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The five day short-course titled “Urban India and Environmental Sustainability” is meant as an interdisciplinary introduction to the key issues of environmental sustainability that Indian cities will need to address. The short-course will introduce participants to the conceptual underpinnings of urban sustainability while grounding them in the realities of urban India. Critical challenges facing key sectors like transportation, energy, water and sanitation, land and shelter will be examined with an emphasis on issues of inclusion and poverty.
The short-course will involve classroom sessions along with opportunities for experiential learning through city walks, interaction with practitioners and other hands on activities like simulation games. This course is meant for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and working professionals with less than five years of experience.
Kavita Wankhade is a consultant at IIHS. She began here career as an architect only to soon realise that her interest lay primarily in spaces, rather than buildings. Her desire to work in the public sector resulted in a variety of small projects – covering varied urban issues including a policy document around urban sanitation, a climate change project, and a project on municipal governance in Kolkata. This has given her a good understanding of cities from multiple perspectives. At IIHS, Kavita is responsible for the development of an interdisciplinary curriculum. She manages the entire process as well as participates actively in the core team that is working on this. In the coming months, she plans to work on cases that are being developed for the IIHS curriculum and to continue to teach in the upcoming programmes at IIHS.
Krishnachandran Balakrishnan
Krishnachandran Balakrishnan is a consultant at IIHS. As an architect, Krishna has been working in India on projects ranging from offices and cultural institutions to universities, with an emphasis on building-landscape integration and energy efficiency. Since June 2005 he has been a director in the consulting firm S.P.A. Design Pvt. Ltd with Stephane Paumier and Anupam Bansal. At UC Berkeley, Krishna taught undergraduate courses in Integrative Biology and graduate studios in Landscape Architecture.
Dr. H.S. Sudhira
Dr. H.S. Sudhira is a faculty member at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). He has obtained his Ph.D. for his thesis on “Studies on Urban Sprawl and Spatial Planning Support System for Bangalore, India” at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. Dr. Sudhira has been a summer Research Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore during 1998 and 2000. In addition, he has received the Indian Institute of Science Fellowship for Research Scholars (Jan 2005 – Dec 2007) and the NUFFIC Fellowship, the Netherlands. He has worked on studying the evolution and growth of towns and cities, their land-use and land cover changes, planning practices, governance structures and mobility.
Somnath Sen
Somnath Sen is a Senior Advisor for IIHS, Bangalore. Trained in public economics, management and consumer marketing research, Somnath has managed and led a number of institutional development and strategic advice tasks, across public sector reform, urban management and environmental services delivery, natural resource management, social development and energy sectors. Somnath enjoys training and teaching – having trained more than 100 students as an animator for Leadership Training Service, a youth movement in India.
Sanjay Prakash
Sanjay Prakash is a Senior Advisor for IIHS, Bangalore. He is Principal Consultant of his design firm, Sanjay Prakash & Associates Pvt. Ltd., and was a partner of DAAT and Studio Plus, design firms that predate his current firm. His area of practice and research over the last 30 years includes passive and low energy architecture and planning, hybrid air-conditioning, autonomous energy and water systems, bamboo and earth construction, community-based design of common property, and computer-aided design. Under his guidance, hundreds of people have developed capabilities in performing design, conceptual or management work in these areas.
Introductory Sessions (Day 1 & 2)
Environment and the City
This session will provide an overview of the environmental questions at the global scale, and contextualise the urban within them. It will introduce some key environmental debates and perspectives including the North-South one.
Understanding the Urban
This session with provide an introduction to the urban from multiple perspectives. While this short course focuses only on particular sectors, the intention of this session is to broaden the outlook of the learners.
Cities and Ecosystems
This session will discuss urban sustainability from the perspective of city – ecosystem interactions. It will specifically examine the dependence of cities on local and regional ecology and how urban areas alter ecosystem functioning in the surrounding landscape. The session will also discuss urban areas as examples of human dominated ecosystems and examine the significance of natural factors in urban planning and overall quality of urban life.
Systems Perspective on Urban Sustainability
This session will explore the city using principles of systems thinking. Stocks and flows for key infrastructure and services like water and sanitation, energy and mobility will be examined. Students will get familiarised with tools and methods of systems dynamics.
Sectoral Sessions (Day 2 & 4)
Introduction to Urban Transportation
The sessions on transportation will examine the current urban transportation systems in India, particularly from the environmental and equity lenses. This is to provide an overview of the current policy and programmes in the transportation sector in the country. Alternative solutions will then be explored, drawing upon the work done in the field by the faculty.
The session will examine the complex set of interactions between an Indian city and water. It will provide an overview of water supply and sanitation sector, the ensuing environmental concerns, and current policy climate. It will also examine the connection between urbanisation, urban planning and water. The first part of the session will focus on the implications of current pattern of Indian urbanisation on water resources in the city. The second part will critically examine the current paradigms of urban planning in India, and the disjunct with the hydrological systems.
Energy
This session will begin with an overview of energy sources and urban energy consumption in India, before exploring factors affecting the energy intensity of Indian cities. It will also discuss the relationship between urban form, transportation choices, building construction practices and energy consumption in cities. The transition to a renewable energy based urban future will be another focus area for this session.
Sustainable Buildings
This part of the course will focus on sustainability issues at the building scale. In particular, this session will examine energy and resource consumption by buildings in their construction and lifetime operation and also explore potential for energy generation at the building scale. Passive and low energy strategies for thermal comfort, daytime lighting and ecologically sensitive site planning and landscape design will also be discussed in this session.
Land and Urban Form
This session examines trends in land cover change in India, and the environmental consequences. It also examines the connections between urban form and environmental sustainability.
Day 5
Urban Sustainability in Practice
The aim of this session is to highlight that urban sustainability practices are dependent on the socio-economic and political context. It critically examines some of the key approaches to urban sustainability prevalent in the country, and what are the challenges with each one of them.