December 2009 RNI REGD NO MPBIL / 2002 / 10269 Postal Regd. No. : L - II / RNP / PNCE / M / 10 / 2007 - 2009
Year - 6, Vol.86 January 2009 Page: 8. Price: Re. 30/-
Indian City Planning & human needs.
Architecture & Soul
D ear Readers, In this issue we will approach the penultimate month to the New Year with a greater respect and appreciation towards earth and nature. We wish to continue a trend from this issue onwards on talking to experts from various fields on topics related to healthy living. Living in cities and being healthy is getting impossible. Vastutimes from this month would take initiative to create a dialogue with the readers in form of thought provocative notes, poems and articles. Vastuworld’s associated Architect Judith has taken the responsibility to make us all realize the need of this hour. The workshops of Vastuworld have been appreciated by our patrons and we would like to use Vastutimes as an ongoing platform to announce these workshops, so all those interested in participation we would like you to pay a closer attention. I would also like to make a special mention here for all those who would be interested in sharing their views, thoughts and ideas in the form of articles, excerpts, extracts etc are more than welcome to keep sending them to our editorial team, and we promise to publish
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them in our next issue.
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In this issue we also talk about a developing India, there is a slight cynicism in this article but the message is quite clear on taking India towards modernization but away from losing its environment.
Happy Reading & Have a Great Day
Editors Note
Where have we left our souls? Ar. Judith Vogel
A brief note on Indian city planning and human needs How human has become a tool and overall society is developing without considering us as living organism? What is happening to this world? What is happening to our environments? What are we creating out there and where the hell have we left our souls? My soul cries watching the cities, when the sun is rising in the early morning hours. I see children playing between mountains of garbage, I see an old man in dirty clothes, counting his last coins for a chai on the road side, I see people running up and down concrete roads, wanting to move their bodies freely, craving for a glimpse of light and fresh air. Craving for nature. But all they get is a foggy, blurry image of a once beautiful shining dream of wealth, comfort and happiness that now follows its own laws. In this dream, it seems that India's city development has exploded beyond its scope and has been overtaken by mainly profit-oriented market forces, irrespective long term quality and
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durability. The shape the cities are taking nowadays is a frightening scattered and sprawling mechanism, which grows too fast to even grasp it. Irrespective of natural habitats it consumes huge areas of land, pure and precious not only to ourselves, but to the whole world. We as human beings seem to have lost our connection to this purity and decided to prefer closed, safeguarded societies in something that we call security. But what is social security? Does it really need to be made up of grey concrete walls that disconnect us from our natural environment and from our natural social being? We have forgotten our responsibility for each other. Social awareness and responsibility if understood rightly, binds us humans together and can overcome the need for external security. Irrespective of that, built realities all over India have become unstructured low dense projects with insufficient social infrastructure that are coming up everywhere independent from each other.
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City planned at Ahmedabad. Boasting 17 high rise commercial buildings — the tallest being the signature 80-storey, 400m , as well as an artificial island, integrated mass transit and dedicated expressways, residential townships, and dedicated power supply, the 500 acre township aims to be Global Financial Services hub.
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What is the planner's role in this process? We have the power to bring upon change, but we need to step back for a while and reflect on ourselves and the impact of our actions.
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The regional planning process in the developing world is not under the control of a central body, neither is it transparent to the public. This and the resulting spatial segregation of the created living environments make communication and connection in between projects difficult. So we as planners have to keep on working individually in a competing rat race, where we are closing our eyes for the opportunities and changes of
communication and togetherness, though we already suffer the results on many levels. Infrastructures are overloaded and breaking down. Long distances have to be traveled within a city, while traffic is increasing, roads are congested and noise and air pollution are reaching a critical level. Monotonous project layouts are rebelling against aesthetics and social convenience with low quality housing in mass production, irrespective of individual needs. It seems that the nature of the human being and nature itself have lost their importance in India's growing process, giving space to success, fame and quick money.
sensitive to contextual circumstances. And with developers targeting at the higher end, a failure of sustainability is precast.
A recent fashion in India are so-called “integrated townships�, developments over 100 acres, planned and constructed in suburban areas to relieve the cities. Developers are private investors. These townships are mainly coming up solitary in underdeveloped, suburban areas, where land is cheap and easily available. These areas require already urgent provision of social and physical infrastructure and interconnectivity. The basic by law requirements based on estimations are not
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It has not always been like this. Looking at ancient Indian planning methods, we can find wellelaborated recipes to build sustainable and ecological sensitive human settlements. But we are not doing that. All we are doing is blindly copying the methods, which are coming to us from all over the world. Though it is very necessary to study all projects which are concerning human growth, from whichever context they may come from, it is even more necessary to understand them fully, understand the local driving forces behind the physical solutions and being able to evaluate them in the varying local contexts to adjust them to local requirements. Whereas India would actually need a coordinated restructuring to get rid of the problems of the fast economic growth, it still seems hard to speak about alternatives. And so the sprawl goes on.
