Revisiting landuse

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

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If any part of city, neighborhood, plot or real estate inventory is not performing optimally, or partially vacant or deserted; then possibly assigned land use is not appropriate, which is required to be heterogeneous and able to be readjusted in near real time. The definition of land use as well need to be re-examined.

Land use regulation in any part of world usually has inbuilt provisions of land use conversion, sometimes by complex and lengthy statutory provisions; while land use remains binding for five to ten years or longer. Also, today’s land use plan, might be based on 5 to 10 year or older idea of what growth is or what growth should be or what growth may look like in future.

The actual current growth, desired land use composition and today’s socio-commercial dynamics may or may not match the historically envisaged growth pattern, land use classification; or land use spatial distribution; which usually leads to mismatch in current land use demand, supply, and mix. Hence the nobel intention of development control regulation, though may serve its intended purpose of stopping haphazard development, may also prove to be insufficient or counter-productive due to its rigidity. Further the definition of land use in terms of its current broad categories, and manner of current application in three dimentional space may remain a barrier for quick adaptation to market demand and supply, in absence of further granularity.

The traditional land use regulation is usually top-down, many a times fails to respond to emerging unforeseen bottom-up requirements over years; especially short-term requirements and rarely corresponds to real time requirements. City scale development control regulations or meso scale land use regulations and urban design guideline in all its legitimacy and validity, still by its very nature, may also create a rigid abstract three-dimensional regulated space which may act as a self-limiting criterion, failing to respond to present and real time land use demand pressure and socio-commercial aspirations.

While land use remains, an indispensable city planning tool, it a) may require to reinvent itself to be agile, allowing land usage conversion in near real time; b) may require to factor in dynamic property pricing and associated economic cost-benefit so that not a single acreage of potential urban space or single square feet of precious real estate remain underutilised in a city; c) may require to be implemented at a more granular level i.e., looking at a mixed-use zone or mixed-use building for instance not just as a spatial land use demarcation or a vertically stacked land use, but to be seen as mosaic (pixels) of variety of land usage both horizontally and vertically; compatibility of which can always be worked out.

Author: Anoop Jha

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

Please Note, that I am also conducting a FREE 45-minute online individual consultation on your interior design and home decor needs and aspirations if you are in the Netherlands or even internationally. Drop me an email at anoop.jha@gmail.com 

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

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Thoughts on Complete Street Design

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

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A lush green street, a canopy street, aesthetic avenue, rich boulevard and a street equipped to handle and harvest storm water in every part of city has been a distant dream here. Is it too difficult a dream to achieve. There are few reasons for same. A preconceived RoW template mindset which leaves very little earth or scope within RoW for landscape Architects to play with, transport modeling software only being limited to carriageway design and not the complete RoW, lack of synergy between approach of transport planning, storm water management, landscape architecture and street lighting leading to complete absence of collective vision. It cannot be solved professionally as by that time each one is rigid and wise enough to exclude most of above tasks from their respective scope of work.  Unless a transport planner will care for trees or a landscape architect will care to understand what goes into engineering of road or a water expert will have affinity and knowledge of ecology until then we won't get to experience a complete street. It has to start with education not from the desk of multi disciplinary team sitting in office. Above mentioned subjects to be made compulsory in each others curriculum for few semesters not just to teach them the technicalities but to help them sensitize about each others domain, to gain/give respect to each other and garner natural affinity about others subject so that end user could experience a complete street.

No such thing as Level Play Field or Even Ground...

You have to learn to master all terrain! 

#embankment #slope #goat #kid #children #play #photography

What does growth cycle of design industry looks like?

Design industry follows a repetitive elliptical growth path.

If you look back down the development lane of design industry especially visible in product design and fashion industry, you will witness some familiar recurring pattern of growth, repetitive, though every time in a new avatar.

More than say 90 percent of designers still use direct or derivatives of primitive or rather eternal   geometrical building blocks as raw material- shapes and surfaces, like circle, triangle, square, prism, hyperbole  etc. and remaining 10 percent relentlessly trying to unearth some divine pattern or previously unseen building blocks or magic design elements, anxiously looking here and there for some clue, looking into microscope, looking up to nature, science, nano technology, microbiology, history or mythology or whatever or simply resorting to hallucinated inspiration, so that some divine "never before design element" descends upon them out of luck, while still acknowledging that those basic geometric building blocks like triangle and circles are not going to go away anywhere soon, probably never.

So, when majority of fundamental design elements have remained exactly the same throughout the evolution of design industry, this industry is bound to follow a recurring path starting from basics, evolving on the way through innovation, reaching to maturity, taking an inspirational U-Turn and finally going back to its roots, from where it all started. Apparently a perfect circle of growth; but it goes further, we haven’t talked about technology yet, this ever evolving technology provides designers even bigger opportunities, with new materials, new textures, enhance durability and elasticity, new colors, new opacity newer viscosity and so on, which helps prolong this period of growth cycle pushing this circular trajectory to follow an even larger elliptical path, finally going back to its roots just to be born again.

