sop of sorts

Masters in sustainable urbanism

Born and brought up in India, a country of vast variety and diverse history brought together by the British who left us united and equipped to deal with the developing world. The sheer lack of efficiency of the bureaucracy we inherited is the only reason for the survival of indigenous knowledge which otherwise fails to find a position in the rapidly modernising and densifying urban scenario in the subcontinent.

Water, land and air the main commodities of an urban realm are no longer easily available, and scarcity is the name of the game. Pollution and dirt spreads around us, landfills pile up, the night sky disappears.

The scary part is that the explosion seems to have just kicked off . . . rearing to go our cities are growing at unprecedented rates . . . the prices continue to rise, and all of a sudden people from around the world seem to want to come here . . . far from planned our urban centers are ill prepared for the rapid densification that ensues, developers and builders far outrun desperately struggling municipalities . . .

. . . amidst all this, the average Indian has an amazingly low standard of living consuming next to nothing as compared to his first world counterpart . . . as we shape our urban form around our heritage, our unique situation and adaptive nature needs to be incorporated to customise our cities according to our requirement. Aping the first world with inadequate resources and a paradigm away in requirement, we are bound to come up short in all regards.

To address issues of natural resources (water, land, air, life . . . ), waste, mobility within the context of a developing country with regard to the inherent tradition of urbanism . . .