When it comes to climate change and urban planning, cities occupy a unique position. Globally one of the largest sources of emissions, they are also highly vulnerable to the impact of a changing climate.
According to the UN Environment Programme, urban areas are responsible for three-fourths of global emissions, and nearly all of them face some kind of risk.
On the bright side, they can also be powerful sources of change. And even though policies on the front have been moving painfully slowly, urban architecture and design have huge potential to have a positive impact on the environment through meaningful changes in land use and zoning, transportation, and energy policy.
Mansee Bal Bhargava is a trans-disciplinary scholar of the built environment that includes architecture-design-development-planning-management-governance. Her twenty-five years of entrepreneurship, research, and education of large-scale developments have focused on the sustainability and liveability aspects.
In an interview with Youth Ki Awaaz, Bhargava decodes the impact of architecture planning on climate change and sustainability, and how education around the issue can lead to positive results.
Hemang Parmar (HP): How is Architecture-Planning impact Climate Change?
Mansee Bal Bhargava (MBB): Urbanisation is pretty much about the architectural planning of cities. The world has over 50% urban population. The urban population in India, was 11.4% in the 1901 census, increased to 28.53% in 2001, now near 35% and expected to be 40.76% by 2030 according to reports by The World Bank and UN. The kind of architecture-planning of the buildings and infrastructure certainly has an influence on climate change.
HP: How does Architecture-Planning impact Sustainability?
MBB: Climate-induced water distresses like floods, droughts, and asymmetric distribution are all a result of poor architecture planning of cities.
HP: Do Architecture-Planning educational organizations/curriculums touch upon the Climate Change aspects?
MBB: Yes, but at a very superficial level. The Masters’ courses discuss Climate Change as an impact but linking it with the way cities are planned and developed is barely touched upon. Further, the Bachelors’ courses barely discuss climate change. Planning education fairs better as compared to Architecture.
HP: Do Architecture-Planning Educational organizations/curriculums touch upon the SDGs?
MBB: Yes, but again at a very superficial level. The Masters’ courses in the field discuss SDGs as some distant goals to be addressed by the government. Ironically, it misses linking the global goals with local actions. The Bachelors’ courses in the field barely discuss those.
HP: Can you share an example to elaborate on the misreading-misleading CC-SDG education in Architecture-Planning?
MBB: To begin with, most students do not know about the SDGs thoroughly. Those who know, the way it is taught skews the understanding of the SDG and thus we miss the interlinked relationships of the SDGs and what they are meant to achieve.
For example, the SDG11 (Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable) is nearly impossible without the other SDGs but particularly without addressing SDG12 (Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns).
Unless we focus on responsible consumption and production, where responsible must refer to reduction, we are not heading towards sustainable development.
The economic model of consumption and production is completely against the philosophy of sustainable development. Architecture-Planning continues to talk about economic development by scientising the politics and sending a fake alarm of the demand for more development aka urbanization.
The architecture-Planning profession has been blindly & irresponsibly supporting the unsustainable growth by politicizing science.
HP: Can you provide us with another example?
MBB: The whole Architecture-Planning Education is anthropocentric. It is all about constructing bigger buildings and wider roads- that humans are part of the planet and a being among billions of other beings is totally forgotten.
The focus on humans alone in Architecture-Planning is discriminatory and is at the core of all the unsustainable development and climate change. For example, in riverfront-lake front developments, it is all about where humans will play, jog, sit, etc. Whether the birds and fish will have a life or not is not even thought about when plans are concretized.
Ironically, humans are also discriminative of humans. Inequality is the biggest enemy of humanity and is getting aggravated by the way Architecture-Planning is doing the cities.
HP: How do we change the ‘business as usual’ attitude in Architecture-Planning pertaining to CC-SDGs?
MBB: Well, as a governance scholar, a lot of hope is bestowed upon the community and youth have a crucial role in that. I believe first we have to know the difference between management and governance in Architecture-Planning pertaining to CC-SDGs. Governance is SDG17 ( Revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development). Management is Capitalism.
Every small local action matters and thus must be encouraged. Secondly, science without conscience and common sense are naïve and often dangerous. We must remind ourselves that the world is destroyed by the educated elites, not by the poor who live most sustainably. So, a serious pedagogical shift towards applied science is crucial.
Architecture-Planning must stop promoting capitalism and focus on serving the rich-middle class. Also, when the profession talks of the dignified life of the poor to uplift their poverty, there needs a benchmark of what is the basic needed for human dignity.
As that benchmark is available, it is important to alleviate the poor but at the same time question the richer that are living extremely unsustainably.