You might also like this post - Artificial Sonic Urban Environment to break the monotony of City!

Still untapped potential of raw satellite images for city planners!

Urban Planning satellitexted

Satellite view of urban alphabet

Love exploring cities from the eyes of satellites! they tell stories which were never written, imprints of time still visible, you see a city, you see it growing, you see where its going, you learn where it comes from. They say you need to travel if you want to learn, you confront with knowledge and experience while travelling. Some tools like free or else satellite imageries were not available for planners decades back or even recently, by the time it arrived for planners as a tool, GIS and satellite image interpretation etc. also accompanied and hence all the focus shifted towards degitising the whole world including your neighborhood street and front yard, making layers after layers, though they sure help planners in many ways, but you know at times on feels that in this whole process of mechanization and automation and interpretation, the shear beauty of raw, as it is satellite images and views are loosing its significance. 

The naked and raw satellite images of earth like as seen in google earth can tell things and give clues which even high level high resolution satellite image interpretations can't tell, the judgement of human eyes and brain, not just the computer processor, once in a while for sake for fun learning at least. Urban planners, transport planners and so on planners need to see and understand the random behaviors of random cities across the world, travel wont be possible and you don't have enough time to wait for that as well so go explore a city, any city or settlement or villages on google earth or something, every time you will go there you will learn something. Don't get simply spoon-fed by other's version of what that particular city is  all about, go learn yourself through your own version of experience, through satellite images, if you are not familiar with the streets and terraces and vegetation of a city from its aerial or satellite dimension, your all efforts to become a good planner is halfhearted. Explore to understand and share with the world or simply use this learning in you next city planning or development project. There is always more than you can explore there!

When “Traffic Merging Ahead” on every alternate road, clashes are bound to happen

Bad transport infrastructure and poor road designs leading to conflicts on road.

No one wants to get into argument or fight on the fine morning office hour or while on the way back home, really!! Everyone has some plan for the day ahead, and they really can’t afford to waste time here on road arguing for nothing. But what to do with these urban roads that make these people susceptible to conflict and road rage due to design which lack consistency and continuity. It’s ironical that in the same alignment of road where mile long vehicle queue is witnessed also has a part of stretch like super smooth expressway, either right in the middle of metropolis or connecting neighboring cities, districts and states leading to gridlock. It’s like speedy route to gridlock. So 70-90 % of the whole journey stretch you can cover in 20-30% of journey time, spending rest of the journey in gridlocked section travelling in snail’s speed. Journey on that reaming 10-30% stretch becomes more frustrating because you have just witnessed a test of speed on the expressway like road stretch back on the journey.

Things become worse when variety of vehicles start competing for the lanes with suddenly reduced carriageway near bottlenecks at every few hundred meter due to variety of reasons like poor road design, bad road geometry, old narrow bridge, recent construction and maintenance works, frequent vehicle breakdown, faulty or unrealistic traffic signals (it’s unbelievable that there are also around less than 10 seconds of green signal assigned for some stretches at some busy road junctions) etc. at least similar is the case in many developing countries.

This induced conflict is result of lack of cohesiveness and isolated accountability among different agencies and consultations hired at different point of time, for revamping urban transit stretches and systems. In Urban scenarios, Road stretches cannot planned and designed in isolation, hence no question of isolated accountability, like trunk routes cannot be designed in isolation without  considering feeder traffic flow. What is happening here in bottleneck situations is that vehicles are allowed to reach the bottleneck at high speed which encourages quickly accumulated high volume traffic at bottleneck, and then the real struggle begins, people ruthlessly competing for limited lanes!! It’s a painful experience of struggle for daily commuters, not because of slow speed but due to immense psychological pressure and tiresome drive to negotiate that rude, ruthless competing traffic while trying to protect their asset and peace of mind. No wonder it also leads to frequent road rage incidents. Even if bottleneck situation is unavoidable there has to be smooth transition from high speed stretch to the bottleneck point, which can only be done through proper road design, sensible signage and its highly visible locations, commuter education, manual or automatic traffic assistance and guidance, strengthening alternate route, staggered office timing, land use restructuring, etc.

How we assess and respond to architecture

Need of assessment without prejudice and unconditioned response.

Architecture and design is awfully judgmental and philosophical stream, its aesthetic and functional perception varies from person to person and it holds different meanings for users of different socio-economic and educational background.  For the evolution of architecture it is necessary to assess it from a radically different perspective, questioning every established values and prevalent formulas and benchmarks of good architecture.

