Bus Stops For Sustainable Cities
The 10th annual GPPN Conference, hosted by the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs, featured students' solution oriented ideas and prototypes to address public policy challenges identified by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To participate, each GPPN member school carefully selected up to five student teams to present their projects and compete for the GPPN prize. The result: 32 teams from around the world met in Paris to showcase their ideas on how to solve some of the most pressing global challenges of today.
We are the last generation that can do something about climate change. When countries adopted the Global Goals in 2015, we made a commitment to protect our planet. One way of protecting our planet is to protect our cities. If by 2030 almost sixty percent of the population will live in urban areas, we need to work on making them sustainable. In recent times, bus stops have been identified as hotspots for urban air pollution (Erik Velasco et al. 2016 ). Pollution from vehicles is a huge public health risk. Acute exposure to toxic substances such as trichloroethylene and black carbon, which get accumulated in bus stops, cause severe respiratory problems. This is the specific issue we plan to mitigate. Three unique and realistic bus-stop blueprints have been presented. We have taken into account the public transport fleet size to allocate the designs to select cities. Green plants are the most important components in our models.
Meet the team
S.M. Saminathan is a Master in Public Policy student at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy on a Comprehensive Lee Kai Shing Foundation Scholarship. He is trained in Horticulture and Agricultural Policy. Before joining the school, he was running his agricultural consultancy in the southern state of Tamilnadu in India. He has also worked at the genetic resources and seed unit of AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center, Taiwan. After graduation he is keen in pursuing his Doctorate and go on to set up Asia’s biggest Agricultural Policy think tank and help run governments worldwide in the decades to come.
Pallavi Rachel George pursued her bachelors in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. As a Youth Fellow for Youth Service America, she launched a successful campaign for road safety in the city of Delhi. She worked on ‘Breaking Business Barriers’, a project funded by the British High Commission, during her time with the Centre for Public Policy Research, an Indian think tank. She also served as coordinator for the Access Audit project of Sai Samanvaya Institute, an Indian non-profit. Academically, she is inclined towards national security and public health topics. Pallavi is a trained pianist, drummer and classical dancer.
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