Why Urban Planning Matters

Soumya Diddi, is a B-Tech graduate and has experience in digital marketing. She supports gender equality, child education and strives consistently for growth of knowledge. She says “One should never stop learning and should try new things breaking their comfort zones to succeed in life”. In her free time she loves visiting new places, reading books, watching movies and working out. Spending time with her loving husband and family is what she does during the weekends.

Why Urban Planning Matters

Urbanisation is expected to keep growing in the coming years and according to reports of United Nations on World Urbanisation, urban population will keep expanding up to 2.5 billion by the year 2050 and 90% of that will be in Asia and Africa.

This might leave our future generations in scarcity of water and high levels of pollution and many other problems creating an imbalance in their lifestyles.

Here comes the vital role of Urban Planning,

Urban planning can be explained as the marriage between people and their surroundings. 

So, can we take a chance ignoring appropriate urban planning? Isn’t it worth working on innovative plans to make our smart cities liveable?  Yes it is. In this article, I will explain about the effects of neglecting healthy urban planning practices and give you some case studies on sustainable living.

Threats of Poor Urban Planning:

One of the reasons for catastrophes:

Do you remember the 2018 California wildfires? These wildfires are listed as one of the most dangerous in recent years. What do you think are the reasons for this? Is it just the atmospheric changes? No, there is another important reason here to be considered called, Wildland-Urban-Interface(WUI). Drastic increase in residencies in Wildland-Urban-Interface are one of the causes for the wildfires. California alone has around 4 billion houses built in WUI. As more people start staying in WUI there will be an increase in ignition gases which aids wildfires and results in loss of life.

This is the condition of so many places in several districts of USA like Columbia etc and in many other countries.

Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/13/3314

Drop in Quality of Urban Life:

Developed countries like Australia and New Zealand are considering urban planning as its effects are seen in economic growth and can also solve unaffordable living. Increase in car lanes and delay in planning approval are some more factors causing a poor quality of urban life.

Image Source: https://www.citi.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2313-01.jpg

Killing Wildlife:

The increase in population increases the number of vehicles and industries emitting several hazardous gases and plastic content thus affecting animal life. Many of us are aware of how plastic is killing sea life and leaving our water bodies polluted. Good urban planning like planting more trees around the buildings, proper waste disposal away from water bodies can help wildlife as well as make the environment more sustainable..

Couple of Countries with good urban planning:

Netherlands:

With its appreciative level of urban planning techniques Netherlands is an outstanding ideal example for many other countries.

Using bicycles in large numbers, technology-driven solutions for quality urban living, secured building and many more sustainable solutions Netherlands is always giving us some major urban planning goals.

Singapore:

Dr. Liu Thai Ker, former master planner of Singapore in the PropertyGuru’s Real Estate Summit at Marina Bay Sands explains how urban planning helped such a small country in achieving great results. He says division of land into towns made Singapore's traffic hassle free and improved quality of living.

Conclusion:

As seen, increase in urban population brings up new challenges for urban planners. Support of the government in approving good quality designs, innovative ideas using technology and pre-planning before executing designs will definitely help everyone in creating and living a quality life.

Opinions expressed are of the writer.

*This blog was first published on Safecity.