Human settlements: Introduction
Human settlements in Queensland range from isolated outback farms and Indigenous communities, rural towns and regional centres to the rapidly growing metropolis of South East Queensland (SEQ). These settlements, particularly the large urban centres and cities, drive modern economies and provide a rich social and cultural environment in which people can interact and pursue a range of educational, employment and recreational opportunities. These opportunities attract more people and fuel the trend towards increasing urbanisation.
Growing human settlements have impacts on the environment through land use conversion, the development of physical and social infrastructure, the consumption of water and energy, and the generation of waste. Queensland's integrated planning and development assessment framework plays a key role in managing population growth and provides a number of planning tools to coordinate and integrate planning at the state, regional and local levels.
This chapter examines the major issues facing Queensland's human settlements in eight issue papers:
- Population and settlement patterns deals with total population growth, population growth of local areas, population ageing, household size, residential density, demographic trends such as interstate and international migration, and how development is being managed at the state, regional and local levels.
- Economic activity and employment discusses economic growth at the state and regional levels, total employment over all sectors, employment in the information and technology sector, and unemployment levels.
- Travel and transport explores such topics as car ownership, the distances people travel in passenger vehicles, public transport use, congestion levels, average distance that people travel to work, and the movement of freight.
- Energy use discusses total energy consumed, energy consumption by different fuel sources, energy consumption per person, energy consumption per unit of gross state product and the proportion of energy consumption by sector.
- Urban water use examines the use and reuse of water and per capita water consumption.
- Solid waste management provides an overview of the amount of solid waste going to landfill, the amount of solid waste that is either recovered or recycled and the trend in the amount of domestic waste recycling per person.
- Chemicals in the environment describes government actions to assess the environmental and chemical burdens in Queensland and the number of facilities that report to the National Pollutant Inventory.
- Liveability covers such topics as the proportion of land that is conserved for green and open spaces, the number of noise complaints, house prices and income ratios, changes in community renewal areas, life expectancy, health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, urban socioeconomic inequality and community attitudes.
Long-term trends have been presented for all issues except 'Chemicals in the environment', where indicators have been presented for the first time. The inclusion of chemicals in this chapter reflects the increasing public awareness of environmental chemicals and concern for the impact they have on the environment.
Urban metabolism and industrial ecology
The environmental monitoring of a human settlement needs to take into account the internal environment of that settlement and its utility in meeting human needs, as well as the settlement's impacts on the external environment through resource use and waste production. Conceptual frameworks for studying urban centres have likened urban settlements to a complex organism or ecosystem and given rise to the fields of urban metabolism and industrial ecology (Krrishnamohan 2002). These models provide a useful way of examining energy and resource throughputs and the sustainability (or otherwise) of our urban environments.
Industrial ecology in particular offers a framework for holistic environmental management of human settlements, aiming at 'closing the loop' in the flow of energy and resources (Figure 9.1). The Regional Industrial Ecology model builds on the Extended Urban Metabolism (EUM) model presented in State of the Environment Queensland 2003. The rationale of industrial ecology is to minimise waste and resource and energy consumption upstream while finding opportunities for reuse of waste by other industries, through by-product synergies or waste exchange. Here the output waste from one industry becomes the input material for another industry.
Application of these concepts at a larger scale requires tracking of the total resource inputs-energy, water, food, building materials and other natural resources-into a region (Figure 9.1). The processing of these inputs has been dubbed 'community metabolism'; it can be likened to the engine room of a human settlement where industry and business, residential, tourism and local government processes occur. The aim is to feed as much of the waste streams as possible back into the community metabolism systems as resource inputs: the final outputs are liveability and waste outputs.
This chapter explores the core elements making up the regional industrial ecology model. The resource inputs are energy, water consumption and chemicals found in food and building materials. They support the metabolic cycles of economic activity, population, settlements and transport. These activities, in turn, generate the outputs of liveability and waste, where any waste or waste chemical generated is recycled where possible. This concept is useful because it provides an entry point for examining sustainability (see Chapter 2, Sustainability) and for tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of the laws and regulations put in place to reduce the impacts of human settlements (see Chapter 11, Legislation).
Figure 9.1 Regional Industrial Ecology model
Source: Krrishnamohan 2002
References
Krrishnamohan, K. 2002, 'Urban metabolism as an industrial ecology tool for sustainable development of human settlements-a viewpoint', International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences 28(1-2): 63-70.
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Last reviewed 12 May 2011
Last updated 13 February 2008