Australian Summers Are No Longer Normal – Part 4

Introduction

It’s been a while since I wrote Part 3 of this series. Life has had other plans, but in hindsight, I’m actually glad this article waited, as much has happened with summers overseas that I feel deserve a mention.

For those who may be joining the series for the first time, or who would like a refresher, I’ve included pingbacks to the previous three parts.

Australian summers are no longer what they were a generation ago. Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense, yet many of our homes, suburbs and planning policies still reflect a climate that no longer exists.

In Part 1, I spoke of my own personal experience during the summer of Dec ’25 – Feb ’26, how it caused health issues for me and exacerbated health issues for my two dogs.

In Part 2, I looked at how not just Australian summers, but summers around the world, are affecting the environment and the native species that call it home.

In Part 3, I explored how our cities are being affected by ever-rising summer temperatures and explained how we appear to be caught in a catch-22, where hotter summers make our cities hotter, while our cities themselves exacerbate the heat.

In Part 4, I’d like to focus on how our cities are currently structured and ask how we can improve the way we live through better city planning, so that we don’t begin to fear each coming summer.

To keep pace with our changing climate, we need to evolve the way we design our homes, suburbs and cities today, so they’ll be ready for the challenges of tomorrow.

Rethinking Our Cities

While Australia has been rugged up through winter, I’ve watched another story unfold on the other side of the world. Europe and the United Kingdom have been experiencing heatwaves that, only a few years ago, many people would have considered extraordinary. Homes designed to retain warmth through long winters have struggled during prolonged periods of extreme heat. Hospitals have come under pressure, transport has been disrupted and, tragically, lives have been lost.

Suddenly, this no longer feels like just Australia’s conversation.

It’s becoming everyone’s.

In the earlier parts of this series, I spoke about Australia’s changing summers, my own experiences, and the way our cities contribute to the problem through the Urban Heat Island Effect. Concrete, asphalt, dark roofs and dense development absorb heat during the day and slowly release it overnight, making our suburbs considerably warmer than the surrounding countryside.

Our climate is changing and the question is no longer whether we notice it. The question is how we respond.

Building cities for tomorrow

For generations we’ve built homes to suit the fashions of the day:-

• Large picture windows.
• Dark roofs.
• Expanses of concrete.
• More glass.
• Fewer trees.

Yet many of the things we now consider modern may also be making our homes harder—and more expensive—to keep comfortable. Perhaps it’s time city planners began thinking fifty years ahead rather than five.

Imagine:

• naturally shaded footpaths lined with mature trees rather than endless concrete;
• more parks woven throughout suburbs;
• green corridors linking neighbourhoods;
• rooftop gardens and living walls on apartment buildings;
• lighter-coloured roofs and building materials that reflect rather than absorb heat;
• better natural ventilation;
• communities designed around people rather than simply around roads.

There’s a world of difference between walking beneath a concrete awning and walking beneath a canopy of mature trees. One simply blocks the sun. The other helps cool the environment itself.

In the suburb where I live, out the front of one of the houses, there is what I call a “green tunnel”, where trees and shrubbery completely surround the pathway. Riding my mobility scooter, I often pause there on my way home to read a page or two of my book. Even on the hottest summer days, it’s noticeably cooler, and the dense vegetation softens the noise of passing traffic. It’s a small reminder that nature doesn’t just make our suburbs look better—it makes them feel better too.

In a much larger park a couple of suburbs from where I live, when I’m in the centre of the park, I can almost forget that I’m in the middle of a small city. Green spaces like this also provide quieter, more sheltered places where people can stop, rest and simply enjoy being outdoors. In a world that often feels rushed and noisy, those little pockets of calm can make a city feel far more welcoming and encourage people to spend more time outside.

Growing cities need better housing

Our cities continue to grow.

• Families grow.
• Immigration continues.
• Young adults struggle to enter the housing market.
• Homelessness remains a heartbreaking reality for far too many Australians.
• Whatever the reason, more people need homes and the answer cannot simply be building more houses as quickly and cheaply as possible.

If the homes we build today become ovens in summer and refrigerators in winter, we’re simply creating tomorrow’s problems.

Affordable housing should never mean sacrificing comfort, dignity or sustainability and good design should not be reserved for people who can afford luxury homes. Nor should environmentally responsible homes become luxury products with luxury price tags.

If a home is cheaper to heat, cheaper to cool, healthier to live in and better for the environment, those benefits should belong to everyone—not just those with the biggest budgets.

Sustainable housing shouldn’t become another status symbol.

It should become the standard.

Keeping up with the environment

For generations we’ve been encouraged to “keep up with the Joneses.” Perhaps it’s time we stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses and started keeping up with our environment instead.

We don’t have to imagine these ideas from scratch.

Look at award-winning sustainable homes from Australia and around the world. Many already include passive solar design, natural ventilation, intelligent shading, living roofs, recycled materials, earth-sheltered construction and clever insulation.

The challenge isn’t whether these ideas work.

The challenge is making them affordable enough to become the norm instead of the exception.

Ideas we can use today

Whether you’re renovating, building or simply dreaming, many solutions already exist.

