Green Star-Communities, the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA) triple-bottom-line sustainability rating tool for communities, has now been in place, in various iterations, for almost a decade. Almost 500,000 people live in or are moving to Green Star communities across Australia[1].
From my reviews and assessments of community rating submissions over this period, here’s my view on the rating tool credits that have most successfully improved sustainability and liveability outcomes in rated communities across the country.
- Credit 3 – Engagement. Together with Credit 6 (Sustainability Awareness), this credit has raised the bar for embedding community values and aspirations into the development model and helped inform occupants, owners and operators of the positive financial, health and environmental benefits of living more sustainably. The credit is helping to create ‘6-star users’ for ‘6-star communities’.
- Credit 4 – Adaptation and Resilience. Climate adaptation studies and community resilience plans are helping to future-proofed new communities from identified climate change impacts, shaping the insurability and asset security landscape, and engaging the public in a critical discourse.
- Credit 5 – Corporate responsibility. Corporate responsibility and sustainability reporting are the hallmarks of progressive organisations. Major developers are often, contrary to some public views, the innovators and drivers of world-class fair and ethical work practices, social equity, sustainable material sourcing, affordability and low carbon living in emerging urban communities – and they recognise there’s an improved bottom line from this.
- Credit 12 – Culture, Heritage and Identity. Investigating, interpreting and enhancing a site’s cultural, heritage and identity values (often including Reconciliation Action Plans) fundamentally improve how we respect and reflect country and embed indigenous and heritage values into our communities. Where meaningful interpretation occurs and associated place-making programs and initiatives are implemented, it can transform a community’s identity, relevance and uniqueness and drive occupant engagement and community pride.
- Credit 16 – Community Investment. This credit has recognised and driven optional infrastructure investment in communities, often well beyond the credit’s target of ‘$4000 per dwelling’. Improved communities with better facilities and assets drive market uptake and branding and consistently deliver positive returns (direct and indirect) on investment.?
- Credit 18 – Employment and Economic Resilience. For certain (mainly brownfield/renewal) communities, the rating tool drives and rewards diverse employment and economic diversity, and encourages incubators, start-ups, shared innovation space and the productive interplay of engaged people and organisations.
- Credit 24 – Integrated Water Cycle – This credit drives the adoption of progressive, consistent and sustainable water quality and quantity outcomes. The resultant improvements in post-development stormwater volumes and pollutant loads that are increasingly being adopted as national standards.
- Credit 23 – Peak Electricity Demand Reduction and Credit 25 – Greenhouse Gas Strategy. These credits established early national benchmarks encouraging developers to deliver meaningful reductions in electricity demand and carbon emissions relative to reference development cases. Many communities are now all-electric, have power purchase agreements with net-zero suppliers, on-site generation and the storage and low carbon civic infrastructure. The credits have also driven low energy, efficient and healthy dwelling design, fit out and management systems.
These outcomes are delivering health, social, environmental and economic benefits for communities and occupants, helping organisations meet their corporate governance objectives, building brand and improving direct and indirect return on investment.
Positive outcomes for communities are being further strengthened by GBCA’s suite of sustainability tools, notably the Future home rating tool which extends the range of measures available to drive “the transformation of the housing market to focus on health, resilience and net zero energy[2]”.
Future iterations of the Green Star – Communities rating tool will reflect the GBCA’s recent Future in focus: Climate Positive Roadmap for precincts document and assist the transition to absolute zero carbon and carbon positive outcomes.
In my next instalment, I’ll look at the ‘misses’ – those Green Star – Communities credits that I feel haven’t quite lived up to their intent or have seldom been embraced by project teams.
In the meantime, if you’d like discuss a Green Star – Communities pathway for your project, by targeting the credits that maximise liveability and sustainability outcomes, and optimise return on investment, please feel free to contact me at JFP Urban Consultants.
[2] https://new.gbca.org.au/green-star/green-star-strategy/future-homes/
All images are linked directly to their source and are examples of Green Star-Communities success stories
