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India sets Green Building Codes. Shouldn’t Green Behaviour Codes come first?
Here's the latest from the Climate Change front. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's Council on Climate Change has cleared the Urban Habitat Mission, which will make it compulsory for all office buildings in Indian cities to adopt energy-saving codes within the next three years. With malls, high rises and commercial complexes taking over a huge chunk of our urban spaces, and accounting for an even huger share of our greenhouse gas emissions, the step But is it enough? Aren't some more urgent reforms needed in how we govern our cities and how we live in them? Gobar Times has been talking about this for years now. As India sets out to give its Urban Habitat a green face lift, here are some reminders… Urbanization increases water use dramatically!
In India over 170 million people do not have access to safe water Water lost from Mexico City ’s leaky supply system, which serves 17 million people, would be enough to meet the needs of 3 million people. In many countries, more than 30 per cent of domestic water supply is lost to porous pipes, faulty equipment, and poorly maintained distribution systems. |
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Slum truths, mostly myths
Cities are a hub of all commercial activities. No wonder, therefore, millions flock to them every year. We added 65 million persons to our urban population in the `90s. Fifty percent Indians will be living in cities by the first half of this century. So the urban slums are bound to swell, both is size and number. A while ago, Gobar Times helped its readers to get familiar with these fastest multiplying human dwellings. As the Urban Habitat Mission takes off lets take a look at them again.
Not true: Slums are the first stop for immigrants. They provide low-cost housing for millions, low-cost services for the rest of the city and are social support networks.
Convenient: In some cases, slum crime stories are a fabrication of the media. In cities with high crime rates, poor people suffer more from violence and theft because their homes are less secure.
Not to blame: Slums are the result of a failure of housing policies, laws and delivery systems, as well as of national and urban policies.
Untrue: In the 19th Century in the West, conditions were as bad as those found anywhere today and slums were just as widespread.
In fact: In many cities, as much as 60 per cent of employment is in the "informal" sector of the urban population. This serves the needs of the city through goods and services.
False: Some people with reasonable incomes actually choose to live within or on the edges of slums. Many slums in southeast Asia have colour TVs and mobiles.
Wrong: 25 per cent of the world's squatters do pay rent. In parts of India, squatter housing is rented from landlords, and ironically, given the low level of services available and the poor quality of the housing, these people actually pay more per square foot than the rich.
