On the suburban scourge of black roofs
Shades of non-colour are trendy at the moment. From cigarette-smoke grey to sepulchral black, non-colours appear everywhere. From where I sit now, I can see six parked cars and not one of them is an actual colour. But worse than this profusion of non-descript greys on the roads are the vast swathes of our suburban landscape given over to grey houses with black roofs, and to this I only have one thing to say: stop it! Stop it right now. Enough with the grey and black. And not just for aesthetic considerations, although that's reason enough.
Our cities are urban heat sinks. As we cover up the natural landscape with houses, roads, airports, carparks, shopping malls, waste transfer stations, office blocks and so forth, we alter the landscape's natural ability to cool itself down. The built environment absorbs heat quickly and retains it for longer than the natural environment. After a very hot day the road will still be warm to the touch long after sunset, as will the western walls of buildings. Dark colours absorb heat, so all those black roofs are making houses hotter. How do we combat that? By installing air-conditioning, of course.
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Aesthetically, this scenario is atrocious. There is no longer any regional architecture - if you're in an outer suburb you could be in any city in Australia. Those trendy greys and blacks won't be trendy for long (hopefully), so in a couple of decades all those grey and black houses are going to be so 2020s. Chat GPT tells me that grey is fashionable in architecture "because of its versatility, neutrality, and ability to create a sophisticated and timeless aesthetic." Personally, I see nothing timeless or sophisticated about an endless expanse of grey houses with black roofs. I see a boring, characterless failure of urban planning and design.
Then there's the sustainability aspect. Traditional architectural styles are not only suited the prevailing climatic conditions of the region, but originally they used building materials that could be sourced locally. In Melbourne, for example, some of the oldest and most regionally characteristic buildings were constructed of local bluestone. In The Rocks area of inner Sydney, the rocks were literally carved out from where they were and used to build houses.
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| Traditional workers' cottages, Brisbane |
The size of houses is also increasing while the size of blocks of land is decreasing, meaning there is little room for gardens, much less for trees. The advantage of trees in urban areas is well documented and includes: providing shade and keeping temperatures down in summer; absorbing carbon; absorbing stormwater runoff; preventing erosion; providing an aesthetic urban environment; filtering air particles; reducing noise; and providing habitat for birds and insects thus enhancing biodiversity. The treeless deserts that our outer suburbs have become have few of these benefits. Additionally, provision of public transport to these outer areas is seen by governments as not cost effective and is therefore inadequate if it exists at all, forcing residents to use private vehicles to commute, in some cases, a couple of hours to where they work.
So who's to blame for this unsightly and unsustainable urban blight of grey and black with not a tree in sight? State government? Local government? Developers? Urban planners? Architects? All of the above to various extents. Governments at all levels are under pressure to provide more housing, and as Australia is a highly urbanised country, housing in cities is a priority. Developers are reaping huge amounts of money by buying up tracts of land on the city outskirts and marketing these dustbowls, as they become once the trees have been bulldozed and farmland flattened, with words such as "affordable", "lifestyle", "liveable" and "semi-rural". All of which either make no sense or are laughably untrue. As for the design - whoever is designing these wasteland estates needs to be sent back to university and fast!
Is there a solution? Of course there is, but governments want, nay, need, expediency. Potential solutions include: urban infill, higher density housing in the inner suburbs, provision of parkland, high speed rail networks to link outer 'villages', building codes that ban black roofs and enforce or incentivize solar panels, better street planning to take advantage of north-facing aspects, mandatory planting of street trees and use of 100% renewable energy in new housing estates. But governments, whose policies are designed to be as durable as their terms of office, need quick fixes, not long-term solutions.
But the least we can do is lose the bland and gloomy non-colours! Buck the trend! Better still, be the trendsetter.
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| Traditional 'Queenslander' |
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| Sydney 'Federation' style |
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| Mid-Victorian era Melbourne | |
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