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Low Carbon City: Policy, Planning and Practice by A.K. Jain

Discovery Publishers, New Delhi, 2009, Pages 476, Price Rs. 2,000/-

ISBN 978-81-8356-468-7

The cities in India often present a depressing picture of poverty, slums, persisting shortages of water and power, rivers turning into drains, insanitation, pollution, traffic congestion and diseases. With the recent oil crisis, the situation has worsened. Most of the urban ills emanate from disregard or lack of understanding of the ecological dimension of planning and development. Whether there is a hope to turnaround urban India into Low Carbon Cities is a key issue.

The cornerstone in making the human habitat as low carbon is to adopt integrated approach towards ecology and environment. The urban environment cuts across the various aspects of the environment, the habitat, transportation and services management. The natural resources include the elements of air and noise, water (water bodies, river, lakes, drains and ponds- and ground water) and land with reference to open spaces, green areas and other surface and sub-surface conditions. The composite built environment includes the environmental infrastructure - water supply, sewerage, solid waste disposal and transportation network.

The quest for Low Carbon City development underlines the need to evolve innovative practices, such as, water conservation and recycling, dual-pipe system, balancing lakes and reservoirs, recovery of the river and water bodies and blue networks and green corridors. The landscape dimension and ecological approach are crucial in this pursuit. The book provides a detailed historiography and evolution of landscape heritage and greenery in Delhi and its successes and failures. The author underlines the conservation of city’s ecology, i.e. the ridge, the riverbed, water bodies and forest cover. An unexplored area is 600 km of canals and drainways of the city which are proposed to be developed as ‘greenways’ with simple, indigenous plantations, and by arresting the flow of untreated sewerage, wastewater and solid waste in these water channels. The author, who worked on Delhi Master Plan-2021 as Commissioner (Planning), suggests an integrated approach and the adoption of the concepts of Bio-drainage, Zero Run-off, energy efficiency and audit, use of alternative sources of energy, Zero-fossil Energy Development (ZED), bio-fuel recovery, waste recycling and reducing ecological footprints which add up to make a low carbon city.