Population explosion, owing to booming urbanisation, has led to unequal resource distribution between the urban and remote regions. This issue of unmitigated urban-rural migration demands immediate solutions for accommodation and land occupancy, rendering public welfare ideas like making social infrastructure policies unimportant. Unregulated housing development demands take priority over the discourse on public spaces. Effectively, public infrastructure is often shrunk or overlooked to cater to the population and commercial growth. An alternative scenario, favouring the urban infrastructural development that is not commerce-driven but people-centric, must be the approach for a progressing nation like ours.
A preliminary tool that could help create better cities are well-landscaped public spaces. This allows nature to become drivers of the open plazas in their immediate clusters and, eventually, the larger urban fabric. With increased social spaces and public avenues, neighbourhoods become more cohesive and well-connected.
The planning of any public infrastructure, just like small or mid-scale private projects, must maximise on smart landscaping as an intrinsic design feature. The Eye Of Noida, or EON, is one such example. The mixed-use campus, packing retail and workspaces, prioritises user experience while designing transitory spaces. By creating more avenues for interaction and unwinding, the interventions leverage the landscaping, leaving behind the least carbon impact—sustainably steering the campus operations. The landscaping is designed for the 'urban heat-island' effect reduction — a concern for most urban habitats. The social, landscaped spaces housing internal market spaces and some F&B are woven between the building clusters to create a seamless master plan.
Importance of Landscaped Public Spaces at an Urban Scale: The Case of Central Delhi
The planning of Delhi started with the idea of making it into a Garden City with tree canopies enveloping the roadways. The roads in the Secretariat cluster of Delhi are relatively narrower, so the trees on either side can shade the road entirely. Newer roads, such as the Ring Road and Outer Ring Road, are much broader and thus receive little to no shade. By implementing simple solutions like lining the streets with native trees, the higher temperatures of the urbanised areas could be matched with that of the outlying, shaded fringes. Five rows of trees are recommended for roads with 60-45 meters widths, with one row planted in the central median and two on either side.
Reimagining the Policies that Impact City Planning Principles
The integration of design policies that mandate the infrastructure to develop as a resilient urban design is imperative, given the urgency of the current environmental situation. Resilience is the ability of a city to prepare for and recover from adverse impacts. It involves adopting advanced construction technologies, sustainable materials, green practices, etc. In an ideal case, when the amount of green cover in cities matches that of people-occupied land pockets, the cities could become climate resilient. Replacing uncovered city plazas—often neglected due to extreme weather conditions, with landscaped clusters would help revitalise them and add to the urban green cover.
Over the past decade, gradual but impactful strides have been made to integrate biodiversity into the urban fabric. The widening disparity between the footprints occupying the built environment and green cover zones remains a concern with rapid modernisation. The role of landscaped community spaces plays a deeper part in the well-being of urban concentrations.
As architectural boundaries continue to be pushed, luxury housing in India will undoubtedly remain at the forefront of architectural innovation, offering residents a life of unmatched luxe and style while enabling community living.
