Favelas, Rio De Janeiro
The importance of “built environment knowledge & application in city life”
Child Development
Look around you, how do you feel ? Relaxed? Tensed? The atmosphere surrounding you is usually influenced by the built environment. As you walk on a street or enter a building, many feelings and emotions creep on you, regardless if it gives you goosebumps or maybe you feel safe and comfortable, it is attributed by the design of built environment. Well designed areas often enhances the well being and behavior of children, leading to better development and growth. Studies have shown that living with big yard space, neighbourhood with less traffic, further from school and children day-care lowers the chances of poor development. Children tend to be happier and stress-free.
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Health and Hygiene
Having a decent built environment keeps us healthy. How so? Having good sewage treatment area, pollution free area, water piping and filtration ensure every individual to have a hygienic and clean environment to live in. If one were to drink or inhale in polluted water or air, it might lead to having deadly diseases. For instance, Cholera, lung cancer etc. Therefore, this shows that built environment is necessary in our daily lives.
Inspiration
Built environment has the ability to inspire people without any realization. Places and environments that people live in affect their enjoyment in life. Many might be curious of how built environment brings joy to us. Subconsciously, the softscapes and hardscapes around us brings pleasure to us. These designs might help to open up youngster's eyes to explore and develop designs and arts from the inspirations of the architecture around them .
Safety
Do you ever get goosebumps whenever you are passing by a dark alley in the middle of the night? Yes, that is just like in the movie scenes, where people get kidnapped , robbed , gangster fights or even murdered. Sadly, all these scenarios do happen in real life. Dark alleys create the ambience of danger and eeriness, also increasing the percentages of such criminal activities. Nevertheless, having more exposure, less alleys solves the issue.
Traffic
Most adults have definitely experienced this before - traffic jams. They feel frustrated as they have been waiting in the car for hours. Better designs helps with better circulation, resulting in lesser traffic jams. Perhaps broader road, more lanes can solve the issue?
Convenience
Greener world, lesser pollution. Public transport is always one of the ways to reduce pollutions. Sometimes, people are lazy to go for public transports because it is too far away from their homes. That is why building public transport areas like bus stops near by neighbourhoods can promote the idea of using public transport and it is easy to access.