Twitter
Advertisement

Vertical city: How to go up without going down

A lineup of 72 speakers will discuss how cities can remake themselves in a way that makes them more sustainable.

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

“We are not going to talk about tall buildings over the coming three days. In fact, I say, we should stop making tall buildings because there isn’t infrastructure to support them,” said Antony Wodd, executive director, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), while inaugurating the three-day annual CTBUH world conference 2010, titled, ‘Remaking sustainable cities in the vertical age’.

Jointly organised by the Chicago-based council and Remaking of Mumbai Federation, a focus group that advocates the redevelopment of pre-1940 structures in the city, the conference has been conceived as a networking platform for urban planners and architects, and to exchange ideas and case studies from across the world. A lineup of 72 speakers will discuss how cities can remake themselves in a way that makes them more sustainable.

The conference is being held in Mumbai this year in appreciation of the developmental potential of a city with a population of over 16 million, almost half of which lives in squat settlements.

Contrary to what the title may suggest, the conference isn’t about how to create tall engineering marvels. Eminent architect Charles Correa summarised, “It’s not how high a building can go, but what goes into the building,” suggesting that while creating a mass transport-supported, high-density city was the paradigm to aspire to — high rises being just one way to achieve that — they would be unsustainable without attached amenities like schools, hospitals and open spaces.

In Mumbai, he said, rather than retaining the open space next to a tall building, more high-rises are erected. “The problem is not about increasing density, but about how to provide more amenities to achieve the optimum density,” he said, pointing to the statistic that, in Mumbai, roads are a mere 8% of land use, compared to the 35% international standard.

David Nelson of Foster & Partners, London, observed that cities across the world that have voted for indiscriminate high rises without amenities to support the numbers living in them, have seen a decanting of people from the city-centre towards automobile wielding suburbia, an unsustainable trend that would require three planets to meet everyone’s housing needs.

SK Das of SK Das Associated Architects, New Delhi, said that in
cities marked by conflicting aspirations, “the affluent raise the bar in consumption. The poor are excluded.” A city, he said, must be seen as a multiple city with various groups trying to exert their claim over the existing resources. While affluence, rising prices, and globalisation will definitely lead to taller cities, the Indian city, with its diversity and complexity, “has to be a mosaic of high-rise, mid-rise and low-rise structures”, one that honours the aspirations of all.

Eventually, sustainability, he said, will have to build on the idea of the traditional city which was structured to an extent by the government, but which allowed people to build with choice.

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement