Urban planning is a process apprehensive of the design and development of land used constructively to the built environment. This involves technical and political decisions pertaining to air, water, infrastructure; it requires detailed planning of architecture, structural designing, and civil engineering to create the solutions for the communities.
Points to Ponder:
- Exploration: This includes considering and exploring several aspects of the environment to build communities that have access to the communication network, transportation in a methodical way that social environment remains protected.
- Solving Problems: Organized, practical, balanced, modern, and stylish approach in solving town planning related problems are possible through an innovative idea and their implementation at the design level.
- Expansion: This domain of urban planning includes economic development based on the infrastructure and other natural resources planning for support of the community. It is tie-up of social and environmental planning.
- Human Experience: The interaction of people has an interlocking effect on the availability of resources and easy connectivity. It enhances the experience of people and intensifies community connection.
- Vitalizing the Town: Passage of time is a factor for change in the requirement of land, water, energy, transportation and this leads to redesigning the town to match the standard of living the citizens expect, repairing, and renovating the urban areas to adapt to the modern technology.
Latest technology trends of Urban Planning:
- The health of Town: People are present to the healthy lifestyle and the designing of urban areas now need broader roads where people can walk, some running tracks and exercise areas outside the residential complexes or common plots. Initially, this is expensive but with the involvement of technology, the roads, and walking tracks can generate electricity to run the homes. The exercise instruments if linked can convert mechanic energy into electricity that can supply electricity for street lamps and run water motors in the common space. The major benefit of these walking tracks is reduced pollution, which is shaping up to a demon size problem.
- Public Transport: People are opting for public transportation than the earlier year’s preference for personal vehicles. They are aware of the oil prices, environmental challenges like pollution and global warming issues. To enable them support in this, cause the urban planning needs to contemplate the required change in the variety and numerals of public transport for its availability and comfortable commute. The initiatives like e-bikes and renting of cycles is possible with the support of technology, making the booking and return of bikes easy, cheaper and environment-friendly.
- Rising Population: The needs of electricity, land, water, affordable housing rise with the population. Maximum use of land to build comfortable yet affordable homes and encouraging people to save energy by use of gadgets that consume lesser electricity, plant more trees to reduce pollution and heat. Re-Greening the exteriors of our towns is inevitable, and we shall foresee the involvement of technology in space, plants management and pollution reduction.
- Traffic Needs: Technology helps in managing and diverting the traffic, it indicates the probable traffic jams, as well as notifications of traffic jams, help in immediate actions. We can now develop roads that can generate power from the passing vehicles and pedestrians. Utilization of the energy produced from these roads in traffic signal control or street lighting. The parking of vehicles issues was ignored but needs immediate attention for this the multi-level building that saves parking spaces and here the technology helps in space allocation, collection of charges, providing parking instructions, making announcements to public.
- Industrial Development: With the increase in number and size of industries the two-sided coin effect observed is, people are likely to get jobs but the rise in electric and water consumption, release of dangerous gasses, rise in pollution. Technology enables the companies to monitor and control the pollution level with use of apps. They can generate at least part of the electricity consumed by the industrial units with the installation of solar plants.
- Exercising Control: The government has rights to introduce new acts for environmental safety and human benefit. By introducing and embedding rules and regulations for construction, manufacturing, and engineering companies the urban planning can be coherently improved benefiting in long run. Technology can exercise control over the tracking of activities by the industries and report the unmet criteria’s or developments taking place.
- Research and Development: Necessity is the mother of invention, is so true and urban planning supplies lot of opportunities to the researches. The need-based inventions become trendy in no time. E.g. designing the buildings to make use of natural light to save electricity, rainwater harvesting for water shortage problem etc. From identification, innovation, execution and monitoring at all level’s technology empower us.
- Changing Times: The preferences of food, clothes, and shopping have changed and the need for more food courts, take away counters may need to reutilize the building spaces. Online shopping may change the designs of shops or even requirement of lesser shops and more warehouses to store the materials and finished products. Technology is playing a crucial role in stock taking, transportation of goods and supply chain.
- Community Experience: Expectations of people from the urban planning development authorities and government had changed they want better transport and internet connectivity, spacing within a building, proper sunlight, fresh and clean air, attractive exteriors of buildings, broad and quality roads, improved standards of living, and sense of belonging. The expenses of survival are increasing and with better urban planning, increased efficiency of renewable energy resources, infrastructure, and the introduction of eco-friendly solutions makes technology dynamic.
- Outreach: Technology is creating a communication network, which is two-sided, in fact, multi-sided where the facility users, government, architects, engineers, and actual service providers all can connect to reinvent and redesign the urban life.
Indian Urban Planning has traces found form the civilizations of Indus, Harappa, the rulers, invaders, post freedom development, and with inventions, the trends kept changing.
Every era leaves a historic stamp of the cultural and environmental changes. This era is of technological solution explosions focusing on the customer and environment care.
