Retrofitting the suburban garden: Morphologies and some elements of sustainability potential of two Australian residential suburbs compared

Abstract

Residential gardens will continue to dominate as important elements of Australian suburbs in the timeframe available for adapting to climate change. In this paper, we analyse and compare the morphologies and sustainability potential of residential suburbs and their gardens in two case studies: Traditional-suburban and Modern-suburban in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Spatial distributions of land-cover patterns were estimated using Geographic Information Systems (ArcGIS). The four sustainability parameters measured were: roof rain water collection; local food (vegetable) production; energy and CO2 emission savings from clothes lines; and carbon benefits of onsite tree canopy cover...