settlements

Theme commentary
Professor Peter W. Newton, Swinburne University of Technology
prepared for the 2006 Australian State of the Environment Committee at CSIRO, 2006

Liveability of human settlements

The liveability of human settlements can be defined by performance in three key areas: environmental quality, neighbourhood amenity, and individual wellbeing.

Environmental quality

The environmental quality (capital) of cities includes those environmental resources that are contained within the boundaries of an urban centre and from which residents gain benefit. As such, they are distinct from the natural resources (capital) imported into the region to support the economic functioning of the settlement and its residents. They include urban air quality, water quality of urban creeks, rivers, bays and estuaries, levels of contamination of soil and groundwater, and urban biodiversity (refer to the commentaries on Atmosphere, Land, Inland Waters and Biodiversity). There continues to be a major deficiency in national, state and territory, and local government state of the environment reporting in this core topic within human settlements (for example, see state of the environment reports for the ACT , New South Wales , Queensland , South Australia , Tasmania , Victoria , and Western Australia ).

Neighbourhood amenity

It is at the ‘neighbourhood’ scale, where a range of housing (design) and subdivision and infrastructure (planning) factors intersect (Figure 6), and where success in the creation of liveable and sustainable communities can be assessed for a set of key performance indicators. Where housing and neighbourhoods can be planned and designed in tandem, the maximum potential for innovation and achieving desirable triple-bottom-line outcomes is likely to be obtained; examples include using energy efficient dwellings to generate electricity and sell surplus back to the grid, and building water-smart housing, which relies on water sensitive urban design of the subdivision to derive maximum benefit. In the Australian greenfield urban development context, master planned communities are seen to offer the greatest prospect for achieving more sustainable residential development (Delfin Lend Lease 2002). The opportunity for simultaneously incorporating the range of environmental factors listed in (Figure 6) in a more integrated and comprehensive manner in master planned communities has been examined in a study by Blair et al. (2004). That study found that master planned communities, for the most part, delivered superior planning and design outcomes than would be possible under a traditional regulatory subdivision. New subdivision planning, however, continues to be dominated by financial yield over environmental performance, primarily because environment is under-priced (Miller and Ambrose 2005).

Figure 6: Sustainable subdivisions:  the housing – neighbourhood nexus

Figure 6: Sustainable subdivisions: the housing - neighbourhood nexus

(Source: Newton 2002, p. 39)

Housing

Demand for housing

McDonald (2001) has projected that there will be need for an additional 1.15 million new dwellings between 2002 and 2011 to accommodate the demand  that will result from the increased number of households in Australia. Much of this demand will have to be satisfied in the capital cities; for example, Melbourne South will require 10 000 new dwellings per year; Melbourne West 8 000 per year; Melbourne East 4 000 per year; Inner Melbourne 3 000 per year. McDonald also forecasts that two-thirds of these new dwellings will be detached houses.

As of 2001, only Sydney represented Australian urban centres with a percentage of detached houses less than the projected level (Table 5); most were at or above the national average of 75 per cent. The rate of growth of medium-density and high-rise housing is, however, more than double than that of separate housing; and all the medium and high density housing is concentrated in the larger urban centres and the inner suburbs, where demand for housing is strongest and land prices are the highest.

Table 5: Selected Occupied Private Dwellings - 2001
  Separate Houses High density housing  
  Percentage of dwellings Change in number of dwellings
(%)		 Percentage of dwellings Change in number of dwellings
(%)		 Total Dwellings#
(’000)
  2001 1991-2001 2001 1991-2001 2001
Capital cities 72.4 16.1 26.7 36.2 4 453.4
  Sydney 63.7 10.2 35.5 36.5 1 438.4
  Melbourne 74.5 13.9 24.7 36.0 1 243.4
  Brisbane 80.6 25.9 18.3 73.5 601.1
  Adelaide 75.5 13.5 24.0 13.9 430.2
  Perth 77.9 26.1 21.5 30.5 511.2
  Hobart 83.1 15.4 16.2 8.2 76.1
  Darwin 62.6 32.8 29.8 55.4 38.2
  Canberra 76.9 18.0 22.8 49.6 114.7
Large Population Centres 76.8 40.0 20.8 71.5 1 257.9
Country Areas 86.5 7.0 8.5 -0.1 1 361.0
Australia 75.9 17.5 22.2 37.2 7 072.2

* Dwellings where the dwelling structure was not stated were excluded prior to the calculation of percentages
# Includes other dwellings

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (1991 and 2001) Censuses of Population and Housing, cited in: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2003ef, p. 176).

