Habitats in a world of Properties

Differentiating the two is difficult.

With economics so entwined in our day-to-day lives, we sometimes lose sight of things money shouldn’t be able to buy. The severely commodified real estate market has made us oblivious to our need for a certain kind of space rather than our means. Economy is a reality but its current tradeoff with quality must be brought under scrutiny. There is also a visible bias in the importance we ascribe to the different components of our surroundings. For instance, our home or place of work is more cared for than our neighborhood or township, an extra lane is a more valuable addition than say a row of trees, and the like. This disconnect in our sense of ownership of and belonging to the habitat is troubling.

Awareness regarding the elements of a man’s natural home is key to bridging this gap, apart from implementation, obviously. So, how much do we know about what constitutes our habitat, and how much of it is in a form acceptable to the ‘urban’ and ‘intellectual’ man of today?

This is by no means an easy query and neither does it have a unique answer within the confines of any one particular field.

This corner of the web explores the balance between our built and natural habitats so that we may be in a better position to make informed decisions on a day-to-day basis. At the collaborative, we believe socio-economic viability and environmental vitals to form the bulk of such sustainability considerations, One may therefore find them to be a common theme here. We discuss habitat on all scales, from individual buildings to neighborhoods, to cities, and even whole districts.

Our hope is to supplement the discussion around healthy built surroundings.