Urban Aesthetics is an important feature of a city in the sense that it provides a unique characteristic to the place and also makes it liveable. In some of the cities like Bhubaneswar, where the houses are built with some open space called setbacks, this feature of urban aesthetics becomes the identity of the city. Open and green spaces in urban regions are often ignored, but it is high time that we begin to inculcate this aspect while planning a city.
Urban Aesthetics is not just about green spaces, open parks, boulevards, etc. and is even not limited to some buildings or skyscrapers. It is a crucial part of almost every aspect of a city including infrastructure, and mobility.In India, most of the cities are overcrowded making the region chaotic, and monotonous for the community inhabiting the area. Proper implementation of urban aesthetics in such conditions is difficult but needed. Urban design and aesthetics go together but are different in some aspects. Urban design directs how the elements will be designed in a city for instance what will the building look like or what will be the spacing among buildings or how will the park be. Urban aesthetics, on the other hand, is more of a wider vision, it directs what the city will look like placing all the elements together, today and in the coming years.
Urban design also plays an important part in making a city beautiful in the right sense. The amalgamation of green and open spaces with design elements, which suits the region and the demography, is the crux of a unique urban design.One of the examples of this is the cycle paths in Poland, which glow in dark due to a synthetic material called Phosphor. It absorbs the sunlight in the day time and glows for 10 hours at night. Such small initiatives of urban designs not only add to the sustainability of a region but also improve the aesthetics quotient of a city.
A city is identified by a number of elements including food, for example Vada Pav of Mumbai which has become synonymous with the city since its inception in the 1960s. These characteristics of different cities in India tell a lot about the culture of these urban regions.Culture in some cities depict the ancestral influence on them who used to inhabit the place, some others make a culture for their own which evolves in a period of time, while some are identified for their infrastructure, planning, design, etc. such as Chandigarh. Whatever culture or lineage a city follows, if we look closely, every region has a distinct aesthetic.
In cities, especially in India, when we talk about sustainable living, it is important that people and experts try to design a unique and creative way to incorporate sustainability in such a way that it becomes homogenous with the culture and lifestyle of the place. This is the reason why urban design and aesthetics are an important aspect when experts talk about planning sustainable and liveable cities.
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