Interview with Urban Designer, Swapnil Patil

How did you decide to foray into urban planning? What has been the motivation? Cities have always fascinated me. While it is true that cities grow organically, the great cities are actually an act of deliberate intervention, vision & a long term planning. It’s a science & art which I started appreciating while doing my masters course at Berkeley. I consider it a privilege to have professors like Allan Jacobs, Donlyn Lyndon, Chris Alexander, Dan Solomon and Calthorpe at Berkeley. After graduation I also had an opportunity to work with Dan Solomon in San Francisco & with the likes of Larry Beasley & Andres Duany while working with UPC at Abu Dhabi. As an Urban Designer I could not have asked for more. Working with these Masters, observing them at their craft & learning from them was the greatest motivation for me. What kind of projects have you been working on in India? We are working on several master planning projects ranging in size from 5 to 5000 acres. These are typically concept masterplans, visioning exercises, large scale integrated townships, TOD’s, long range campus plans & designing ‘Agricultural Urban Communities’.  What is your ideal vision for a town or a neighborhood? An ideal town or neighborhood should be compact, have a pleasant walking experience, should contain mixture of use such as convenience store, day care or school, a health clinic, senior center & a neighborhood park in its walking vicinity. Preferably it should be served with transit stop which is within its 20 min walking distance. It should have diversity of housing types with people of different income range. Simply said it’s a place which we cherish & tell people proudly where we live. Source:Zingy Homes