Building ‘smart’ cities essentially means building ‘livable’ cities

India is in a frenzy of construction. We are building at a massive pace, but are still not there yet: a staggering 60 per cent of the buildings that will stand in India in 2030 are yet to be built. And how we choose to design and build these and live in them can have a profound impact on our resource use and environment – this is one of the core messages in a new publication on the ‘green’ building sector which was released in New Delhi. Building sense: beyond the green façade of sustainable habitat has been published by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). It was released at a two-day conclave on the ‘green’ buildings and townships sector, by a panel of eminent architects from all over India including Chitra Vishwanath, principal architect and managing director, Biome Environmental Solutions Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru; Sandeep Virmani, managing director, Hunnarshala, Bhuj; Sanjay Prakash, principal architect, SHiFt Architects, Delhi; Ashok B Lall, principal architect, Ashok B Lall Architects, Delhi; Suhasini Ayer, principal architect, Auroville Design Consultants, Puducherry; and Yatin Pandya, principal architect, Footprints EARTH, Ahmedabad. The two-day conclave was opened by CSE director general Sunita Narain, and ended with a panel including her, Ajay Mathur (director general, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Delhi) and B K Sinha (head-civil engineering, Bureau of Indian Standards, Delhi). Building sense covers a range of issues, including environmental impacts of buildings and townships; energy efficiency of buildings; affordable housing for the urban poor; building materials and waste; and green rating of buildings.CSE researchers say as both residential and commercial buildings will increase several fold, this will have enormous impacts on the quality of urban space, water and energy resources in cities, and waste generation. Unless guided with right principles for selecting locations, architectural design, appropriate choices of building material, operational management, and strong monitoring, the building sector can make cities unliveable.