Affordable improvements

• Better insulation
• Thermal curtains
• External awnings and shutters
• Ceiling fans
• Lighter roof colours
• More trees providing natural shade

Mid-range improvements

• Adjustable external louvres
• Double or triple glazing
• Energy-efficient skylights
• Living walls
• Green roofs

Long-term investments

• Smart glass that automatically darkens in strong sunlight
• Solar panels with battery storage
• Ground-source heating and cooling
• Hydronic underfloor heating and radiant floor cooling
• Passive House (Passivhaus) design
• Earth-sheltered homes

Modern homes often feature spectacular and beautiful picture windows, but during increasingly hot summers they also become enormous collectors of solar heat.

Which makes me wonder…

Could future windows adapt to the weather?

Could they provide uninterrupted views during mild weather but become more insulated, more shaded—or perhaps even physically reconfigure themselves—during extreme heat?

It may sound like science fiction, but then again, we’ve long surpassed gadgets that once appeared on futuristic shows like Star Trek or The Jetsons, so what’s holding us back now? We already have smart fridges that plan our shopping lists for us, vacuums that know where to go, an AI servant (in the form of Alexa) that will adjust room lighting, control kitchen gadgets, have pre-prepped food ready for us for when we come home after a long day out.

We’ve been building underground for years

At first glance, earth-sheltered homes might sound unusual.

But perhaps they’re not.

Modern cities already rely heavily on underground engineering.

Take Sydney.

Beneath its streets lay a vast network of railway tunnels, road tunnels, pedestrian underpasses and underground services. In parts of the CBD it’s entirely possible to travel, shop and move between buildings while spending remarkably little time above ground.

Millions of people trust underground engineering every day.

If we can build transport tunnels beneath our cities, perhaps the question isn’t whether we can build more earth-sheltered homes.

Perhaps the question is why we’ve rarely considered them as part of the solution.

Around the world, architects are already experimenting with earth-sheltered homes—houses built into hillsides or covered with landscaped earth. They use the surrounding soil as natural insulation, helping keep homes cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

For thousands of years people designed homes to suit the climate.

Somewhere along the way we began designing homes to suit fashion instead.

Perhaps the unusual thing isn’t building with the climate in mind.

Perhaps the unusual thing is that we’ve stopped.

Here’s what the future could look like…

…if we dare to think differently.

What if the future isn’t waiting for us to discover something entirely new.

It’s just waiting for us to think differently about what we already know.

A challenge

Before I finish, I should make one thing clear.

I’m not an architect, an engineer or an urban planner.

I’m simply an ordinary Australian looking at what we’re experiencing here, looking at what the rest of the world is beginning to experience, and asking questions.

Sometimes asking the right question is the first step towards finding a better answer.

So I’d like to leave a challenge for every architect, engineer, designer and city planner who happens to read this.

Could windows adapt to changing weather?

Could walls and roofs become smarter?

Could affordable housing become some of the most energy-efficient housing instead of the least? By building more affordable energy efficient housing, we could also minimise the amount of external resources needed to survive.

Imagine a world where there are no more frequent blackouts due to excessive use of air conditioners. In fact, air conditioners could even become obsolete if houses were constructed in a way that responded to the climate rather than fighting it.

If our homes were designed to be far less dependent on continual energy inputs, we’d also reduce the pressure to keep expanding energy production by whatever means.

We often think innovation means inventing something completely new.

Sometimes innovation is simply taking the best ideas we already have… and putting them together in ways we’ve never thought of.

If this article inspires even one architect, engineer or city planner to look at housing from a different perspective, then it has achieved exactly what I hoped it would.

Learning from Coober Pedy

Australia doesn’t have to look overseas for inspiration.

We already have a remarkable example in our own backyard.

Coober Pedy sits in one of Australia’s harshest landscapes. The surrounding country is largely barren, dry and rocky. Summer temperatures regularly climb above 40°C, with some days reaching into the mid-40s.

Rather than trying to conquer the climate, its residents learned to live with it.

Many homes, businesses and even churches have been built underground where the surrounding earth provides natural insulation. Above ground, the most obvious clues are the ventilation shafts quietly rising from the landscape.

The people of Coober Pedy didn’t build underground because it was fashionable.

They built underground because, in that environment…

…it simply made sense.

Around the world, cities are already proving that a different future is possible. In Zürich, Switzerland, MFO Park transformed the site of a former industrial factory into a multi-level vertical garden that changes with the seasons. Rather than demolishing the past, it embraced it, creating a place where architecture, history and nature exist together. It demonstrates that designing greener, cooler and more livable cities is no longer just an idea for tomorrow—it is already happening today. The question is no longer whether it can be done, but whether we have the vision to do it ourselves.

Perhaps we’ve spent generations trying to make the climate adapt to our buildings.

Maybe it’s time we started adapting our buildings to the climate instead.

Thank you for reading!

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you seen examples of climate-conscious design that impressed you? Do you have ideas of your own? If you could, would you add or have you already added any of the above mentioned environmentally changes to your home?

Feel free to like this post and leave a comment below, and if there’s another topic you’d like me to explore in a future article, I’d love to hear your suggestions.