Notion of Progress:Is ecology and sustainable development within cities an issue of pogress and future?

Notion of progress

I am going to present the notion of progress. Progress consists in an evolution which can be linked to an improvement. It’s the act of going forward, growing and being better. The notion of progress opposes to stability. To illustrate this notion, we can use different domains such as: Sciences, techniques and human progress. We can therefore ask ourselves if ecology and sustainable development within cities is an issue of progress and future?

Firstly, we will see an example of practical progress interfering ecology and technical evolution. Throughout the example of the city of Chandigarh. We will see then a project of transport by inland waterway which is a tourist and ecological project. And finally, I will give you my vision of the utopian city, which aims to advance architecture without damaging the environment.

Chandigarh is a new town, built after the independence of India. It is considered for its exceptional town planning, and was built by "Le Corbusier", draftsman and internationally recognized French architect. Le Corbusier realizes a functional city in the respect of his urbanistic doctrine. He created independent zones for 4 function: the housing environment, the work, the leisure activities and the traffic. He gave up the horizontal city flooded in the generous vegetation.

To create a more pleasant and greener city, Le Corbusier left numerous natural spaces. The city is divided into several sectors which are self-sufficient to themselves thanks to a good distribution of the businesses, the places of worship and the green spaces. What makes the specificity of the city is its sophisticated system of circulation, it happens on seven ways, to fluidify the traffic, and ways are taken away from houses to maintain the tranquillity.

This city is an exceptional progress, due to its horizontal town planning flooded in the vegetation. It is also a social progress, because people of various social classes and various ethnic groups live together, and the agreement is perfect there.
After having seen a real architectural model, I am going to present a utopian project which seems to me essential to create, to develop the architecture in the respect of the nature and to exploit new spaces.

I’m going to talk about a futuristic boat, which seems utopic. It’s about a new invention, a boat born in the imaginary of the architect Vincent Callebaut. The ship will act as a wastewater treatment plan. The Physalia will go to a trip from river to river without rejecting pollutants. It will play a part of water purifier. This is a respectful project of the environment at one hundred percent contrary to riverboats. Moreover, the boat would be energetically positive because it doesn’t pollute and It would also produce more energy than it consumes thanks to its photovoltaic panels on the roof and its hydrokinetic turbines under the hull of the boat. This same hull has for purpose to clean up the water because it contains titanium dioxide, which disintegrate the water pollution to its contact. – However, this boat remains a utopia because it is way very high – This boat is also composed of many gardens so visitors benefit it. I think that “architecture is the art of how to waste space”, however this kind of futuristic project would aim to exploit spaces without degrading them.

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