Showing posts with label Index. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Index. Show all posts

Nov 26, 2012

Making places - That street corner…


Traditional planning approach and values - being lost in transition?

Any random street corner of any random city, corner at the junction of streets, streets busy or calm, chaotic at times, still having its own order, order in transition, transition of daily commuters, transition of shifting daylight, transition of shadows, glitter of street and neon signage light, LED shop window and synchronized traffic light, that flux of casual traffic light, that changing activity landscape across the day across the seasons with occasional pause. But peculiar are the streets of old and heritage cities, cities with history, those streets and corners evolved from the centuries of planning and urban design experience, tailor-made to the local needs of community and neighborhood, with varying characteristics across the region across the city and across the world. Wisely adapted for local climate, some designed for extreme harsh summer, some for tons of snow, an ancestral legacy of planning and design up-to the last fine details of drain cover and cast iron light-pillars and articulated bollards.

Though respected, preserved and encouraged in some cities, that example and inherited legacy of urban design and planning is fast deteriorating and disappearing, sometimes out of ignorance sometimes purposefully ignored, in several parts of the world and almost in any upcoming new city in any corner of world, that local wisdom of traditional planning is increasingly being lost and being mechanized, being templatified. Traditionally those streets and corners were designed to protects commuters from harsh sun, from icy wind, and from pouring rain and sudden snow, those meandering streets used to have a texture of character with those spaces to pause and relax and in the comfortable safe niches, a place to chat and socialize and a place to engage oneself in that active buzz of street, corners reinforced to give it a distinct recognizable character. That legacy of traditional localized planning is calling for justice and revival.

Thinking about fabric ofcity especially within city boundaries, a natural question comes to mind, why a vast country with extremely diversified heritage and climatic regions and special needs should have only few standard templates of streets sections and junctions and street corners with little bit possibility of urban design integration mostly for sake of localization formalities? Templates though give advantage of planning execution, better control and cost efficiency; it tends to encourage deterioration of heritage characters and inherited values and learning mostly in the name of infrastructure and technical feasibility, commercial viability, changing lifestyle requirements, uniformity, standardization, international acceptance etc. Of-course needs are different today, speedy transport, higher population density, quantum shift in lifestyle and technology, higher latent demand, etc., hence the different planning approach visible and practiced today, but we should ask ourselves, can we incorporate those learning experience from our past generations into today’s planning process and can we infuse them in today’s “easy way out templates”? With all the technological advancement and possibilities and centuries of learning experience, one thinks that it’s somewhat possible to strike the balance between traditional learning and present planning approach preserving the character and dignity of that specific city that specific core and that neighborhood, starting right from the careful planning of that street and that street corner. All it needs is a tender heart, logical brain and collective will of planners, urban designers and policy makers and may be few extra bucks!    

Apr 20, 2012

Key strengths and potential sectors of Indian states

ANDHRA PRADESH
ITES destination
Industrial estates
Abundant energy
World-class academic institutions
Storehouse of minerals

ASSAM
Comprehensive central investment policy for NER
Liberalised state industrial policies,
Skilled and cheap manpower
Pleasant climate and scenic landscape
Locational advantage for foreign trade

CHHATTISGARH
Power surplus
Availability of low grade coal-power plants
Ample amount of land

HARYANA
High per capita income
Proximity to trade and consumption centers in country- NCR
Automobiles and automotive components
IT/ITES facilities /software,
Textiles and readymade garments
Property development and retailing
Agro export

HIMACHAL PRADESH
High incentives index
Consumer market index
Most urbanised state
Low power tariff and cost of power generation
Policy proactiveness
Availability of natural resources for agro-based industries
High literacy rates and good quality workforce
High quality limestone

JAMMU & KASHMIR
Concessional land rates for industries on lease
Large tourism potential
Horticulture industry
Skills of weaving and designing of textile products,
Traditional skills of fine craftsmanship can be used in the field of electronic and precision engineering.

