About this Journey ...

Robin Allison received a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship for 2008 to research sustainable community and town centre projects in the United Kingdom and North America. She will be studying both the environmentally sustainable design features, and the processes by which these projects are engaging the wider community in awareness and action on sustainability issues. She plans to visit both new mixed-use zero-carbon town centre projects, and existing town centre regeneration projects, where local communities are active in building community awareness, skills and projects to address environmental issues.


Her purpose in travelling is not only to learn but also to network and link what has been achieved at Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood with the work of others in the wider global context. Her research will then be applied in three main ways: to inform the educational programmes that are being established through the Earthsong Centre Trust; to participate in the transformation of the local Ranui town centre, currently under re-development, into a vibrant suburban commercial centre that reflects the cultural, social, environmental and economic needs of the local community; and to implement the concepts of cohousing and eco-design into wider contexts, including large commercial housing developments, low-cost housing, marae housing, and inner-city developments.


Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood is an innovative urban housing development modelled on the principles of Permaculture and cohousing. The project is located in Waitakere City, New Zealand.