[WEBCAST] Reimagining Housing for Stronger Cities
VIEW EVENT DETAILSBuilding Cities of the Future - Architecture, Urbanisation & Public Health: Part I
LIVE WEBCAST
Watch Live on Facebook
Throughout history, public health concerns have shaped the way urban areas have evolved. In a post-COVID-19 world, cities will not only need to adapt to the effects of a global pandemic but also plan for the next 100 years. Forever in search of more room, cities now face a future where social distancing may become the norm. Furthermore, shifting weather patterns continue to erode urban land with increased flooding, drought, and wildfires. Moving forward, city planners and public health leaders will need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to address urban performance indicators in resiliency, preparedness, innovation, and investment.
Researchers at Stanford University, led by epidemiologist Steven Goodman, have claimed that high population density combined with efficient intra-city connectivity can expose residents to sustained local outbreaks. But the effects of such outbreaks are often disproportionately distributed, with socio-economic factors playing an important role in determining the health outcomes of communities. This has been observed in the successes of densely packed housing colonies in Hanoi, Taipei, and Tokyo, versus the disease burden in the informal settlements of Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, and Cape Town.
In India where a large percentage of urban houses are high-density and low-cost, with only communal access to bathrooms, this pandemic has highlighted the need to build safe, affordable, and sustainable housing. While access to natural light and ventilation remain core concerns, India's low-cost urban housing presently places great importance on community spaces – like passages and the courtyards. New modalities will perhaps need to address how these vital spaces can be reshaped into semi-private areas, shared among smaller numbers of people. In a post-pandemic world, architects, town planners, developers, governments, and other stakeholders will need to work together with local communities to prioritise public health while designing durable and liveable homes.
Join us as we discuss the critical linkages between housing, urban planning, and emerging public health concerns with Shipra Narang Suri, Chief of Urban Practices, UN-Habitat; Dr Dileep Mavalankar, Director, Indian Institute of Public Health and Smruti Jukur, Architect and Urban Planner, Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centre. Rupali Gupte, Professor, School of Environment and Architecture will moderate the discussion.
This is the first programme in our series on 'Building Cities of the Future: Architecture, Urbanisation and Public Health'. This series will discuss issues of housing, urban planning, transportation, mobility and infrastructure resilience with leading global urban planners, architects, policy experts, and academics. The discussions will share emerging ideas, critical research and relevant best practices to help design sustainable cities for the future.
Shipra Narang Suri leads UN-Habitat’s Urban Practices Branch, which is the hub for UN-Habitat’s normative work and the home of its portfolio of global programmes. She is also the senior advisor within UN-Habitat for local governments and their networks. She has extensive experience in advising national and local governments, as well as private sector organisations and networks, on issues of urban planning and management, good urban governance and indicators, livability and sustainability of cities, urban safety, women and cities, as well as post-conflict/ post-disaster recovery. She is the former co-Chair of the World Urban Campaign, and former Vice-President of ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners.
Dr Dileep Mavalankar is the Director of Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar; the Vice President, western region, Public Health Foundation of India and Co-ordinator of NIDHI-TBIC. He has been a consultant to Columbia University, WHO, UNICEF, CARE, UNDP/World Bank and government of India and state governments. He has been a member of several programmes, technical & scientific advisory committees including GAVI Switzerland, MotherCare project USA; NIHFW, New Delhi; IIPS, Mumbai; IIHMR Jaipur; IMMPAC Project University of Aberdeen UK, and the Planning Commission of India. He was appointed by the Prime Minister to the Missions Steering Group of the National Rural Health Mission and has been recently appointed as a member of the Steering Committee on Health For the 12th Five Year Plan.
Smruti Jukur is an architect and urban planner who specialises in working with informal settlements. Her work with SPARC and SDI is based in India within the network of Slum Dwellers Federations, and also extends to Asia and East & Southern Africa. The practice is based on people-centric design with solutions that are evolved from what works for the people and is suitable to the local context, and that which can be affordable, scalable and replicable. They challenge traditional methods to develop rationalised approaches in urban planning and design to create new solutions that are tailor-made to suit the brownfield areas which have special needs, where what works for the city, may not work in slums.
Rupali Gupte is an architect and urbanist based in Mumbai. She a co-founder of and Professor at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA), a partner at BARDStudio and a founder member of the Collective Research Initiatives Trust which have been involved in urban research on the city of Mumbai. Her work often crosses disciplinary boundaries and takes different forms - writings, drawings, mixed-media works, story-telling, teaching, conversations, walks and spatial interventions. This includes extensive research on contemporary Indian architecture and urbanism with a focus on architecture and built environment; tactical practices; housing; and urban form.