Housing consumption

Demand for housing—the acquisition of residential property for domestic or investment needs—has intensified over the past decade, and this is seen in house price statistics. The drivers of this trend include the continuing strong preference by approximately 90 per cent of Australians for owning their own home (Wulff et al. 2004), which is closely interlinked to preferences for separate house and land. The attractiveness of housing as a form of investment from a taxation and long-term capital growth perspective (zero capital gains tax on owner-occupied houses; negative gearing for rental investments) has also been key to maintaining high levels of demand, despite challenges of affordability.

The demand for more space within new dwellings  has increased over the past decade, with average floor areas of new houses in capital cities consistently about 20 square metres greater than those in houses in the rest of the state (ABS 2002a) over a 20-year period. In this same 20-year period, household size has continued to contract to about 2.5 people per household. Recent studies of residential mobility (Wulff et al. 2004, p. 68) have concluded that ‘… too much space is hardly ever viewed as a problem by a household. Overcrowding nearly always leads to a residential move but a surplus of space tends not be considered a problem because adjusting to surplus space is far easier than to a shortage of space.’ Overcrowding  is largely restricted to the rental sector in Australia, which also experiences the greatest churn of household movement.

While demand for more space inside the dwelling has been increasing, the allotment sizes  for new housing in the capital cities have been decreasing. The exception has been Brisbane, where sites have increased in size between 1999–00 and 2003–04. New, detached housing now occupies a high proportion of the allotment.

Housing condition

The most recent survey of housing quality (ABS 1999) found that over half (57 per cent) of all occupied dwellings were in need of repairs , although less than eight per cent were considered in need of essential or urgent attention.

With regular maintenance, dwellings can have lifetimes that extend well over 100 years, which is an important target from the perspective of sustainability. The growth in major structural problems with age, however, and the shift in the cost ratio of dwelling: land from around 4:1 in the 1960s to 1:4 over the past five to ten years in major cities in Australia has increased the likelihood of demolition and re-build rather than re-life of property. This has a consequential impact of increasing construction and demolition on the associated waste streams.

Housing and neighbourhood character: the challenge of infill housing

A convergence of forces has led to a relatively new phenomenon in urban residential development in Australia’s major capital cities: that of infill housing. These forces can be identified as: an ageing of housing stock and inflation of land prices relative to dwelling costs; a set of government policies that encourage urban consolidation and higher density residential development; and the opportunistic property owner—someone who creates a dual occupancy on their hitherto single-dwelling allotment, or sells to an investor–developer who subsequently redevelops the property at two or three times the residential density. One of the few in-depth studies of this phenomenon estimated that the contribution of infill to Melbourne’s total new dwelling stock is around 35 per cent (Birrell et al. 2005). Notwithstanding the environmental benefits mentioned under ‘Urban form and density’, there has been an inability of development guidelines such as Rescode (Victoria) and BASIX (New South Wales) to come to terms with qualitative ‘design’ issues that can destroy the aesthetics of a streetscape and neighbourhood character (difficult to define, but readily apparent once constructed), increase traffic congestion, and diminish residential amenity (such as privacy, wind flow and ventilation, environmental noise, and shading). This is reflected in the increase in planning appeals (see Newton et al. 2001), the emergence of save-our-suburbs groups (Lewis 1999), and urging by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects for appointment of a Chief Architect for Australia.

Indoor air quality

Indoor air quality is a component of a key factor that affects individual health and wellbeing—indoor environmental quality . The Australian population spends an average over 90 per cent of its time indoors—at home, at school, at work, in transit, and in retail and entertainment centres. The result is that most people experience extended exposure to a range of pollutants such as tobacco smoke, Legionella, dust mites, volatile organic compounds, small particle pollution, and ozone. All of these have been linked to a spectrum of illnesses that includes respiratory disease (including asthma), headaches and dizziness, fatigue, nausea, pneumonia, allergies, and skin rashes (US EPA 1994). Combined, these all signal the importance of this environmental factor.

