An innovative company is about to change the way housing is developed in Australia. Smart Urban Villages Pty Ltd (SUV) will leverage local design and community engagement expertise with the best design attributes of existing leading-edge communities to create highly liveable communities. SUV launched on March 12 and is now open for all inquiries.
The SUV approach adapts successful European “lease not buy” models, in conjunction with the latest developments in ecological design and practice, and several in-house innovations, for the Australian market through a cohousing/ecovillage style model.
Several solutions make the company’s Smart Community Model (SCM), developed by Ecomplish, innovative:
- Apartments can be leased for the long term (10+ years) so there is no need for residents to obtain a mortgage!
- All the buildings will be sustainably designed, reducing costs to residents.
- Unlike pure cohousing and body corporates, a central management company and caretaker will ensure all the essential services are provided to residents, so they can focus on living, not working or worrying.
- The urban villages will be medium density and contain resort-style facilities such as a shared community hall, kitchen and gardens;
- Meals will be available to residents from the community hall weekly;
- Whilst rents may be set at premium prices, the benefits enable residents to save much more in the long run, compared to traditional housing;
- Such estates provide a much more safe, supportive and friendly environment where people and friendships amongst environmentally conscious people can flourish.
Ben O’Callaghan is proud to be a director of Smart Urban Villages with business partner Rolf von Behrens. For more information about this pioneering new model please contact us at SUV www.smarturbanvillages.com 
Thompson announced last night that the Ecovillage in Currumbin had won the Australian Institute of Architects 2013 QLD President’s Prize. He said, “This is a truly landmark development, achieved with a vision, tenacity and inspiring commitment rarely seen in the development and building industry. Now home to a thriving and highly engaged community of over 200 people and still growing, its success and international reputation is highly deserved. There have been many naysayers from the time of it’s inception and even still today, but you can almost be certain that most of those have never visited, talked to the residents or have been prepared to set side their preconceptions. There is an undeniable spirit, a sense of shared values and community whose actions every day make a positive contribution to to the wider world. At a time where the words sustainability, green development, environmentally and ecologically friendly, placemaking and community are exploited and abused, and sprinkled over what are really tokenistic gestures to business as usual and where so called ratings agencies are too ready to avoid the hard or important issues, the Currumbin Eco Village quietly, but determinedly puts most of them all to shame. Is it perfect, of course not. Neither does it preach or engage in didactic rhetoric. It is a living, breathing real community, not just another sub-division selling itself as a community. Notwithstanding it’s undeniable credentials and frontiering efforts in demonstrating that there is another way, profitable, architecturally and ecologically sensitive, I believe that perhaps it’s greater achievement and one which is as profound as any, is it’s creation of real community, where safety, security, volunteerism and neighbourliness have naturally evolved in a way other developers and government can only dream of. Such communities demand less of the public purse, are more self-policing, where vandalism is non-existent, where nature and people co-habitate in an easy open and relaxed lifestyle. There are so many lessons for all of us, that space and time do not permit me to list them.
