When I was studying Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, an issue arose in my mind that had been unresolved up until today. Having been familiarised with the planning theories, I found that nobody had thought of integrating settlements and nature in a seamless unified theory. Probably with the exception of Ebenizer Howard's Garden City theory but then Parks are not what I was interested in.
The need for such a design...
When Sir Howard was coming up with his theory, there were just 1.66 billion human occupants on this planet. Most of who lived in non urban settlements, living a relatively sustainable life.
Today, the population has grown 6 times over and Urbanisation has become the new mantra. Yet with the growing exodus of people to the city, somebody was still responsible to grow all that food in the hinterlands. Yet all this was coming at a cost.
This growing demand added with unscientific methods of cultivation, turned most of the land barren. To meet the need for fertile land more forest was cut and the process continues. This is exemplified in the poorer regions of Africa and Asia, where the higher population demands more and the unscientific methods of cultivation yields less.
So what has happened to the planet since...
All this was alright until about 50 years back, when we understood the implication of our actions, rainforest depletion, endangered wildlife, droughts due to a changes in micro climate and the all so famous Global Warming phenomenon.
Our cities are ever expanding, growing endlessly without control bringing a stark contrast to how things were up until a couple of centuries back, when our settlements were like islands surrounded by forests, but now we have to put a fence around the forests. Reminds me of what Agent Smith tells Neo, about how humans are like viruses.
What may be the solution to this problem...
More recently I read that the Kerala government has made the study of agriculture compulsory in all state run schools. The intension of which is to motivate more people to take up agriculture despite the risks, hopefully with better knowledge. Simultaneously, they have made it compulsory for all owners of agricultural land to use their land for cultivation, since many left their former occupations for more profitable ones. Although this maybe a good initiative, wouldn’t it be better to leave the old, possibly flawed system and move to a newer more inclusive and more profitable one.
And then I wondered if we could in fact regrow all the forest around us, and put ourselves into cities, possibly with tall skyscrapers, put a fence around ourselves this time around hoping that this would reverses the changes we have made to the climate. I might not have had all the information to contest any critics of this idea until I saw this video of Willie Smits and his project.
Although my thoughts remained thoughts, Willie Smits seemed to have acted upon his thoughts a good 20 years ago. In the following video he talks about how he started off looking for a place to rehabilitate an orphaned orangutan to how he came up with a thoroughly remarkable system to regrow the rainforest.
I would also like you to take a look at a project by Dr. Dickson Despommier, of who I have had the privilege to meet at Natcon 08. His idea of vertical farming was featured by the Discovery Channel recently. (Click here to view the video) If at all we could somehow integrate the two ideas we may be on the path of reversing the damage to this planet. Throw out the ideas of blocking the sun or dumping tons of iron into the sea, we may after all just have to hug the tree.
No comments:
Post a Comment