Significant background information on indoor air quality in Australia is available in Brown (1997) and Newton et al. (2001), but there continues to be a lack of national standards for this category of air pollution, apart from those that apply to workplaces. Trends in indoor air quality in Australia are summarised in Table 6; some pollutants are declining (for example, asbestos fibres and tobacco smoke), and others are increasing (for example, dust mites and volatile organic compounds), and many classes of pollutant still lack sufficient information. Part of the reason for this continuing situation is that the responsibility for indoor air quality is not centralised in one authority in Australia and as such is poorly coordinated. Avenues for improving indoor air quality include:

Table 6: Pollutants measured in Australian buildings1
Pollutant Indoor Concentration Range Major Source Control Trend over Recent Decades Basis of Trend Information
Asbestos fibres <0.002 f/ml Friable asbestos products Risk management, Removal Declining Asbestos products use declined to zero since 1980s
Radon: Conventional dwellings 99.9% < goal of 200 Bq/m³ Soil under building Siting of building No change Cities located in areas w/o radon problem
Radon: Earth-constructed dwellings ~9% > goal of 200 Bq/m³ Background radiation of earth walls Material selection Unknown -
Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) High in recreational buildings Cigarette smoke Prohibition of smoking, designated smoking area Declining Population who smoke approx. halved; smoking prohibited in most buildings
Respirable particulate matter Poorly characterised ETS, cooking, fuel combustion Poorly characterised Unknown -
Legionella spp. 30% of population exposed Water cooling towers Maintenance, site selection Variable Outbreaks in Vic decreased markedly last two years with new regs/register
House dust mites 10–40 mg/g Der p 1 [this is the main type of mite protein that caused the allergic reaction in humans] allergen in house dust Allergen build-up in bedding, carpet , furniture Removal of habitats, humidity control High, possibly increased Greater use of carpets, plush furniture and low ventilation
Microbial species 100s to 18000 CFU/m³ Moist or damp surfaces Control moisture and mould Unknown -
Formaldehyde: conventional buildings <goal of 100 ppb (1–3 day average) Reconstituted wood-based products Source emission control, ventilation Variable Product emissions reducing but more product used
Formaldehyde: mobile buildings 100–1000 ppb, exceeding goal Reconstituted wood-based products Source emission control, ventilation Unknown -
Volatile organic compounds (VOC):
established buildings
new buildings		   Total <goal of 500mg/m³
Total 2000-20 000mg/m³		 ‘Wet’ synthetic materials (adhesives, paints), office equipment, printed matter, furniture Source emission control, ventilation Increasing Increasing new homes and renovation
Pesticides Limited data, median <5mg/m³ Major sources unknown Floor structure, clean-up, inspection Unknown -
Nitrogen dioxide Up to 1000 ppb Unflued gas heaters and stoves Source emission control, flued appliances Variable Emissions marginally reduced but ventilation probably also reducing
Carbon monoxide ~10% > goal of 9 ppm Unflued gas heaters and stoves Source emission control, flued appliances Variable Emissions marginally reduced but ventilation probably also reducing
Carbon dioxide Poorly characterised Exhaled air Ventilation to standards Variable Probably increased in buildings from 1980s due to reduced ventilation standards
Ozone Poorly characterised Office equipment, ozone deodorisers Source emission control, ventilation Probably decreasing Emission from office equipment decreased in 1990s

1 Goals specifically referred to are National Health and Medical Research Council goals.

Source: Brown (2004 pp. 6–8)

Transport, mobility and accessibility

The sustained increase in personal mobility, whether in terms of transport communications, has been one of the key transitions of post-1950s Australia (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Change in the number of passengers on urban public transport from 1945 to 2005

Figure 7: Change in the number of passengers on urban public transport from 1945 to 2005

Source: ABS (2005c)

Private passenger vehicle travel represents three quarters of total road travel, but the rate of growth in the share of road travel is greatest in the category of light commercial vehicles (seven per cent per annum), which service intra-urban freight needs. Growth in the volume of freight that is transported by road, both urban and ex-urban, has also continued at rates more closely aligned to rates of economic growth than population growth.

Transport and triple-bottom-line negatives

The negative environmental, human health and economic impacts of Australia’s transport system are seen in increasing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, urban air pollution, and traffic congestion. Transport contributes approximately 15 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions (ABS 2003c) as a result of its fossil fuel use . The demands of road transport have been largely responsible for an increase in fossil fuel use in Australia by more than 25 per cent in the decade 1991–2001.

Urban traffic congestion is likely to remain an intractable problem for Australia’s biggest cities. The bulk of city traffic is now dominated by non-work activities, such as social and recreational, ferrying children, shopping and personal business.

