Dear Friends,

here is something i have experienced in a Green Asia Meet 07 at Singapore. There are many minute details, will follow in detail report. Also its my personal observations, our problems may be a bit different so the solutions will be, the crucks is the way they are flexible & fast in solutions.

Aesthetics & Environments ….

Recently I had been called to read my paper at Green Asia meet in Singapore. I have tried my best to promote Pune in my presentation as many wasn't knowing Pune at all,they have just heard the name & thats all.Banglore & Mumbai, a bit of Noida thats what they were knowing.There were representives from Planning authorities,developers,fund managers from all major citys from East Asia.

I think we should cal few of them in Pune via our Envo Committee forrum.

It wasn't my first visit to the city but surely with the environment back ground it looked more beautiful to me & a comparison with our city is unavoidable. The conference was about urbanization in the East Asian countries & the impact of environment it's causing on the city life as well overall.

During the sessions I get an opportunity to meet many people from the field & also to roam in & around Singapore, one of the most beautiful as well environment savy metro of East Asia. With a population over 42 million even they are also facing problems of traffic & energy. Also being an island in Hindi Ocean they don't have a permanent source of poatable water & water is a scarce thing. Being an equatorial country though rains are all over the year yet increasing urbanization is a looming threat on the greens.

A small example is the way they are dealing with the issues is the way they dealt with debris of construction activity as well the excavated stuff (multi storied basements parking is a common thing for the most sky scrappers) & the dumping yards is a problem. What they did is, they have made to dump the excavated stuff in the open spaces adjoin to the buildings within the plot premise( like open spaces in our layout,not to forget that club house & all other things are allowed at podium or at terrece level) & retain it with proper walls & convert it in to small hill garden. Hundreds of such hills island covered with thick big trees is seen in between the tall buildings, is the effect.

Both purposes achived, the excavated stuff taken care as well green cover is maintained. All the bridges are covered with bogon-well ( flowering crippers),covering the exposed concrete parts of the structures like bridge with greenery  is a common practice.

The best part is environment is not just a technical thing, it's aesthetic looks of the city also & the striking feature was no hoarding in haphazard way all along the streets which is a common scene for us & no mesh of cable TVs, cell phone towers, broad band cabling all over the sky line of the city. It feels so good to have a look of the city without any such obstructing objects, there are huge advertising hoardings but at fixed positions only. The city was celebrating their festivals but without cut outs of numbers of political/social images on them in all shapes & moods!

Even the best public transport system, the bus service is facing the problem of economic surge of the city. Upper crest isn't ready to be seen in designer clothes & waiting at bus stops ,so now they are thinking on lines how to make people comfortable not only during the travel but on bus stops also. The busses are air conditioned, clean, and equipped with popular TV channels displaying current shows on them. The major problem most of the Metros are facing is from this class of socity which has money in their pockets & gives importance to the wealthy life style where they think "if they can spend then why not" type attitude. It reflects not just in spending valuable goods but consumption of natural resources like water & energy. Most of the electrical energy comes from burning of fossil fuels so a slightest saving in power consumption is directly related to the conservation of natural resources.

Being equatorial country, rains is a daily routine & they have one of the best rain water collection system which is maintained at high priority. Every drop of rain water is collected with a net work of open channels which are spread all along the roads, public areas. This water is collected to pumping stations at regular interval & guided to natural passages like river & streams.

The whole city is user friendly in terms of information of the services the city offers right from metro to bus service to land marks of the city.At every major square on main streets there is a booth of Singapore Tourism with a person there for giving information about the city as well distributing free city maps with locations of interests mentioned. This is something which really makes a visitor to become fond of the city. The local citizens also get benefited with the facility as Singapore being a big Metro many don't know about all the places in the city.

Seeing this I just keep on thinking what is going wrong with us and where they are scoring above us! I think it's the accepting facts, knowing what kind of result we want to achieve & adopting the remedies at fast rate at which urbanization is growing, has made Singapore unique !

Let's act & not just think friends, time is running out…..

Sanjay Deshpande
Chairman Envo Committee.