Drafts by Aishwarya Pandey
Built environments are defined by various cultural, social, economic and environmental issues. Th... more Built environments are defined by various cultural, social, economic and environmental issues. The built environments take many forms that include buildings, parks, structures,streetscapes and the layout of cities themselves. Urban design involves the arrangement and design of buildings, public spaces, transport systems, services and amenities. Urban design is the process of giving form, shape and character to group of buildings, to while neighborhoods, and the city. It is a framework that orders the elements into a network of streets, squares and blocks. Urban design blends architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning together to make urban areas functional and attractive. Urban design is about making connections between people and places, movement and urban form, nature and the built fabric. Urban design draws together the many strands of place-making, environmental stewardship, social equity and economic viability into the creation of places with distinct beauty and identity. Urban design is derived from but transcends planning and transportation policy, architectural design, development economics, engineering and lanscape. It draws these and other strands together creating a vision for an area and then deploying the resources and skill needed to bring the vision to life. Urban design involves place-making-the creation of a setting that imparts a sense of place to an area. This process is achieved by establishing identifiable neighbourhoods, unique architectue, aesthetically pleasing public places and vistas, identifiable landmarks and focal points, and a human element established by compatible scales of development and ongoing public stewardship. Urban design practice areas ranging in scale from small public spaces or streets to neighbourhoods, city-wide systems, or whole regions. The definition of landscape architecture according to the International Federation of Landscape Architecture (IFLA) is : A profession and academic discipline that employs principles of art and the physical and social sciences to the processes of environmental planning, design and conservation, which serve to ensure the long lasting improvement, sustainability and harmony of natural and cultural systems or landscape parts thereof, as well as the design of outdoor spaces with consideration of their aesthetic, functional and ecological aspects. Within this broad definition of landscape architecture there are three areas of activity : Landscape planning, Landscape design and Landscape management. Landscape planning is concerned with the long term development and preservation of natural and cultural landscapes by implementation of strategic goal-oriented concepts and allocation of types of land use. Landscape design deals with form and meaning and is concerned with the organisation of a physical, functional and aesthetic arrangement of a variety of structural elements to achieve desired social, cultural and ecological outcomes. Landscape management is concerned with the conservation and enhancement of the long term beneficial use of landscape resources as well as it's heterogenity, character and beauty. Planning is a general activity; the making of an orderly sequence of action that will lead to the achievemt of a stated goal or goals. Planning attempts to (re)shape prevailing social and economic dynamics to achieve particular developmental ends. Urban planning is a process of guiding the use and development of land with the [3] [1] [2]
Prisons should help prisoners rather than just punish them.-John Howard, 1726-1790 When we speak ... more Prisons should help prisoners rather than just punish them.-John Howard, 1726-1790 When we speak about crime , we often focus on preventing it rather than looking at the source of the social problem. People who commit crime against women might be hailing from backgrounds that are crime-prone, where women are not respected equally, where the family unit has disintegrated. Parallel this with studies that show that a vast majority of prisoners across India return to a life of crime upon release from prison. There is therefore a constant cycle between the committers of crime and society, and it doesn't end when they are put in prison. More often than not, prisons are breeding grounds for further crimes, for resentment. By creating an unhealthy prison environment, we are therefore cultivating more crime, which in turn is brought to society sooner or later because many released prisoners are not able to reintegrate into the society. To put an end to this vicious cycle, it is very important to understand the potential of education in the prison environment in preventing crime, at the source. We, as a society, seldom question the causes and the reasons of crime and criminality but react to it all the time on the basis of what's popular rather than what's right. There is a direct correlation between criminality, the social circumstances of people and the education as well as poverty. It's generally people from the lower socioeconomic classes that end up in prison. High rates of unemployment and poverty drive people to commit petty crimes, at the same time also making it more difficult for them to deal with the legal system. Once we look at the statistics and the evidence, we need to ask if there are there ways that we can reduce the number of people committing crime? And if we can say yes to that we will automatically reduce the number of victims and it's far better to prevent people from being victims of criminality rather than responding to it. Instead of seeing prisons as a revolving door of punishment, we can see it as an on-ramp of opportunity so that our communities can be renewed all over the country. Education can be a wonderful opportunity for exploring and discovering. It is transormative and reinventing. We need to change the prison paradigm and for that we first need to clear the misconception that we have about crime and incarceration. You see, we think that crime is the problem but the truth is they are actually just a symptom warning us of a problem in our society. We see that in the disproportionality of our justice system, the failings of our educational system and our socioeconomic inequalities. Many crimes are merely a symptom of these problems and trying to solve them to mass incarceration is not the cure. Sure it might give us a solution temporarily, but it is not going to fix the problem, which is the society. The lack of education is at the heart of the many problems that lead to prison; and it is believed that the lack of education contributes to incarceration and recidivism. If there is a direct correlation between them : Why don't we turn prisons into schools? This way we can address the symptom which is crime, and at the same time address what many would call the heart of the problem : Lack of education. We need to cutivate the prison into a place of learning, a place where prisoners can work with the community to give back in a real way. The whole purpose of punishment should be to teach and educate the prisoners so that they make different choices. Prisons are supposed to be teaching a lesson, educating so that these men and women make better choices in the future, but somehow we become so fixated on the punishment part that we miss the whole point. Prisons should be able to cultivate the positive aspirations of these people. First thing we need to do is open them up to the public. Let the community see the actions that prisons are making towards atonement and the steps institutions are making to facilitate and hold prisoners accountable. After all, it's our community that's at the heart of our society. It's where these prisoners were raised, where they committed their crimes and where they will eventually be released. These communities have as much right, responsibility and duty to be a part of this process as the correctional staff. Custody levels should be replaced with grade levels; where the higher the grade level achieved to the completion of educational programmes further the access for reintegration, allowing the prisoners to use what they have learned in the prison to earn back their place in the society. By doing this we could take the general public's lack of information, the growing communal fear regarding the prisoner's release and transform them to a graduation, an acceptance back into the society, supported by the community's knowledge of a prisoners's personal progress. Just like to grow a tree, it's not enough to just sow the seeds in the ground; we need to fertilize it, we need to till the soil, water it and if the environment is not conducive to producing the type of plants we want,we make a greehouse.
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Drafts by Aishwarya Pandey