Besides all this society is one of the most important aspects. Human settlements originally have grown out of family based communities, who settled along a river or anywhere where they could find fertile land. These communities expanded naturally according to their very own requirements and developed the facilities and amenities they required to sustain themselves. In the layout of old cities all over the world, we can find clear physical demarcations of societies in form of clusters or pools. In these communities, the society as an entity was taxable and responsible to a central authority. This structure made everybody feel responsible for each other and for the maintenance of society and its environment. With the modern lifestyle, these structures are vanishing. A change of values is driving the new society. What was earlier the family is today the circle of friends or colleagues. Very often pets or even material goods, like vehicles, television or computers substitute inter-human relationships.
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We forget where we belong to; forget whom and what we are responsible for. Our responsibility focuses on private belongings, as we are now taxable as individuals, not any more as an entire society. The build environment is a direct reflection of these phenomena. Spatial definitions become blurry in the mass-construction mania. People are now packed in segregated solitaire objects, high above the connecting ground. As it was earlier possible to access a multiplicity of neighboring houses through the same corridors, we face today four apartment doors when we step out the lift. And
most of the time they are shut. We have reached a point, where we should ask ourselves, what the things that count in life are. What is it that really makes us happy, that really matters? Is it true, what the media tells us? Do we need to be enclosed to be secure? Do we need to force new laws of aesthetics upon ourselves that substitute nature? Maybe at some point, we can remember our beings, our identity, our individual and social needs and jump above the dictate of fashion, fame and success and come together to create living environments in common that can build a society sensitive to itself, sensitive to nature.
Sometimes while walking through the cities I can't help, but remember Ben E. King:
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No matter who you are, No matter what you do No matter where you go in life At some point You just need somebody to stand by you
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No matter how much money you got No matter what you do No matter what the bounds Or the freedom you got, At some point You just need somebody to stand by you
Climate Change : slow down & our existance in nature
Where roads are made, I lose my way In the wide water,in the blue sky
The pathway is hidden by the bird's wings, By the star fires, By the flowers of the wayfaring seasons And I ask my heart if its blood carries The wisdom of the unseen way!
The world is disturbed yet my heart is struggling for what it desires than to lose itself in what it does not desire. Love for nature does not come from the fears of the human extinction. Motivation to protect the planet comes from 'the realization' that we are a part of everything that is around. Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that if he won the battle, his own survival will come to an end. We are estranged from reality and inclined to
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There is no line of a track
My heart dances; my body floats and my eyes wet the face with the first dew when I read these touching lines of Rabindranath Tagore. All of my chakras come alive when I close my eyes and shut my ears to the chaos and noise at the traffic light of ITO. My winged senses take me into a world of peace and love where every peck of dust is thankful to the universe for being a participant of this interconnected and inter woven world.
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treat everything valueless that we have not made ourselves. Lost in the glare of technological advancement we detach ourselves from a much important bond. We forget that nature is not income but our capital in which we need to invest. Measuring advancement only in terms of GDP makes us disqualify the simple life of a tribal in the jungle of Arunachal whom we then provoke to become like us. We often forget that simplicity is a rational response if we think we live in a living universe, as we want to reduce needless clutter and complications and engage with the infusing aliveness of authentic relationships, meaningful work, caring communities and creative expressions. If it was Nehru who called the big dams as the temples of modern India, it was Nehru who also said the following lines: “I am alarmed when I see not only in this country but in other great countries too-how anxious people are to shape others according to their own image or likeness, and to impose it on others? This applies equally to national and international fields. In fact there would be
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Ar. Mayank Barjatya Priti B. Ankita Bhargava
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more peace in the world if the people would desist from imposing their way of living, the tribal or own. In some respects I am quiet certain theirs is better .Therefore it is grossly presumptuous on our part to approach then with an air of superiority, to tell them how to behave or what to do or what not to.� I feel that India needs no advancement for it is the richest in terms of Gross Natural Happiness. The mountains, the forests, the rivers, the ravines, the animals, the love for fellow beings still proves it to be a Golden Bird. Our heart will feel how spiritual and fulfilled this nation is when we notice these true examples of cooperation. I am aware of what Climate Change is doing to the environment but I would still insist us to slow down and take a deep breath and immense ourselves in the ordinary things that are very close by because it is then that we understand what it means to exist in nature.
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