South West Life

The South West is one of the great places in the world to live.

We love it for the people we meet, for the relaxed lifestyle that comes from being away from capital cities, and we love it for the natural environment.  It occurs to me that we have such a lead at the point of our natural surrounds that even if things get worse, we’ll be better off than most.  What a dumb thing to think.  We’ve got a gift in our hands and we really need to do what we can to look after it.

With a consciousness in my head about the way we’re treating the planet, I got really excited when I read in an ad for Busselton Lifestyle Village that claimed living in one of their homes will give someone about one third the environmental footprint of living in suburbia.

A story is there for the writing, I thought, and off I went to do the research.  Not too many days later I found myself talking to Richard Hammond, a senior lecturer at Curtin Uni and heading up the design team at National Lifestyle Villages.

Richard confirms that by clear attention to the way the homes are structured, and aligned to take account of passive solar effects, there is a massive reduction in the energy someone will consume in the village.  On top of that, the village lifestyle allows residents to enjoy the use of major entertaining areas and bonuses like a workshop, art and craft studio, swimming pool, library etc.  The blend of a home’s own space with shared use of a number of opportunities means that lifestyle is achieved with really minimal use of scarce resources.

And water.... the village works with residents to design the right garden for themselves, and that design process allows grass if it’s useful, but in most cases there is a decision to use plantings that provide pleasant and attractive spaces while reducing water consumption.

It all seems so easy when an architect talks to you about it.  Richard agrees that lots of people say we need to do something about our use of resources, but very few do something about it.  Simple, he says, we’ll start doing it and we’ll see if people will get on board.  There are villages full in Perth and the first one has a waiting list of 170 people eager to part with cash to get in.  It mightn’t be for everyone but it’s clearly working for some.

I’ve heard the good bits, how does it work, I asked, and we began to look at the model.  As I suspected, you don’t get to change things without a few things having to change.  Probably the most important to my mind was that Richard talks a lot about “creating intentional communities”.  What it really means is that people moving into one of these villages have to agree to a lot of rules.  They’re both protected and restricted by the fact that there is a broad agreement about how everyone in the village is going to live.

People select in to the village based on the fact that they’re comfortable with the agreements that they make first.  They also must be comfortable with the ownership model, in which you own your building but you don’t ever get to own the land.  Richard has a guess that this model is one of the reasons that about 48% of the people who’ve bought in so far are originally from the UK.  The lease hold idea is more common there and in that case a 60 year lease is plenty, given that the place is targeted to people over 45.

With all this agreement, are tenants likely to find themselves feeling like clones?  There’s a lot of diversity of activity, and the range of resources available leads to a natural harmony.  People have learned how to be close and they still live their own differences.  Current patterns also show that at any time you can expect about 20% of the residents to be away somewhere, holidaying or visiting.

Indeed the group has grown out of the caravan park/ park home industry and Richard notes that life in the village feels a bit like you’re on holiday.  That willingness to live close to your neighbours has combined with an ability to retreat to your own space to produce what presents as security and belonging.

So does it work?  I did the interviews and didn’t visit, but I like the sound of it, and it offers some real cost advantages over buying the apartment in the city or at the beach.  Clearly there’s a section of the community who are happy enough to put up the money for the home and pay the lease on the land, and there’s no argument from this quarter that the environmental advantages alone make it worth careful consideration.  Busselton is under construction now and as I write there are 15 homes occupied.

I’ve got to say that the closeness and sense that all 229 homeowners in the village will be consciously part of a single community sounds romantic, and it’s something I’d look at the next time a move is right.