Why building houses with marble and concrete is not the smartest idea.

Cities in India are like magnets – attracting more and more people. Like a modern day Pied Piper, cities have a magic that draws people from villages and smaller towns. To live and work in slums and squatter settlements.

In India today, more than 290 million live in cities and towns. And this number is ever increasing. There were about 40 metro cities in the country in 2001 as against 23 in 1991. By 2025 more than half of the population will be living in overcrowded cities.

Alongside the growing urbanisation, India, nevertheless, continues to live in her villages. As many as 629 million people live in some 580,706 villages, which works out to an average of 1,083 people per village. All these people need roofs over their heads. Low-cost housing is the proposed agenda.

New housing required, as estimated by the planning commission, is about 77 million houses in urban areas and 63 million in rural areas by 2021.

Will it be possible to build houses from modern construction material like cement, steel, burnt bricks for so many? For one, even what is called ‘low-cost’ housing remains accessible only to the middle class. Much above the purchasing power of the majority. According to a World Bank estimate, 55% of Mexicans in Mexico city, 63% of Indians in Chennai and 68% of Kenyans in Nairobi could not afford the cheapest modern house built with modern construction materials. That’s because the homes we like to live in demand concrete, marble and granite. Modern Taj Mahals. Traditional architecture and building materials are pooh-poohed. As President Nyerere of Tanzania said in his 1977 assessment of the Tanzanian economy: "The widespread addiction to cement and tin roofs is a kind of mental paralysis."

Yet, surprise, surprise, nearly half of the world’s population still lives in buildings where mud has been used as a major building material.

Is it possible for us to get out of the mind set that looks down upon humble ideas that have stood the test of time? Can we learn to learn from the past, however old-fashioned it might seem? Can we think as clearly as mud?

Iron, glass, steel, aluminium, cement, marble, burnt bricks are very energy-intensive. The process of extraction, refinement, fabrication, and delivery of these material are all energy consuming and this use of energy adds vast amounts of pollution to the earth, air and water. The total energy consumed during a process is known as embodied energy – offering a general guide to the amount of pollution involved in its manufacture. Typically, low energy material are less polluting.