Letters to the Editor
IRIS IWANICKI: Elspeth Reid’s letter is so right – trees cool the environment within the city and suburbs. If chosen and planted sensibly, these wonderful natural air processors provide urban spaces where temperatures can drop as much as six degrees in the shade. One has to only walk through the Adelaide Botanic Gardens to appreciate the coolness provided by the more mature and statuesque trees within the grounds.
Our new public spaces will need to last a long time, in a climate that is increasingly hot. By designing spaces for seasonal or permanent shade prior to designing buildings and hard surfaces would be quite radical, given the current focus on design in buildings before landscaping plans. Sadly the latter follows as the icing on the cake and then gets diminished due to unforeseen building costs. It isn’t a new idea. Ian McHarg wrote about designing with nature back in the 1970s. going into the detail of stormwater retention, watering, soils, appropriate species, etc. Then there were edible landscapes planted along streets during the Great Depression of the 1930s. We have all the lessons we need to create beautiful, cooler places and better technologies to manage water. There are good examples around too with the growth of community gardens.
A great letter on an essential aspect of making places liveable, healthy and (dare I use another word than vibrant) – how about beautiful!
MICHAEL SCHILLING: There has been much written lately concerning the proposal to increase the retirement age to 70 and, by definition, eligibility for the government paid old age pension.That makes it opportune to question our entrenched handout mentality, in particular reliance on the old age pension.
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Given the expected increase in people above 60 years of age, the expectation that the government should take care of us once we retire is starting to look both unrealistic and unaffordable. Therefore each of us should, from an early working age, accept the basic responsibility of providing for old age. Government assistance should be available only in special circumstances, that is disability and established need. Such change would do away with the need to have a fixed retirement age. Of course, a transition to that will take time but it is the right way to go and it would stimulate the will to strive and achieve, as such being a bonus to the economy.
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