IPMX @ IIM Lucknow

“Nothing in excess” goes the maxim often heard and taught. But in practice, we have exploited Earth’s resources like there’s no tomorrow. As a result, we are facing the consequences of our excesses manifested in Global warming, water scarcity and ruined ecosystems. Our cities have grown inorganically with huge asymmetries in their development. Just to put a figure to that; 30% of India’s 1.1 billion population lives in urban areas. Of that more than 70% resides in just 10% of the cities. Not only have the resources depleted at alarming rates, they have been grossly polluted.

‘Sustainability’ is the need of the hour. Sustainability is defined as “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It’s all about using living in a way that resources serve us in perpetuity. So what do we need to do to live in a sustainable manner? We must reduce our ‘Ecological Footprint’. Ecological footprint a measure of humanity’s demand on nature and measures amount of land and water a given population needs to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the wastes, using prevailing technology. A lot of green standards abound that tell us how to design our buildings in an environment friendly way. But what we actually need is better planning of our cities.

I refer to an article on building new cities in the 21^st century that compared two cities viz. Barcelona and Atlanta. Both are former Olympic hosts with populations of around 2.8 million and with roughly the same standard of living. Yet, the per capita ecological footprint of Atlanta is four times that of Barcelona! Indeed, Barcelona’s per capita environmental impact is lower than even that of many rural areas of Europe. In India the large cities are already bursting at the seams and every day newspapers are full of problems faced due to rampant in-migration. We cannot stop people from choosing where they want to live and work. The answer lies in creating sensible templates for urban planning.

So what should be our strategy for a sustainable future? We need to design compact cities and stop creating flat urban sprawls. Our Cities should have an optimized circulation plan alongwith an efficient Public transport built into the urban design. Studies suggest that reducing the sprawl and better public transport alone can bring in a 30% reduction in energy usage. Building sustainable cities would involve significant costs in modifications to existing city structures and building new cities. However, sustainable development must be treated as investment and not consumption. Only in this way will capital including our natural capital be available for future re-investment.

Neerad Swaroop