A Common Sense Approach towards City Planning and Design

Objective

To understand the issues of a city and collectively arrive at simplistic solutions possible to tackle the issues.

Outcome

Students will be able to build their own perspective of urban development and question the current development paradigms. Students will be able to understand the environmental destruction that development perspectives are exclusive of, and understand the foundation of inclusive development.

Requirements

Black/white board, Laptop, internet

Prerequisites

Knowledge about the city, information on the future development projects and planned for the city.

Procedure

Step 1: Organize the class into a few groups and visit parts of the selected city to understand the vibe, ethos, and problems in the city. This step can be skipped if the students are already aware and know the city well. 

Step 2: Collectively list down the issues that the city is facing such as pollution, traffic, Transport infrastructure, quality of living in Informal settlements,  decreasing greenery and open spaces, heritage, etc.  

Step 3: Each group takes one issue.

Step 4: Discuss each issue collectively and come up with simple common sense based simple solutions, without its implementation related complexes for eg; public transportation for increasing traffic and congestion issue without addressing the issues related to the implementation of public transportation. 

Step 5: Research and find out such cities or communities where such solutions are practically implemented and functional. 

Step 6 :  Share with the larger group. 

Step 7 : Try to arrive and discuss the reasons for such solutions not being implemented in your own city in your respective groups.

References

None