Mar 30, 2023

How different stakeholders of city having different perception and measurement scale for city, make them judge city performance differently.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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A saying that goes something like - Every peasant measures the sea with the pond in their village - Anonymous

And we also remember the story of elephant, how it was assessed differently, blindfolded.

That is, we have our own idea of scale or measurement unit or performance measurement; at individual level, at institution level and at fraternity level. And we see city as an object of analysis form these lenses.

How city is performing? Depends on the position which each actor takes while posing such question. For instance, real estate developer may see city from asset perspective, assessing city on a per square feet real estate basis, while assigning each zone and neighbourhood a price tag. Urban designers may visualise city as interplay of mass, in terms of built and open spaces, and assigning weightage to each zone based on form and order. Landscape architects, might visualise city as punctuation of green and open within built environment, and assessing liveability of different neighbourhoods based on percentage and access to green. Climate scientists may visualise city as a heat map of energy usage intensity and might like to assess city on per capita energy usage or carbon footprint. Social scientist might be judging city in terms of Human Development Index/ per capita income/ happiness index etc. Transport planners may like to assess city, in terms of road density and model split, spatially assessing city based on ease of access to public transport. Engineers may judge performance as per capita power and water availability etc. And so on. List is long. Though mostly it remains a composite assessment based on quantitative and qualitative parameters. But sure qualitative also still has benchmark, scale.

City as a physical dynamic entity may mean different things to different actors, stakeholders and fraternity, but it practically cannot fit 100% in the aspiration and assessment matrix of each actor. There may be mismatch in their aspirations and assessment satisfaction, because of different assessment tools they use, assessment scale with which they are comfortable with, intuitively. So usually consensus in city making process is reached when parties arrive at a win-win situation after rounds of discussions and deliberations, also a trait of network governance.

As cities are expected to change, at the same time measurement scales and industry wide fixation or affinity with particular assessment indices also need to change/ evolve over time, in a synergistic manner. We sometimes need to leave a particular stand or position to see things from each others perspective, to appreciate "City" for instance, in the grand scheme of things.

Author: Anoop Jha

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