Traditionally the planning of water supply and sewerage was seen as an activity to be taken up at city scale. Population projections would be drawn up, standards of water supply used to determine demand, resource and source identified and then supply and distribution networks designed and set up to reach water to people. This model is faced with huge challenges now. Cities expand fast at the periphery and become more dense in the centre. Infrastructure is always playing catch up since conventional projects are ‘lumpy’, come once in a decade and generally tend not to be amenable to incrementality.
Step in the smart building. It will maximise the resource available on the plot and recycle all possible things that can be.
The building will harvest rainwater, will meter, measure and price all consumption, recharge and manage groundwater sustainably and treat and recycle its waste-water. Some individual buildings will have ‘on plot’ sanitation to ensure safe disposal of waste-water and recovery of nutrients over time using the twin leach pit type of technology.
Most problems such as managing solid waste and liquid waste are easier solved at building level than at city level. This will need to be fostered by policy and economic instruments.
Access for all Moving up the ladder at the community level, the neighbourhood will make sure that there is access to water and sanitation resource for all including the socially and economically deprived. It will take care of its resources and infrastructure such as storm-water drainage, solid waste, parks and forests, lakes, tanks, wells and groundwater. Decentralised infrastructure which cannot be managed at the building level will be managed at the neighbourhood level.
This level of infrastructure lend themselves easily to incremental growth, look at cyclical use of resources and not linear use and hence are more sustainable.
Finally at the city level, social and physical infrastructure will be maintained and regulated so as not to become gated social ghettos of affluence on the one hand and of slums on the other.
It is crucial that cities are caring, foster equity and are environmentally benign, improving the social ecology within and around it.
The principal of subsidiarity, of solving problems at the lowest level possible, is the way to go. Participation will be key and therefore will have to be a people’s movement.
It starts from the home / apartment and goes to the urban mega-city scale. That would be a smart city.
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