
Pathway to our future cities and villages
A world that keeps our civilization sustainable
The Why: As densely populated cities take over the villages with intense migrations recorded in past few decades, 52% of the world now reside in Urban Spaces. For the first time in record human lifestyle has so much impact on the planet. Rivers change course, rain forests turn into paddy fields, mountain forests replaced by alpine pastures and the list goes on. The reasons might be various but everything together results lead to an uninhabitable planet. Hence there is immense need to understand how we act together on solving the issue. It’s time to change the way we grow our communities and evolve them into villages and cities.
The How: So I’m here trying to study best practices across the world. As there are various activities that ruined our home, there are lot more activities which fix it up at the same time. With over 4.6 Billion years of research our planet already have solutions for everything. Asking 7.2 Billion people to care for environment and expecting change of mindset is a very time consuming action. So we need to figure out shortest path towards building a better planet.
Throughout the study I tried overlapping human needs with sustainable practices that can be people and planet friendly. Although few of them are profitable few might not be. End of the day intent is to list out our needs, find out the methods and then figure out execution plan with realistic business models. Needs are in one column, solutions are in another column and the execution plans are in the third. As we know same sort of solutions might not work everywhere due to varying constraints.
The two halves: To start with we will go for easier space first where needs are lesser when compared to the other half of the planet. Yes, the villages.
Many amazing minds came up with impressive solutions and executed them in frugal ways. While many villagers walks miles to fetch a pot of water hiware bazar became a totally self sufficient in terms of water. Hiware bazar, a village in the Ahmednagar District of Maharashtra, India is noted for its irrigation system and water conservation program, with which it has fought the drought and drinking water problems. There are about 20+ such breathtaking solutions for various problems in villages across India.
Similarly for the cities too. But the skyrocketing demands of cities and high densities require a whole new set of solutions and financing models.
Focusing on the villages first will slow down the migration and lower the stress on the cities. Fixing villages will require lower inputs when compared to the cities. As villages quickly turn into self-sustainable ecosystems with proper education, design, technologies, policies etc half of the problem is off the table. Although there is a need for modifications in all the domains, on a side note I will be listing out the domains that have higher urgency or have more impact on other streams.
The What: The prime use of doing this is firstly to build the shortest path to a better world. I’m expecting that more minds that are trying to do the same will find a place to learn, contribute and make an impact. If there are any already out there I will be happy to be part of them. Recently, I found that Y-Combinator has started a similar research on cities. There is a team from Berkeley who’s trying to turn 469 villages into smart villages. I’m sure there are many more out there. I hope all such entities get together to form a thinktank sometime soon.
The final vision is to empower communities, governments, organizations to use the framework to grow better cities & villages to pass on to our next generations. As a great quote says we are all here as tenants and we live our lives without creating disturbance and leave it the way we got it.
Let’s dive in into the villages block in the next article.
