Sustainable & Inclusive Design Solutions Key for Future

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Realty+ organised a webinar on 19 June 2020 to discuss how people will adapt to post pandemic world? The speakers for the session titled “Collaborate. Rethink. Redesign Future Cities” were Amar Tendulkar, Chief of Design & Sustainability, Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd; Kartikeya Sarabhai, Director, Centre For Environment Education; Manoj Choudhary, Director, Edifice Consultants; Ar. Nayan Raheja, Raheja Developers Ltd; Ar. Pratima Joshi, Founding Member & Executive Director Shelter Associates (SA) & Sushil Mohta, Chairman, Merlin Group & President, CREDAI West Bengal. The speakers, each expert in their field discussed the current environmental crisis and how greener, less populated and better planned cities are the solution. The moderator of the session A Shankar, Chief Operating Officer - Strategic Consulting, JLL India, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh concurred that policy level interventions is required for designing future cities post covid along with public private partnership to develop well planned urban centres. “India’s urban centres are in desperate need of being de-densified especially in terms of the slum settlements,” stated Amar Tendulakar. While, Kartikeya Sarabhai advocated taking lessons from our past ways of living to develop holistic and integrated cities. Architect Manoh Choudhary drew attention to healthcare infrastructure that should focus on infection control strategies in hospitals rather than just speed of construction of building hospital buildings. Pratima Joshi attributed failure of government welfare schemes to lack of proper data and convergence of various government schemes. Kolkata based developer Sushil Mohta stated, private sector participation in developing rental housing for the workers could be a big step in alleviating slums in the cities. According to Nayan Raheja, a developer and an architect, Smart cities and township projects with an enhanced focus on hygiene, safety and lesser carbon footprint will be the way forward for the industry. In addition, the panellists established the need for instant change in the housing policies of the country. Wherein, real estate would have to rethink their projects in order to accommodate the demands of the post covid world. The panel discussion was concluded with a Q&A session by Sapna Srivastava, Editor, Realty+, ; Anil Beejawat, CEO, RAK Ceramics India & Jinal Palkhiwala, Managing Director, Inmobel Doors. They were of the view that developers will have to change their focus from standalone projects to townships with connectivity to schools, offices, hospitals and recreation facilities being the key.