What is the Built Environment?

The concept of built environment has become increasingly prominent with the turn of the century, encompassing numerous man-made structures, infrastructure, landscape, and constructions. Every element in the housing, industrial, and commercial landscape comes under the concept of built environment.

There’s a specific section of the populace that tend to only associate buildings with built environment, which couldn’t be further away from the truth. We say this because there are numerous other elements of built environment that most people just don’t take into consideration. Parks, pavements, monuments, power management sites, and even telecommunication networks – the built environment sector encompasses all this and more!

The best way to describe the concept of built environment in one line would be as follows: It’s the end product of human labour – whether material, spatial, or cultural – that constructs elements for the purposes of living, working, and recreating on a regular basis. The reason why this term has become so popular in recent years is fairly obvious – there’s a pressing need to accommodate for both qualitative and quantitative requirements of the population.

The quantitative factor is pretty self-descriptive – the population is increasing at an incredibly high rate, which is something that everyone is well aware of. Overpopulation is a deeply rooted problem, with the world population currently projected to reach an unbelievable number of 9.7 billion by 2050. It is also projected that 68% of the world's population will live in urban areas (an increase from 54% in 2016). This mandates the need to set up a proper built environment that can account for and provide for this number with the appropriate facilities.

Of course, one can’t talk about human needs and requirements without talking about the qualitative factors involved as well. It’s natural for people to want comfortable living conditions, accessible recreation opportunities, and productive workspaces. After all, human needs are unending, and utilising new-age developments in the built environment sector will go a long way in ensuring that little to no problems come in the way of meeting these requirements. This fact will help place things in an illuminating light – as per a study conducted by the EPA, single-family homes built between 2000 and 2005 are 29% larger than homes built in the 1980s and 38% larger than homes built before 1950.

Unfettered development is not the solution to this problem. The awareness for sustainable development has also become ever more palpable with the advent of the 21^st century. Simply greenlighting every built environment project without accounting for the needs of the future generation is a short-sighted notion. So, professionals in the built environment sector need to identify this need and figure out a balance between the needs of the human population and the promotion of a sustainable built environment ecosystem.

Built environment might sound like a convenient way to group every element of the construction and infrastructure industry, but there’s way more to this terminology. It’s an all-encompassing term, coupled with its fair share of new-age challenges and requirements. Understanding the nature of these problems and figuring out comprehensive solutions is one of the primary reasons why the built environment sector is seeking out new-age professionals who can tackle these challenges in stride. The fact that 44 million jobs will be generated in India’s built environment sector is proof enough of the booming nature of this sector.

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