There is now a greater dispersion of trip origins and destinations. The central business district has long ceased to be the dominant employment destination of cities, with the suburbanisation of jobs into areas not well-served by public transport. Only 13 per cent of Sydney’s jobs are in the central business district (Warren Centre 2000). The reality of more balanced and self-contained residential communities, with a measure of overlap of housing markets and labour characteristic of the early post-war metropolitan era, has diminished at the suburb level (Birrell et al. 1999, p. 54), but warrants attention at the ‘city of cities’ scale (Warren Centre, 2000).

Vehicles kilometres travelled  per person per trip increases with distance from the central business district in the large cities, reflecting poorer access to public transport, employment and services.

It is estimated (ATA 2003) that the freight task will double over the next decade, increasing in volume from 375 billion tonne kilometres (btkm) in 1999–2000 to 648 btkm in 2020, at an average annual growth rate of 2.8 per cent.

Projections of car traffic for Australia’s capital cities to 2020 suggests volumes one-third higher than that in 2002, and 40 per cent higher when growth in light commercial vehicle traffic is included (25 per cent higher for non-metropolitan Australia). When these projections on traffic volumes are linked to data on current road capacity, the costs of congestion and associated costs to the national economy if nothing is done are forecast to be as high as about $30 billion per year by 2015 (BTRE 2000, p. 2).

Towards a solution

There is a range of responses that have been developed to address the negative externalities associated with increased automobile dependence in Australia. They fall into three main categories:

Integrated land use and transport planning

All of Australia’s major cities have strategic land use and transport plans that seek better integration of housing, employment, services and transport. A key objective of this integration is reduced levels of urban congestion and increased levels of public transport usage. The Warren Centre’s (2000) ‘city of cities’ concept has merit as a strategy for big city planning in that it harnesses anthropogenic and market realities (Marchetti 1992) of a 30-minute (on average) daily commute as an organising principle for cities through history. The shortcomings of this approach rest with the long lead times required to achieve the expected benefits.

Transport supply side innovation

Recent innovations include the introduction of more fuel-efficient vehicles. For example, Australian vehicle manufacturers have committed to a voluntary fuel consumption target for new passenger cars of 6.8 litres per 100 kilometres by 2010. This is an improvement of 18 per cent over the 2001 rate (AAA 2003). Hybrid vehicles are beginning to appear on the market, and they offer a fuel consumption of three litres per 100 kilometres (Winkel et al. 2001). The problem is that it will take more than a decade before new vehicle replacements begin to make a difference to the performance of the total vehicle fleet.

Other supply-side innovations relate to a variety of road and traffic systems (Australian Transport Statistics May 2004 ) and increased investment in public transport infrastructure and services to encourage a shift in mode choice . This will require redressing the current imbalance in funding: new transport infrastructure investment on road ($5.3 billion) is three times grater that on rail ($1.8 billion) (Australian Transport Statistics May 2004, p.10). It will also require public transport planning to satisfactorily address the findings from surveys that have sought to understand reasons for low patronage of public transport.

Transport demand side innovation

The key initiatives here are road pricing, Intelligent Transport Systems and Smart Cars that provide driver information and guidance systems to improve efficiency on the road network (For example, see the SmartUK website ), and use of the internet as a substitute for a range of trips; Corpuz and Peachman 2003).

Individual Wellbeing

Wellbeing is a concept that is firmly centred on the individual in terms of key issues such as employment, economic resources, and health; but is also affected by contextual factors that include family and social networks, neighbourhood amenity, and access to services on the basis of proximity and affordability (OECD 1976; ABS 2001b; Eckersley 1998).

Income and consumption

Over the past decade, household debt  (as a share of household income) has reached historically high levels, indicating that consumption aspirations have ‘overtaken’ disposable income. Between September 1993 and December 2001, the aggregate debt to income ratio rose by 51 per cent (La Cava and Simon 2003).

The economic context for this period has been growth in employment and a decline in unemployment . By March 2005, Australia’s unemployment rate was 5.1 per cent, the lowest level since late 1976. Also important, are the growth in national economy , high levels of consumer confidence, growth in Australian investment markets, and growth in housing prices.

All have combined to provide the economic environment that has encouraged growth in individual and household consumption (Dvornak and Kohler 2003).

Locational disadvantage

Average wage and salary incomes for people in metropolitan Australia are higher than those paid to employees in non-metropolitan areas, and the difference is widening (ABS 2003f): from a 15 per cent differential in 1995–06 to 19 per cent in 2000–01.