KARNATAKA
Proactive government
Sector-friendly policies
Large pool of skilled manpower
Best infrastructure
Larger focus on industrial growth

KERALA
High literacy rate
Largest producer of coconut, pepper, coir, cocoa, rubber and areca nut

MADHYA PRADESH
Law and order
High growth in infrastructure development..
High growth in agriculture
Good governance.
Centrally located, / accessible
Low cost of skilled labor
Low cost of land
Cement, textiles and edible oils.
Track record of attracting private investment in transport infrastructure
Initiated greenfield special economic zone.
Automobile and pharmaceutical industries
Improving social development indices

RAJASTHAN
Cement
Mineral production
Producers of cotton and wool
Tourist destination
Progressive states in electricity sector reforms
Oil and gas reserves
Emerging destination for it and ITES industries

UTTARAKHAND
Hydro-potential
Promoting industrial estates, industrial parks and growth centre
Vast pool of a natural resource
Tourism development
Quality human resource base at competitive rates
Number of fiscal benefits like concessional industrial package


By Anoop Jha


Source: pppindia.com

Nov 29, 2011

Missing active layers of master plan

By Anoop Jha

Mapping of Active Layer, a new way of planning Cities

Layers in City Masterplan  
Master planning process through out the recent past has remained somewhat similar across the regions and continents in spite of technological advancement. From the technical point of view (apart from creative side) development of city master plan needs a totally new approach. We need to use the technology, tools, and resources available in a best possible and creative ways. 

There are two sides of Masterplan one is creativity, other is logic. There is always some logic that goes into preparation of masterplan. Masterplan is outcome of logical interpretation of gathered data related to city and region, based on the inferences derived from the analysis of data, hence richer the data-set more sound would be the masterplan. Planners talk about smarter cities but there master-plans look like same old conventional map, most of the city planners do not understand that its high time that master planning process need to change.

Either Planners are unwilling to take a new approach to develop masterplan by exploiting the potential of available technological resources or possibly age old development guidelines are so lenient and flexible that they do not feel the need to do so. 

Its high time that Urban planners should understand the significance of active mapping layers

Apart from usual layers of masterplan like Landuse, Infrastructure, Transport Network, Settlement, Built mass, there are numerous other possible layers which can prove vital for the city planning and which are currently being ignored, Lets call them "Active Layers of Masterplan". Theses layers are dynamic and qualitative in nature in a sense there behavior keeps changing and locations shifting, but after analyzing for certain period of time a recognizable pattern emerges which can be further act as an additional layer and criteria for developing a holistic and realistic masterplan. similarly we can have many more layers and criteria to further articulate the masterplan. These no. of active layers tend to increase as we understand the significance and impact of such criteria on city planning and lives citizens, as well as when we mobilize the resources to collect as much data as possible, no. of layers also tend to increase with the advancement of mapping technology like, GIS, satellite image interpretation, etc. one Very crucial thing to understand related to these layers in totality is that all of these layers can be directly or indirectly related to and influencing each other. thence all the permutation and combination between these layers in terms of impact, should be carefully studied to logically  arrive at a holistic situational analysis and furtehr prepare masterplan. Some of the possible "Active Layers" which can be included in planning process can are as follows - 

MISSING ACTIVE LAYERS OF MASTERPLAN

- City Noise Layer /  Decibel map of city - (for livability assessment, landuse and transport planning) 
- Heat / Temperature mapping (for livability, built mass  orientation and location of city axis and public spaces, plazas)
- Day Shadow land Light Layer (for livability, built mass orientation and location,  public spaces location, walkability)
- Night Light mapping (desirability, safety and security, walkability, nightlife, understanding cold public spots,)
- Tecom and Mobile Signal mapping (accessibility, density flux analysis, concentration and movement pattern of population) 
- Time series density mapping
- Movement and Density pattern in seasonal variation
- Social interaction mapping
- Accessibility mapping,
- Mapping of Public Semi-public and private domain

Nov 28, 2011

Caught in the process: Urban and Regional Planning process requires a fresh approach

By - Anoop Jha

Flawed bottom-up process in Urban and Regional Planning

Too much focus on  process and micro management poses many dangers in planning process and leads to content deficit, blurred vision and ignorance to outcome.

Scale of Urban and regional planning demands a macro level approach to begin with. It requires a top down approach which means, vision of the planning assignment should be stated and crystal  clear and outcome after the whole gimmick of  planning process should be defined, planners need to start from there backwards up to the conceptualizing the project and steps to be taken.

whole process should be oriented towards achieving the goal. but most of the corporations, consultants, planners, governing authorities miss this vital point. for example in a normal routine planning process, at preliminary stages of projects only few senior people are involved but as the project moves towards finalization more and more people chip in and give comments which lead to major re-adjustments in the project at the later stage of project which is not good for any projects health, idea is to urge as many senior planners, authorities and stakeholders in the beginning of the project life cycle for the process of review and feedback. Another example of wastage of time in the process is that some of  the corporate bodies often miss the objective of the project, because they are so much caught n the process of corporatisation, making presentation with fancy jargon words, decorating charts, quoting someone else's statistical inferences etc. Their process is bottom up kind, they are least concerned about the future outcome of the project. they want to en-cash the opportunity of present ignoring the future.

