Introduction to Sustainable Urbanism

As per the UN 2000 data, the world’s urban areas already hosts over half the global population i.e approximately some 3.5 billion people……. and it is anticipated that this number will increase up to 68% by 2050. These unprecedent urban growth leads to several environmental risks and vulnerabilities.

Hence it is very very important to take necessary action to overcome these challenges. Urbanisation and growth of cities is bound to happen but we must work towards mitigating the impact of urbanisation and aim at a sustainable growth of the cities. With the increasing urbanization and the climate change which we all are experiencing, its very very important that we all together along with the concerned agencies and their rules and policies consider the principles of sustainability seriously. It is easy to list a set of local government responsibilities in mitigating the ill effects of urbanization. Every citizen must understand that they also have a very important role towards Sustainable Urbanism.

This course- Introduction to Sustainable Urbanism- is divided into Seven sections. After this welcome and Introduction to the course, we will be dealing with what is sustainable urbanism, key strategies of sustainable Urbanism and Accessibility and Universal design Principles. The next section of this course will be on sustainable infrastructure. Then we will deal with various policies and framework of Sustainable urbanism. The next section will be on sustainable cities, meaning of sustainable cities and the various examples of sustainable cities. The next section is on Challenges of Sustainable Urbanism and the solutions to these challenges. The last section is on Conclusion and list of further readings on the topic of sustainable urbanism.