Gautam Naidu, a second-year Post Graduation student in Information and Digital Design at the National Institute of Design in Gandhinagar has made the city’s ‘Green Map.’ A Green Map is a locally made map that uses the universal Green Map® Icons to highlight the social, cultural, and sustainable resources of a particular geographic area.

He told Newsline: “In 2000, Pune became the first city in the country to get a ‘Green Map’ which was later updated in 2003. But, it is not available to the public and we cannot find it on the Green Map website.”

He added that while there are some Green Maps which focus on beneficial natural and sustainability sites, there are also those that include problems impacting the well-being of the communities, such as toxic hot-spots and other sources of disfigurements.

He added: “This Green Map aims at identifying a sustainable way of living via mapping ecological resources, in a local context. What, how, and where all can we inculcate a more healthy and environment-friendly way of utilising existing and newly discovered ecological resources is what we are looking into. To analyse the region as per the resources available, themes such as natural heritage, energy efficiency, cultural heritage, ecological tourism, health resources, water / food habits, rural sites, blight spots, youth (in-campus and out), green aspects, environmental care, waste reduction, wildlife habitats, and pollution scales were taken into consideration during the course of the project.”

The National Institute of Design and Waseda University of Japan, had an information design conference three months ago in Tokyo, in this regard.

Naidu said: “During our information design workshop, I met a Japanese Green Map maker and learnt more about the concept. I am a nature lover and thought that map-making would be exciting. I decided to take it up for my 3rd semester classroom project at NID.”

Rupesh Vyas, a senior faculty and coordinator for Information and Digital Design at NID, Gujarat Ecology Commission (GEC), and the Gujarat Ecology Education Research (GEER) Foundation are also affiliated to this project.