The Not So Smart City – Amit Khanna, Founder & Design Principal at AKDA

Bengaluru, February 27, 2016: As users, we tend to think of our cities as centres of continuous evolution. However, in the past century, the idea of a city has undergone several tectonic shifts, resulting in a dramatically diverse conception of our urban environments. Whereas the fabric of our cities was once determined by geographical and climatic conditions, global cities now seem self similar in their appearance and experience. It is that loss of cultural identity, and subsequent bland homogeneity which is celebrated by the new fangled smart city; an idea that perhaps needs a little more evolution before it can be applied en masse to a developing nation like India.

The walled city persisted as an almost static entity for nearly two millennia, until it was gradually dismantled to accommodate city expansion in the 19th century. Amsterdam, Delhi & New York are only a few examples of cities around the world that expanded beyond their recognized boundaries, either in an attempt to accommodate vast hordes of industrial workers or to satiate imperial ambitions. However, this new city fabric was not borne from a capitalist desire to provide humane conditions for the industrial worker class, rather it was a series of crippling epidemics of disease that promulgated the creation of the industrial city. Coupled with an rapidly mechanizing transport system, the vision of the new city was one of immaculate hygiene and openness – a well planned, grid iron diagram that clearly demarcated zones of activity. This inadvertently, but perhaps clandestinely separated residential areas by income, pushing the poor industrial workers to the periphery, while agglomerating the wealthy in the centre of the city, safe from the spread of infectious diseases and the misery of long commuting.

This shift from a walled city to an industrial city was sudden and offered little by way of evolutionary advantage. The mixed use patterns that had survived for millennia were done away with in a single instant of “urban planning”. The consequent segregation and resultant urban form has remained the vision of the ideal city across geographical boundaries, exported by a small group of misguided modernist thinkers to the far reaches of the colonial cities. While a minor aberration would have been of no consequence, this has become the de facto method of approaching city planning globally, so much so that even vibrant dense ancient cities like Delhi are expanding into the hinterland in a wasteful car centric manner. Certainly, this creates opportunities for massive infrastructure projects in the guise of development, but it does not constitute city building. We are blindly repeating the mistakes of a hundred years ago, then perpetrated by imperialist ambition, and now by bureaucratic ineptitude.

The three main components of the post industrialist city are the tower block, the highway and functional zoning. These combine to create a thinly spread city, in which one uses the car to access employment, health care, education and even basic services. Unsustainable even for rich countries, this model spells doom for countries with limited resources, limiting opportunities for people with no access to a car. In a world that is now predominantly urban, and with millions expected to move to cities in the coming decades, this type of city may expand endlessly into the horizon, further exacerbating the problem. The fundamental problem that should keep planners awake at night should be the affordability of basic services to the 90% of the city population that creates value, and not the design of boundary walls for secluded public parks.

The failure of urban planning in the past century to create good quality city environments is also a system wide failure to recognize that we cannot build the city of today like we built the post industrial city. Just like the industrial city was a reaction to disease, the smart city must be a reaction to the environment we inhabit. A hundred years ago, cholera did not differentiate between the rich and the poor and today air pollution and large scale climatic disasters will not either. We are all equally affected by the compounded health effects of living in car centric cities, therefore we cannot continue to expand our cities in the same manner. It is worth noting that if everyone lived like an American, we would need the resources of 5 earths to survive. As the global north desperately unravels its mistakes of the previous century and starts building denser urban habitats, we too need a new paradigm for the smart city in the developing world.

Amit Khanna is the Founder & Design Principal at AKDA, a design firm that integrates the disciplines of architecture, interior design, furniture, lighting and product design. He graduated from the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi in 2002. He heads the design studio at AKDA, combining day-to-day involvement in design with his primary responsibilities for the strategic direction of the practice.

Established by Amit Khanna in 2004, the studio philosophy is to make regional specificity and sustainability intrinsic to the design process and product. Every object produced at the studio, be it a 60,000SF office building or a 0.5SF light fixture, undergoes the same scrutiny of process and exactitude; A process that is founded in suitable materiality and innovation, irrespective of appearance.

Amit Khanna teaches at his alma mater, the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi with diverse responsibilities related to design, research and theoretical exploration. Through his initiatives in education, he engages in research as a tool for design innovation to craft buildings that work with the local environment, both at the school and the studio.

He is an acclaimed photographer, writes extensively for both online and offline media. He has been recently featured in Indian Architect and Builder- Young Designers’13 and DesignxDesign, 20 Under 35 Exhibition, New Delhi (2013).

Amit Khanna is the Founder & Design Principal at AKDA, a design firm that integrates the disciplines of architecture, interior design, furniture, lighting and product design. He graduated from the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi in 2002. He heads the design studio at AKDA, combining day-to-day involvement in design with his primary responsibilities for the strategic direction of the practice.

Established by Amit Khanna in 2004, the studio philosophy is to make regional specificity and sustainability intrinsic to the design process and product. Every object produced at the studio, be it a 60,000SF office building or a 0.5SF light fixture, undergoes the same scrutiny of process and exactitude; A process that is founded in suitable materiality and innovation, irrespective of appearance.

Amit Khanna teaches at his alma mater, the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi with diverse responsibilities related to design, research and theoretical exploration. Through his initiatives in education, he engages in research as a tool for design innovation to craft buildings that work with the local environment, both at the school and the studio.

He is an acclaimed photographer, writes extensively for both online and offline media. He has been recently featured in Indian Architect and Builder- Young Designers’13 and DesignxDesign, 20 Under 35 Exhibition, New Delhi (2013).

Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)