Designing For A Sustainable World
A total of 90 per cent of the next 2.5 billion urban inhabitants will be in Africa and Asia and 500 million people will arrive in Indian cities by 2050, doubling the size. There's going to be a billion square feet of covered area being constructed over the next decade in India which is close to 100 million square feet a year, said Amit Khanna, Design Principal, AKDA, FIIA while addressing a panel discussion at BW Businessworld Future of Design event.
Commenting on the impact of construction on the environment, Khanna said, "environmental degradation and global warming will increase as the construction industry is the third largest polluter in the world. And India is currently the third largest producer of greenhouse gases, but our per capita is still very low. We're on the path to more consumption and we're bound to be the largest energy consumer in the world."
Rahul Kadri, Principal Architect, I.M.K Architects explained the importance of government intervention in planning cities, "On a micro level, the government needs to promote places where they want the people to move and give them amenities along with creating the infrastructure. Putting the infrastructure in place initially is something that government can do and bringing that land under the governance of the corporation rather than the panchayat will also be handy.”
Khanna defined the two predominant construction types as organised and self-build. "The organised construction works within the structures of government, technology and professionalism. Contrary to this, a lot of our country is being self-build," he added.
Kadri spoke of the ideal city planning model in India. In this, the city is long, with bands of agriculture and forest coming within. "If these bands are a kilometre wide, then people can walk and if they are linear, then public transportation can also run," he stated.
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