That's the price you pay by Milota Sidorova

Life in great metropolis is complicated. Along with the most basic things, everything is complicated – traffic, planning, social relationships, safety and control. It can be overcome and solved if you are living in relatively small city with a good community, but a life in metropolis means to be living in the jungle. More than 50 percent of global population has already been living in the cities and half of them in the cities with more than 1,000 000 inhabitants. It's just to get a picture of urban policies and trends. This morning I have heard there was a building collapse in New Delhi, India. About 15-floor building collapsed in Lalita Park area and killed about 65 ! people and injured more than 80 people. Thinking of what to say in such situation, I relied on my professional skill – urban and landscape architect. That saved me from dangerous and risky emotional attitude. As I browsed Google Earth I have found Lalita park on the river bank surrounded by small field structures, relatively cheap neighborhood typical with obsolete and unmaintained buildings, dusty and muddy roads and some important highways ensuring connection with this suburban area and the centre. Speaking frankly, Lalita Park is the site behind the interest of people coming and living in New Delhi, Indian capital. The demography is featuring mostly rural immigrants seeking better conditions in the city. The truth is seldom they really find it. They end up in these areas, sqeezed in tiny rooms, paying rents for everything that was for free out in the countryside. This is the story of the building that collapsed – it was used as a rental accomodation for hund! reds of „rural“ immigrants. Each of the rooms host! ed betwe en 3 and 6 people – so you can get a picture how was the organization of the site. Well, if you count landlord's unwillingness to improve any kind of conditions, perhaps weak basements, too much inhabitants and some illegal floors being built on the top of the building, if you add extra strong monsoon rains and flooding river in the neighborhood, the collapse was just expected consequence of all these factors. Now the question is when it will come to next collapses and next disasters. The building was connected to the twin house that was afterall evacuated. But the police and firefighters took up to 45 minutes to reach the site – to great anger and pain of local residents – more people could be saved. But the police argues that it was impossible to reach the site due narrow alleyways and bad traffic. Who can wonder about it in these conditions?

related story (sgx18610): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_india_building_collapse;_ylt=A...

by Milota Sidorova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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