Focus of urban and regional planning should be on analytical inferences of gathered data in terms of trends, regional context, indexing of available social and physical infrastructure, resource mobilization strategies, preparing development matrix and and strategic proposal rather than micro managing the process.



Nov 22, 2011

How reliable are socio-economic future projections?

By - Anoop Jha

There are always some uncertainties of projections in planning process.

While preparing vision and development plans, planners heavily depends on socio-economic projections short to medium and long term. Based on such projections development plans are proposed for a region or a city, both strategic as well as physical plan. It is an effort to look into the future and plan according to that. For regional vision plan these projections are based on analyzing voluminous amount of social and economic data of the region collected over long period time and referring to survey data archive, which shed some light on decades of  growth pattern of the region. For urban and regional projects, projections are made based on samples collected over relatively shorter period of time.

There are number of theories, school of thoughts, methods and simulation tools which have evolved in course of time for the socio economic projection. Data gathering process are becoming more and more efficient, Simulation tools are getting faster and efficient as well capable of handling large amount of data in no time, Still there is an uncertainty of projections in current planning projections. Future Projections are as accurate and reliable as its tools are i.e. gathered data, sample questionnaires, size of sample, hetroginicity of sample, inclusiveness of sample, simulation tools- software & Computers,  apart from that there are  other factors like willingness and efficiency of of consultants/ surveying agencies responsible for the outcome, human error, time constraint, political influence. Under so many of environmental influences future projections are bound to be hazy, hence there should be certain provisions of  compensatory flexibility both in terms of tangible and intangible inputs in the planning model, especially in physical planning and development plans, to make plans as realistic and as accommodative and future proof as possible.

Intercity travel congestion - Need for a new regional planning approach

By - Anoop Jha

Too much focus on urban planning and too little regional planning

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Intercity Transport
Regional Development Plans in terms of intercity mobility plan are long term planning process which are primarily Policy level decisions and most of the time such projects remain stagnant at strategic level. Very few of these projects gets implemented in time while situation keep becoming increasingly critical, for example- intercity traffic congestion.

Most of the proposed projects are capital intensive and hence undergo long review process and witness relatively less thrust from political arena, while other mounting  large numbers of smaller projects at urban level demands immediate attention at the same time and witness  more political willingness, due to relatively shorter implementation period and medium to small  investment in comparison to regional development project, particularly in Transport sector. 

At national and regional scale government has so many pressing priorities in terms of public welfare and social infrastructure like, health, education, water and sanitation etc. that they tend to push  back some elements of physical infrastructure projects like upgradation, widening of existing intercity roads, crucial regional transport junctions, new bypasses, and expressways link roads.  In regional transport plan another reason of choked intercity transport corridors and delayed project implementation is that regional plan are placed lower in terms of prioritized projects, because their immediate priorities are close to core of the city and as we go further from center of the city nature of project starts changing from urban to regional, and projects in regional category are part of later phases of the projects and mostly strategic in nature with some physical planning proposals. 

Need is to identify and prepare  exhaustive list of planning indexes like, demography, revenue, technology,  covering large spectrum of subjects and society, and based on those index a blanket matrix should be created to arrive at more realistic priority list of project.

Nov 17, 2011

Perception of space – a function (f) of day and night

Dramatic shift in Perception of Space during Day and Night.

Day and Night, an ever existent inseparable phenomenon, it’s an external influence on the perception of space, architecture and built form, an environmental influence which alter the experience of space in dramatic way, but we pay very little attention on such a wonderful aspect of such powerful influence while planning an urban setting, or while designing interior of a building. 

In day sun light is ambient and almost omnipresent when it comes to outdoor urban setting with an interplay of light and shadow, but mostly the experience of any specific outdoor space is more or less uniform and little monotonous throughout the day, while night provides infinite possibilities to create, mould, play with space, volume and ambiance outdoor as well as indoors using variety of light sources. Volume of space is directly proportional to intensity of light source, sources of artificial light give a totally different perception on a dark night compared to day time since the space that we perceive and experience in night time. In this case the bright perceived space slowly merges into the  dark sphere of night. Hence night provides ample scope of creating user experience in an urban setting and its responsibility of planners, and architects  and landscape architects to plan and design lighting of public spaces as well interiors of a building with an aim to provide a unique experience of end use in night period.