Envisioning a safer future

Caring Communities

Henrik Valeur, a Danish architect delivered a lecture at the Chandigarh College of Architecture in 2010 October. While speaking in his lecture on the occasion of Le Corbusier memorial lecture, at Chandigarh, he said that, "One of the reasons for the environmental crisis is the massive use of cars, especially in the West. It is very difficult for me, coming from the West, to tell you not to drive cars, but if you repeat all of our mistakes the consequences could be catastrophic. At least it seems to me that the planning of Chandigarh favors the car at the expense of more eco-friendly forms of transportation. The reason is probably that Le Corbusier - and many others - saw the car as a symbol of modernization, and not a symbol of pollution and congestion, as we do today. The fact that these challenges could not have been imagined only fifty years ago, constitute a profound paradox of architecture – that we are creating visions for the future, but our visions are based on and informed by the present, and the only thing we know for sure about the future is that it will not be like the present."

His humility lay in the fact when he pointed out that Copenhagen could learn a great deal from Chandigarh in terms of making the urban environment greener, but maybe Chandigarh could learn something from Copenhagen in terms of traffic planning.

His vision of a safer and caring community seems to have been noticed by the Punjab and Haryana high court, here in Chandigarh on Friday, September 23rd, 2011. One year, after, Architect Henrik Valeur, showed a spark to the city planners, based on which the Court directed the Union Territory administration to declare one of its sectors as vehicle-free zone to keep a check on growing vehicular congestion in city. "To begin with, declaring Sector 17, as vehicle-free can be the best idea," suggested a division bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ajay Tewari.

There is optimism in this judicious direction of the Punjab and Haryana Court and hope for the future which has a vision for having safer communities in Chandigarh, India as shown by a foreign architect in our Land.