A Losing Race or A Winning Opportunity - The Battle of Human Urbanisation

A human being migrates to an urban outfit with aspirations of increased living standard and enhanced overall quality of life. But what does he receive - suspicious water supply, polluted air quality, vehicles all around on the roads, residences nearly touching the sky and what not. The migrant accepts them thinking them as a transformed way of living one’s life till he realises the cumulative trap of urban issues and problems he/she has been trapped into. Exceptions are always there and therefore barring some cities nearly every city is overdosed by technological solutions to even a minuscule of an issue rather than eyeing them as a part of the human system which itself is a part of the universal natural system. The situation gets worse in cities which without even realising their own potential blindly follow the ideas of another in the absence of proper inter-disciplinary knowledge. The planning of human settlements can become one of the toughest jobs of the universe if perceived through isolated windows with a set framework or it can become one of the easiest works to accomplish if done with an inter-dependent understanding of an urban system. 

We are in the midst of one of the biggest or simply the biggest revolution of human history. The history doesn't give any other scenario of such large scaled widespread human migration and we shall understand the intensity of the situation with an unbiased inter-dependent perspective to further plan it more efficiently. Nearly all the discussions around sustainability across the Globe seems to lack either clarity or will and though it should be at the upmost focus like generally found in present times, the arena with which it is generally viewed is too small to fight the battle of ever increasing human interference in the natural system. The ever increasing urban issues along with their sub typologies shall be taken as a warning before the bigger catastrophe takes place. The sinking of coastal cities like Jakarta, the housing shortages of cities like Mumbai, situations of traffic unrest in national capitals like Delhi, the filthy conditions of Lagos, the ever increasing density of Dhaka, the waste emergency of Naples, the increasing smoggy conditions of Delhi or Beijing in recent times are just some examples to give some perspective of its spread across all directions and to quantify the intensity to a bit.

We have beautified our settlements like never before and technology has certainly helped us to achieve the heights of comfort and ease but we shall ask some questions from ourselves - are we building our settlements to enhance our overall physical, mental and spiritual well being or are we just losing out the race already by engaging our valuable human resource in a wrong/less productive/less efficient manner? Till when we will pass on the problems from us to someone else? Till when we’ll first plan unknowingly and then rely on cursing the ever increasing complexity? Educational institutes teaching such courses shall scrutinise their outlook and shall move towards an inter-disciplinary mode of imparting knowledge rather than imparting them in isolation under different specialisations. There are already some sparks where it can be seen being adapted though slowly & being realised by the concerned authorities and fraternities but its effects can be increased acceleratingly if the global human community of those who are directly involved in shaping human lives realises the intensity of the responsibility on their shoulders and act accordingly. The objective of the human race should be universal but the approach to achieve it shall be more towards being local with necessary adaptations as per the global scenario only then we can flourish as a system to the maximum of its potential rather than planning them as different sub-systems in an unsynchronised fashion. A winning opportunity lies ahead of us to create a more empathetic, inclusive & productive Global community to gift our coming generations a space to blossom to the new glories of human progress & natural development. 

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