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Green dream
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Can Chennai become a green city? Akila Dinakar explores some ideas
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THE MADRAS that was - a city with urban amenities and rural charm. The Chennai today - rural amenities and urban sprawl. Taking the advice of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on dreaming big, we can do so — this 360-year-old city will in future have neatly paved streets with grass and flower beds along walkways, blooming road medians, roundabouts with artistic fountains, rocks placed amidst greenery, a thick green canopy to provide shelter and lots of oxygen, zero-garbage residence zones where the organics are composted and the inorganics recycled and the hazardous wastes stashed away safely, temple tanks, lakes and ponds filled with visibly clean water, parks with lawns and colourful flowers....
It's for all to see that we are far away from this ideal. But as G. Dattatri, former Chief Urban Planner of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) and former United Nations consultant, feels the dream can become a reality if the Government, corporate and individual stakeholders have the right attitude.
Reminiscing over 50 years of his stay in the city from his tidy sit-out in the rain-tree-lined street at Tiruvanmiyur, Mr. Dattatri says, "Chennai is a green city, though it can be greener. It also has the good feature of not having too many high-rise buildings, over the height of the coconut trees that dot the skyline. It's a city where you can still relate to the environment."
Focussing on trees, he calls for the need for a proper design to plan, plant and care for trees. "Rain trees are huge for a small street like this," he points out to the road. In such places, we can grow trees in tubs and prune them regularly. Greening George Town and Tiruvanmiyur cannot be conceived on the same platform, he believes.
Zone-wise planning of town centres like George Town or Pondy Bazaar, integrating traffic and human movement, parking zones and green walkways help make shopping a pleasurable activity instead of the hurried exercise of necessity that it is today. Whether it is residential apartments or slum tenements, growing native trees like neem, pipal or drumstick, which have either religious or commercial value, helps in their preservation and growth. What's more, they absorb a lot of the polluted air, which we are otherwise forced to inhale.
An urban sprawl means more flashy cars and this in turn means less space for mobility. A way to counter it has been implemented in the West - improve public transport, link road and rail. Make public transport predictable and prompt, and private transport and parking costly.
Why do Bangalore and Hyderabad have beautiful walkways and parks to boast of, while counterpart Chennai lags far behind? "It is because of the Maharajahs," answers Mr. Dattatri. "There was a traditional system for maintaining parks which is lacking in Chennai. Moreover, if many lung-spaces such as the Theosophical Society or the Agri-Horticultural Society gardens, Red Hills, Pallikaranai swamp and the Manali Jheel are preserved and made accessible as recreation zones, the consciousness to keep the urban surroundings green will grow, paving the way for a proper mechanism for maintenance at the local body level."
Walking through the verdant landscape with twittering mynahs hopping between stone and water at the Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, one cannot help wishing the same environs spilt out of the campus to cover the whole of Chennai. Ravikumar Narayan, landscape architect and visiting faculty at Anna University, who did part of the SRMC landscaping, feels it's not a costly affair.
"Using available materials, integrating the landscape with Nature and allowing the architecture to complement the environment have been the established design principles," he explains. With a wide experience of landscaping townships, hospitals and medical centres, recreation facilities, commercial hubs like the L & T, residential areas and terrace gardens, his stress is on "eco-ponds".
There are 250 parks in Chennai. All that needs to be done is to create ponds in areas where water stagnates, improve upon them with Rainwater Harvesting (RWH), put in fish and water plants and create public activity zones to make the parks safe and accessible.
"Street furniture, an important aspect of urban landscaping, is virtually absent in Chennai," he observes. The term includes bill and signboards, lighting fixtures, public seats and pavements.
Nothing is done to encourage people to use walkways. "You cannot comfortably wait on Chennai roads for a friend to turn up," he says pointing out that planners should look into these socio-psychological features of public spaces while designing urban landscapes.
Sultan Ahmed Ismail, founder of the Ecoscience Research Foundation, calls for a micro-level implementation of waste segregation at source with composting units in apartment complexes, root zone treatment for wastewater on the lines of the mandatory RWH to provide organic manure and recycled water for maintaining healthy lawns and gardens.
In this grand old city, there are dreamers galore. All the Government has to do is to get the heads together, plan and execute, and the green dreams can become a possibility rather than remaining mere slogans on soot-covered traffic medians.
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