february-2012

Ashok Bhalotra,
in the Kuiper
Compagnons office
in Rotterdam
PLANNING URBAN
“It’s a numbers problem,” says
Ashok Bhalotra, the Rotterdam-based
director of Kuiper Compagnons, of the
current wave of urbanisation that’s seeing
him shape cities as far afi eld as China and
his native India.
“In three or four decades, the world’s
population will be nine billion, and 75%
will live in cities. So we have to be creative,
we have to be like poets.”
Bhalotra’s brand of creativity is evident
in his pioneering City of the Sun in
Heerhugowaard, Th e Netherlands, a mainly
solar powered, 1,500-home community
completed in 2009.
Now he’s poised to do the same thing on
a much larger scale, with a new Indian city
in Rajasthan that will one day become
home to 1.5 million people, all of whom will
rely on a predominantly solar power supply.
Th e same sustainable principles inform
the three interconnected cities that he’s
designing in Dalian, China, each one
housing half a million inhabitants.
“People laughed at my idea for
Heerhugowaard at fi rst,” he recalls. “Th at
was back in 1992, and I remember
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