Visionary project for Sydney's first 'Eco-City' unveiled

A leading academic in urban planning and development has unveiled a prototype for Sydney's first 'Eco-City.'

Rafael Pizarro is a lecturer in Sustainable Urban Planning at the faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney.

Mr Pizarro and a team of 20 final year architecture students have spent several months designing what they call an ambitious and revolutionary plan to transform Sydney's White Bay into the state's first ecologically sound and sustainable city.

Mr Pizarro says the idea to produce a prototype for the country's first eco-city came from an urgent need to mitigate global warming in the Sydney metropolitan region.

"The idea came from the current crisis in climate change and global warming," he said.

"When this crisis became public with the Stern Report and the inter-governmental panel on climate change report, I decided that I wanted to give a new direction to my teaching, a new direction to the way I was training future designers and planners in this profession."

"So I decided to tackle this head on through the designing of cities."

The project, White Bay Eco-City, features mid to high-density solar districts, food and energy production areas, storm water run-off systems and a water recycling plant.

Residents of the eco-city would be able to get around on an internal public transport system consisting of a light tram grid and special roads for public GPS-guided 'stackable' mini-cars.

Mr Pizarro says two of the most important features of the eco-city are the internal transport system and the ability to use buildings to grow food.

"Food production not only happens in a spatial district in most of the eco-city, but also on most of the rooftops of the buildings," he said.

"We have created rooftop gardens where you can plant your vegies and in this way increasing the food supply for the eco-city while knocking out the cost and environmental impact of transporting food in and out."

"The other major feature is public transportation."

"We know that if we want to create sustainable cities, public transport is a must. So within this eco-city we have minimised, not eliminated completely, but have minimised the use of private vehicles."

"We created an internal system of public transport with a small tram that goes around the city."

"And the other system we have created, borrowed from an MIT professor who created these stackable mini cars that occupy literally very little space. They are guided by a GPS system, so you don't need to drive them. You just punch in on the screen where you want to go."

The 80 hectare site would accommodate around 15,000 people, but has the capacity to house 22,000.

Mr Pizarro says the prototype may only be a vision at this stage, but he says eco-cities like White Bay are the way of the future.

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