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Indigo Tower: Bio Purification Tower
22 August 2010 2:23 AM | No Comments -
Contextual Tall Buildings in India
30 July 2010 5:30 AM | No Comments -
Empowering and Making the city authorities accountable is key
28 July 2010 6:59 AM | No Comments -
Public: The Forgotten Realm
11 July 2010 4:43 AM | No Comments -
Skylines
05 July 2010 5:25 AM | No Comments -
Mumbai Musings
30 June 2010 5:40 AM | No Comments -
Chasing the Vertical Dimension
12 June 2010 1:33 PM | 4 Comments -
Eco City Ideas: Hydroponics, the urban face of Agriculture 2.0
01 June 2010 6:21 AM | No Comments
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The Urban Vision : Capture the BIG Picture
Environment Archive
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Eco City Ideas: Hydroponics, the urban face of Agriculture 2.0
Posted on June 1, 2010 | No CommentsHunger and water scarcity are but two sides of the same coin, both in urban India as well as in farming communities depleting their reserves of arable land. We desperately need for traditional practices of soil-based agriculture to be complemented by more productive and ecologically-sustainable... -
Our invisible Green Collars
Posted on May 14, 2010 | No CommentsImagine our beloved city of Mumbai if our hundred thousand ‘waste-pickers’ / ‘rag-pickers’ suddenly vanished! Our neighborhoods would be awash in waste, in excess of what the municipal authorities can handle. Our massive recycling industries, such as in slums like Dharavi, would lose a chunk of their raw material inputs. Our city’s greenhouse gas emissions would significantly increase, with landfills and their harmful effects ballooning further. Our commercial purchasers of recycled products would find costs rising. And most unfortunate of all, our most poor and vulnerable members of urban India would lose their one and only opportunity to earn a meager 100 rupees a day while contributing to our social development. -
Why Mumbai Needs a Strategic Urban Design/ Ecological Master Plan
Posted on January 29, 2010 | 1 CommentAs Mumbai matures and harbors aspirations of becoming a world-class city or an international business center, the City needs to engage in ecological urban design and accountable urban planning. Urban planning is a means to create a citizen-defined vision for the city’s future that is implemented by responsible public and private leaders. Much has been said recently about the need for improving governance of cities in India where there has been little attention paid to the planning or design of cities. Cities throughout history – especially in democracies — evolve from a state of chaos and irresponsible governance (where mostly the interests of the powerful take precedence over the city’s general welfare) — to a progressive state where the better informed and educated citizens demand and receive political accountability for better urban life through effective planning and urban design. -
Would you betray your own race?
Posted on December 23, 2009 | No CommentsWould you betray your own race? If you watched the latest James Cameron blockbuster movie “Avatar” and were passionately backing the alien’s cause; then you have just become a “race traitor”. The movie depicts human civilization as a group that is evil and greedy who destroy the environment without any consideration while the aliens live in perfect ecological harmony with their natural environment. The Pandorans might be a figment of Cameron’s wild Imagination but in many ways the depiction of human civilization is almost bang on in the movie. Practically all of Earth’s ecosystems have now been destroyed or severely altered through human activities. According to the World Conservation Union ,784 extinctions have been recorded since the year 1500 (to the year 2004). At this point, The loss of global biological diversity is advancing at an extraordinary pace. According to some estimates, up to 150 species are becoming extinct every day. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007b) has also predicted that if temperature increases exceed 1.5-2.5°C, 20-30% of plant and animal species assessed are likely to be at risk of extinction. -
Sustainable Transportation: Key to Climate Change Mitigation
Posted on December 7, 2009 | 3 CommentsThe Urban Vision in partnership with Columbia Business School’s Energy club, Social enterprise club and Green Business club hosted a forum on sustainable transportation in Columbia University, New York City as part of The Urban Vision’s “Climate Month” celebration between September 15 – October 15 2009 leading up to the historic Copenhagen Summit scheduled for December 2009. The “Climate Month” featured a series of Forums and Symposiums with major thought leaders of our times to evaluate solutions to moving our planet into a sustainable path. -
Event Summary : Battling the Sea Level rise .
Posted on December 1, 2009 | No CommentsExperts urged Indian cities to adopt measures to deal with the imminent devastating effects of Climate Change in a symposium titled “ Battling the Sea Level rise : Lesson for developing World Cities “ held in University of California, Berkeley as part of The Urban... -
Rethinking urban mobility
Posted on July 29, 2009 | 1 CommentRethinking urban mobility : Sustainable Urban Transport One of the key aspects of urban sustainability lies in the relationship between the environment and transportation. Transportation infrastructure and patterns are at the root of many environmental problems, including air pollution, increased reliance on non-renewable sources of energy... -
Sustainable urban systems = Mitigating Climate Change
Posted on July 6, 2009 | No CommentsSustainable urban systems = Mitigating Climate Change Today, climate change has clearly come to be recognised as one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the world. Cities and urban activities are at the heart of this challenge. According to UN-HABITAT, even though cities... -
“If we can’t save our cities, we won’t save ourselves.”
Posted on May 26, 2009 | 2 Comments“If we can’t save our cities, we won’t save ourselves.” says William E. Rees – The Man who conceptualized the ecological footprint idea. In a recent article in Scientific American , he explains how cities are at the heart of the climate change challenge. He... -
City Making as Climate Policy
Posted on May 24, 2009 | 3 CommentsCity Making as Climate Policy How well-designed cities play a crucial role in de-linking increasing living standards and resource consumption In 1986, the German news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ chose for one of its weekly editions a cover with a severe warning. It pictured Colognes famous gothic cathedral...
