Bogota – A sustainable city

Sustainable Living introduced in the city of Bogota

How could a modern way of life that threatens our planet to have become our way of life?

Opportunities to reinvent and redesign

Could poverty be connected by hope through way of design?

America has huge inequalities. People migrating from rural areas to the cities has increased considerably.

bogota

In 100 years, Bogota grew from 100,000 persons to 7 million. It has grown in an illegal way.

There is lack of infrastructure, quality, security and safety. No good leaders. They had no direction. They had no money for the progress of the city. The quality of life in Bogota was the worst in Columbia and Latin America. People hated Bogota for what it was. It was a city without hope and self esteem.

City Design

They wanted to make a city for the people and not for cars. Changing the way of life was the focus of the designers in Bogota. It was believed that Sustainable Urban design will lay the foundation for social justice. The way we design cities would have an impact on our lifestyles which would determine our happiness and well being.

For example: Amsterdam

As it is said, fish needs to swim, we need to walk not in order to survive but be happy. For 5000 years, we had pedestrian streets only. So when cars appeared, the street should have been divided into two halves; half for cars and the other half for pedestrians to keep the balance.

Designers thought that correcting this enormous error was a necessity and could only be achieved by putting some restriction to car use.

Every Sunday, in Bogota 120km of main arteries are closed from 7 am to 2.00pm in the afternoon. All people are brought together and all the vehicles are blocked. This helps people to interact with each other. This has been going on every Sunday since 1982 and has been growing since then. This is a way in which they are trying to reduce car use in Bogota by getting people to cycle on the main streets on Sundays.

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Importance of Sustainable Architecture in 21st Century

Save Mother Earth - Aim of Sustainable Development

What is Sustainable Development?

The word “Development ” in this definition implicates two important aspects of the concept: It is omni-disciplinary, it cannot be limited to a number of disciplines or areas, but it is applicable to the whole world and everyone and everything on it, now and in the future. Secondly, there is no set aim, but the continuation of development is the aim of the development.

Save Mother Earth - Aim of Sustainable Development
Save Mother Earth – Aim of Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development is important for the environmental stability of our Mother Earth… The main focus of Sustainable Development is to preserve the natural resources and use them very cautiously so that we can protect our Mother Earth from devastation…!!

The definition is based on two concepts:

  1. The concept of needs, comprising of the conditions for maintaining an acceptable life standard for all people, and
  2. The concept of limits of the capacity of the environment to fulfil the needs of the present and the future, determined by the state of technology and social organization.

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Chandigarh Rock Garden | Turning Trash into Treasure

Introduction

Chandigarh rock garden is an epitome of creativity and innovation. Rock Garden is a sculpture garden in Chandigarh, India, also known as Nek Chand’s Rock Garden. The speciality of this place is that it is completely built of industrial & home waste and thrown-away items.

Chandigarh's Nek Chand Rock Garden
Chandigarh's Nek Chand Rock Garden

Rock garden has been established in the form of an open-air exhibition hall.

Timeline

The Rock Garden was secretly started by Mr Nek Chand in 1957. The government only learnt about it in 1975. After it was discovered, the government took it over.

Dimensions

Initially, it occupied an area of 12 acres. But it has grown and is spread over an area of forty-acres (160,000 m²),

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