News Archive

How many people does it take to design a new city?

At least as many as there are in this photograph.

This group is most of the UWA researchers and industry and government partners who are working together in the Co-operative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRC WSC).

It is a decade-long multi-million dollar Australia-wide (and international) venture which will transform the way we go about designing new cities and improving existing ones through better urban water management.

The UWA-based hub is one of four (Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Singapore) and a focus here is on the design and creation of a new city, Keralup, for 150,000 people, south of Rockingham.

The State Department of Housing is one of the CRC's industry partners and they are working together to address the problems of high groundwater and high nutrient levels at the 4,000 hectare site on the Serpentine River.

But the challenge is not exclusively about water.

Anas Ghadouani, the Regional Executive Director of the Western Regional Research Hub (encompassing WA and NT) of the CRC, is co-ordinating dozens of researchers across the University from six faculties.

"Solutions need to be integrated into the city form in an interdisciplinary manner, to foster a higher degree of climate resilience in cities of the future.

"This is a revolutionary approach to the creation of liveable, sustainable and productive cities," Associate Professor Ghadouani said. "The revolution is in the interdisciplinary research and external partnerships across multiple sectors.

"Researchers from the Science, Arts and Law faculties, from Architecture, Landscape and Visual Art, from Engineering, Computing and Mathematics and from Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences are all involved, as are government departments, government agencies, local government and private industry - pretty much all the stakeholders."

Late last year, the Federal Government allocated $30 million until June 2019. This is supported by higher education institutions, government and non-government organisations, water utilities and the private sector, contributing a further $89 million.

"It's a rare opportunity, to give researchers $120 million to undertake and integrate their research across 20 disciplines and to apply them to a blank canvases in projects such as the Keralup Project," Professor Ghadouani said. "There are not many places where people can build new cities: WA is one of them. Keralup will have state-of-the-art water-sensitive design at both the domestic and public level.

"There are lots of new ideas that are largely untested, but that's the whole idea behind CRCs - to implement new ideas, not leave them on the drawing board."

The new city will be built in three phases, the first of which is planned to start in seven years.

This is the first time the Department of Housing has partnered with a CRC in a major development. Director, Strategic Projects Unit, John Savell, said the project was a great opportunity for the Department to harness expert knowledge from UWA academics.

"The CRC's objectives align with the issues we need to address at Keralup, including management guidelines for urban water bodies, increasing their resilience and ensuring that urban growth is accompanied by an improvement in the health of aquatic environments," Mr Savell said.

Research over the next nine years will guide capital investment Australia-wide of more than $100 billion by the water sector and more than $550 billion from the private sector in urban development over the next 15 years.

The CRC-WSC has already developed the first tranche of 34 projects, involving 167 researchers and 43 PhD students.

At UWA, 11 projects are under way with 13 academics leading research in the areas of agricultural and resource economics, history, law, environmental systems engineering, social sciences, natural resource management, computer science and the environment. The School of Population Health's Centre for the Built Environment will also be part of the program.

Current projects will address economic, social and ecological costs and benefits of a water-sensitive city; understanding social processes to achieve that future; better governance for complex decision-making; better regulatory frameworks for such cities; urban waterways; hydrology and nutrient transport processes in ground and surface water systems; intelligent urban water systems; and planning, design and management to protect and integrate water systems.

This week, the Institute of Advanced Studies will sponsor a cross-disciplinary forum, Water and Society: How do we achieve social transformation?

The CRC WSC will come together with UWA's Centre for the Study of Social Change and the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy to present a new look at water.

"Water is a good model for learning about society," Professor Ghadouani said. "It is about urban design, safety, health, economics ... so much."

Alongside him on the panel will be Professor Michael Burton, agricultural and resource economist; Associate Professor Alex Gardner from the Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law; and Winthrop Professor Carmen Lawrence, psychologist and Chair of the Australian Heritage Council.

They will explore the social transformations needed to support water-sensitive cities, including community attitudes and behavioural change, governance and economic assessment practices, management systems and technological innovations.

The forum will be in the University Club Theatre Auditorium on Thursday 16 May from 6 - 8pm.  It is a free event but you need to register at www.ias.uwa.edu.au to attend.