How the house and car nexus is destroying biodiversity
"Australian houses are among the largest in the world, averaging 236 square metres of living space"
"Local urban greening outcomes are subjugated to state government housing priorities."
"Driveway area has increased on average by 57% from 29m2 to 46m2."
"Front garden area has reduced on average by 46% from 102m2 to 55m2."
"Redevelopment has reduced canopy cover by 62% at the lot scale."
"Middle-ring suburban Sydney is experiencing a quiet yet profound transformation. As redevelopment accelerates, larger houses with expansive footprints and additional driveways are steadily replacing traditional front yards and gardens. This study examines 370 properties across Northern and Greater Western Sydney to quantify these changes. In areas where older, low-density homes have been replaced by newer, larger detached dwellings, the average front garden area has declined by 46%, while driveways and other impervious surfaces have increased by 57%. Most notably, front yard canopy cover has fallen by 62%. These patterns are not due to a lack of policy, but to a planning system in which local controls have become discretionary under ongoing state-level legislative reforms. Broader social trends toward larger homes and greater car ownership further reinforce this shift. The cumulative effect is leading to a substantial loss of private green space, contributing to higher urban heat, reduced biodiversity, and diminished connections with nature. Urban planning reform is urgently needed to embed minimum standards..."
Death of the front yards: How the house and car is replacing residential gardens >>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126001617
#cars #roads #housing #driveways #sprawl #expansion #MumAndDadDeveloper #UHI #UrbanHeat #gardens #backyard #GreenSpace #UrbanGreening #wildlife #biodiversity #trees #children #SmallLandclearing #UrbanPlanning #FossilFuel #dependency #failure #regulation #suburbia #Australia #culture
Image: Housing cars
This is a traffic infrastructure story, an overreliance on cars story, and deeply macabre
"Man who petitioned for traffic light dies at same intersection where his wife was killed"
#transportation #cars #horror #walkability #suburbs #driving #sprawl #traffic #infrastructure
"“So the case sits...within that moral haze of people who aren’t fit to drive, still driving b/c it’s effectively impossible to give up driving, given the way we have designed our country...
He raises “the question of what exactly people in a largely car-dependent country are supposed to do with themselves as they age out of driving responsibly.”
Link: https://lloydalter.substack.com/p/we-may-soon-have-70-million-boomers
#Boomers #Transportation #Aging #Walkability #Suburbs #Driving #Cars #Sprawl
Australian wildlife in ‘harm’s way’, with volunteers left to ‘pick up the pieces’ amid climate crisis, fires and floods
"Last financial year, volunteers responded to more than 320,000 calls for help for sick, injured or orphaned wildlife. Nearly 130,000 rescue operations were conducted and vets assessed 51,000 injured animals."
"The soaring demand is being driven by climate change and habitat destruction."
“As a consequence of these pressures, more and more animals are getting in harm’s way. When they get in harm’s way, governments take very little interest. So it is left to volunteers to pick up the pieces and get those animals back into the wild. Currently responsibility for injured animals falls on the community."
"We need a national approach.”
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/03/australian-wildlife-in-harms-way-with-volunteers-left-to-pick-up-the-pieces-amid-climate-crisis-fires-and-floods
#biodiversity #wildlife #conservation #EPBCAct #volunteers #FossilFuels #sprawl #roads #LandClearing #climate #governance
Cockatoos!
Everyone loves cockatoos (except property developers)
"Developers in Western Australia are planning to bulldoze an endangered banskia ecosystem to build some overpriced homes. >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/feb/23/cockatoos-everyone-loves-cockatoos-except-property-developers
Image: First Dog on the Moon >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/feb/23/cockatoos-everyone-loves-cockatoos-except-property-developers
#Cockatoos #birds #bulldoze #EndangeredSpecies #biodiversity #sprawl
Bentley ****TALK CLIMATE****
BellingenNSW
Chris Mackay 🇨🇦
ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES
Miss Gayle
Council for Canadian Urbanism
Dave Thompson 🇨🇦