The knowledge economy  is also not uniformly represented across Australia. There continues to be metropolitan–non-metropolitan differences in access to and use of computers and the internet—the basic tools of the information economy—as well as significant spatial concentrations of information and knowledge workers within cities linked to high income – high amenity suburbs (Newton 1991; Gipps et al.1996; Florida 2002; Reich 1991).

There is also an increasing divergence of incomes between areas within metropolitan and suburban areas. In an analysis of employee income statistics between 1990 and 2000, Borland et al. (2001) have warned that one consequence of the income gap that widened during the 1980s and continued through the 1990s could be the development of ‘ghettos’, where welfare recipients concentrate spatially as a result of housing markets (cheap housing) and where the likelihood of finding work is small. The concern is that an intergenerational pattern of welfare dependency could be reinforced by a combination of poor family and neighbourhood experiences in relation to employment. The research pioneered in Australia by Maher (1995) and Gregory and Hunter (1995) requires more attention in the context of the long-term consequences of place-based inequality. Research by Birrell et al. (1999) points to a growth in the number of suburbs (in Melbourne) where ratios of poor to better-off people are increasing. The high rates of residential mobility observed among households in such areas may also reflect their housing tenure status (rental)—a housing-related social justice issue in its own right (Wulff and Newton 1996).

Birrell et al. (1999) suggest that the public policy responses for such areas need to be focused more on welfare, housing, educational and training needs of the residents and their neighbourhood amenity rather than local job creation, which would most likely translate into employment for better qualified ‘outsiders’.

Human health

The key human health indicators  of life expectancy, mortality, subjective health, disability, illness, disease and injury need to be understood within a complex matrix of determinants (AIHW 2004) that include environmental, social and urban settings as well as the biomedical.

Newton et al. (2001) remains the most comprehensive national report to date on health from a human settlements perspective. Key findings from that report and AIHW (2004) reveal the following geographic variations in health outcomes across Australia:

Death rates are on average 1.1 times higher in regional Australia and 1.4 higher in very remote regions than in major cities. There a number of contributing causes to higher rates of mortality in areas outside cities, (see Table 7).

Table 7: Leading Causes of ‘Excess’ Deaths in Areas Outside Major Cities – Australia 1997-1999
Specific cause of death Annual ‘excess’ deaths Per cent of total ‘excess’
Ischaemic heart disease 755 23
‘Other’ circulatory diseasesa 518 16
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 374 11
Motor vehicle accidents 368 11
Diabetesb 191 6
Suicide 184 6
‘Other’ injuriesc 214 6
Prostrate cancer 131 4
Colorectal cancer 112 4
Lung cancerd 52 2
All other causes 399 12
All causes 3 303 100

a excludes stroke or rheumatic heart disease.
bb There were 360 ‘excess’ deaths for which diabetes was a contributing factor (associated cause). In 191 of these, diabetes was recorded as the principal cause of death. The principal causes of the remaining 169 are distributed among the remaining categories in the table. In 11% of all ‘excess’ deaths, diabetes was implicated as an associated cause of death.
c ‘Other’ injuries include all injuries except motor vehicle accidents, suicide, homicide and accidental shooting.
d There were 52 excess deaths due to lung cancer overall (this was made up of 112 ‘excess’ deaths of those younger than 70 years outside Major Cities and 60 fewer than expected for those who were 70 years and older). While it accounted for 2% of all ‘excess’ deaths, lung cancer accounted for 6% of ‘excess’ deaths of people younger than 65 years.

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database cited in AIHW (2003, p.10.)

The most significant contributor to loss of ‘healthy’ life in Australia is mental disorder (over 300 000 Disability adjusted life years (DALY)) years of life lost among the Australian population in 1996 for this condition (Mathers et al. 1999, p.14) and appears to be more highly concentrated in urban and rural compared to remote settings—although this may reflect shortages of mental health professionals in more sparsely settled regions.

Hospital visitation (separation) rates continue to be significantly higher in the more remote rural and sparsely settled regions. These higher rates for people living outside the major cities may be due to greater need (poorer health) or to different admission practices. For example, admission in regional and remote areas may be more likely because of the greater need for precaution as a result of the greater distances and restricted access to other medical services. The lower rates of admission to private hospitals reflect the lower levels of physical and financial access to these hospitals in regional and remote areas (most private hospitals are in the larger centres).