Pinnacle

New Delhi
The Economic Times


Gigantic shopping malls that are mushrooming across India’s big and small cities are ‘environmentally disastrous’, said UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief Rajendra K Pachauri. “The shopping malls in India are environmentally disastrous and their designs are not suitable for India’s climatic conditions,” said Mr Pachauri, who is also director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

“Why can’t we as society use our brains without blindly replicating the Western models of shopping malls? Why can’t we understand that those models might suit their kind of climatic condition, not ours?” asked a visibly concerned Pachauri.

According to Pachauri, India is not taking the consequences of climate change seriously even though there is a growing trend of awareness among the people. “We need to chart out a different path for ourselves altogether that will be suitable to our resources for our own benefit and for global benefit. We need to drive fuel-efficient cars and build a systematic transport sector.

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Ram

jambaavan

Majority Shopping centres as a Building World over very Enviromentally unfriendly........Given the hot and humid climatic conditions in India its just a case of adding fuel to the fire......

Malls are very inefficient Energy guzzlers............

But I strongly think that as India's retail Landscape is very nascent and in its infancy steps must be taken not to blindly replicate the Amercian model in terms of design. More thought,value engineering need to be put at the design stage itself to look into aspects of energy saving and environment friendly concepts.

ICSC inputs in this area will be of great and invalueable help in this.

Last but not the least at the end of the day these measures must make the project viable and make all the stake holders happy.