Gail Hall turns out to be the perfect co-moderator for the Extreme Green Infrastructure masterclass.
She’s a planner, so she understands that the biggest barrier to better, more resilient infrastructure is often planning – which are rules and regulations made by people. And anything made by people should be changed by people, right?
Her background is in local government in Victoria and Gladstone in Queensland, so it’s a given that she has plenty of experience negotiating change in a politically charged environment, we reasoned.
At the City of Melbourne, where she was invited to join a group of landscape architects and city officials working away on greener outcomes, she learnt how her profession could help solve the barriers.
“I was known as the friendly green planner,” she tells us early this week.
Soon, Hall organised a major grant from the City of Melbourne, local councils and state government to create a “growing green guide” in 2014.
Eventually, it became clear that what was needed was a dedicated organisation that would bring together government, research and industry. Hence, she co-founded with Ben Nicholson of Urban Greener, the Australasian Green Infrastructure Network. AGIN was featured at the recent Green Infrastructure Lab launched at the University of Technology Sydney under the stewardship of Jua Cilliers.
But Hall understands we need to change more than planning to accommodate better urban greening – especially at the urban building level.
“If you want good quality, green infrastructure, obviously, you need to get your facilities managers on board because they end up signing all the contracts for maintenance and potentially employing the people that will do the maintenance.”
Inevitably, she says, a new bunch of building managers will come along and try to minimise costs by cutting down on maintenance.
“We actually know all the barriers; what we need to do is actually getting in on and solving”.
The AGIN is designed to advocate for green infrastructure on a national scale through an independent body.
Hall, who is originally from the UK, says the EU and the UK are moving ahead, the latter with a biodiversity net gain mechanism that mandates a 10 per cent improvement in biodiversity for many developments.
There’s also the de-paving mechanism in Paris, which mandates a 50 per cent permeability in paving and concrete around buildings by 2030, something we got a glimpse of thanks to our summits and ebooks on urban greening.
And then there’s the query she’s getting from an old friend in insurance in the UK, who’s hoping Australia has some leadership on green infrastructure, given it’s in the eye of the storm.
So what are we going to tell Hall’s friend after the event?
Get your tickets now and find out!