Just getting overwhelmed by the magnificent interior of a high-end hotel lobby or much hyped restaurant interior or luxuriously decorated living room of an ultra-rich individual is not a real justice to the architecture and interior design in term of its design assessment and criticism. When someone come across to such wonderful places associated with big names, their immediate response of pleasant surprise in the moment they enter the building makes their design assessment biased with a touch of prejudice. Their analytical mind which is responsible for aesthetic and functional judgment, immediately surrenders to the mesmerizing ambiance of interior. Getting mesmerized by something amazing is a natural response of the human mind, but little more is expected from the architects  and designers in terms of their response to immediate environment, surrounding ambiance, assessment in terms of functionality and desired balance between aesthetics and  functionality. In that state of amazement they tend to forget the actual purpose of design, and start judging it on its face value.

Lavishness and expensiveness of architectural treatment can be enough to move an average audience or user hence one should be cautious not to get deviated or mesmerized by the shear ambiance of the environment while assessing the functionality and aesthetics of the said design. One has all the right to question the validity and contextuality of design elements and functionality of design even if it is created by established and much celebrated architects and designers. Often people seem to have been caught in the articulated concepts and animated design language while assessing and experiencing architectural spaces and design elements. Their experiences are colored by the aura of authority of established and much hyped architects and designers. Experiences are more or less fabricated and predefined in most of the cases.

One feels that there should be freedom of assessment. There is a need, not only to challenge and break free of established design values but to perceive the design from a clear vision which is beyond the past experiences, which is neither opaque by any prejudice nor conditioned by any socio-economic or regional background of the observer. An assessment based on complete firsthand experience might be a better and sensible way to judge the design.

By Anoop Jha

Thin line between development works, social service and exploitation

By - Anoop Jha

A case of tribal communities and regions

We need to question our own intention of doing right and doing good thing to others. May be what we think is right for someone or some community might not be that good for them as we assume.

Who is to decide what is good for whom? Is it the job of government? or maybe the Highbrow society? Or socially, politically and intellectually established individuals with their idiosyncratic ideology and philosophy having their own idea of utopian society? Is it the job of little advanced segment of society to decide what is good for not so advanced segment of society?


[Handpicked Books]

What could be the hidden intention behind doing good to others or some community or some region, which we call development work or at times social service?  Let’s take the example of tribal community and tribal region. Is it the shear innocent intention of sharing existing wealth and knowledge to unprivileged or unexplored segment of society or is it to exploit the untapped potential of the previously unexplored tribal region for our own advantage, is it a sincere effort to understand and document the needs and social pattern of these tribal communities or is it just to get commercial advantage by exposing these hidden communities to mainstream society, is it to help them learn utilize their own resources more efficiently or the hidden intention to exploit rich tangible and intangible tribal resources.  Is it to provide them better health, better opportunities and better lifestyle or is it  just shear gratification of doing social service.  Has that road been built to connect those hidden tribal communities to the mainstream society and to provide them new age opportunities and facilities or the intention is to extract the tribal wealth of region and exploit the heritage and culture value in form of tourism and all. 

Shy and conservative tribal communities throughout the world need very little for their living; they are an autonomous society in themselves.  They have been adapted to their environment in course of evolution and their local environment usually provides them all they need- food, shelter, social interaction, entertainment, spiritual satisfaction. Now there are few choices to make. One is to let this situation of apparent equilibrium of autonomous tribal community go ahead as usual and second to interfere and change the equilibrium either for their good or for own advantage which seems to be the case most of the time. This is a sensitive and tender issue has to be dealt with much thought and compassion. Social behaviors, norms and needs of tribal communities are mostly way different then the mainstream, so simply imposing the rules of mainstream society on the said communities might not do justice to them. For example the concept of formal education might be something totally alien to many tribal communities, so simply introducing the primary and secondary education system to those communities might not be a good idea just because we want everyone in the country to be literate, may be they simply don’t need a formal education, may be they need a different kind of skill orientated education, may be they need an education system totally different from mainstream society.  There are many such issues to address and subject of discussion.

Until they all arrive at a consensus, role of government in the mean time can be to protect the tribal communities and regions from external commercial invaders,  and provide them the health infrastructure with emergency facilities.   

Seems they love to waste fuel

By - Anoop Jha

Road junctions need smarter user interactive signal system..

And people need education!! When they know it’s going to be at least 3 to 6 minutes wait at road junction of their busy city and when it’s not extreme summer then why don’t they turn off the engine of their car for a while? This little act of saving petrol or diesel might not save them a lot of money today but if counted over a year the sum of this effort might add few thousand additional bucks in their bank balance. Imagine the gallons of fuel saved over the period by the collective efforts of citizens in a city.

Let’s dig into the psychology of car owners and possible reasons to waste the fuel at road junctions which could have been avoided. Is it because they are ultra rich people and don’t mind burning some fuel at junction, is it that car owners never thought about this as an option, is it that they are so much in hurry and preoccupied that they don’t want to think about it, is it that they want to avoid those beggars and casual vendors selling toys at junctions hence depending on air-conditioning system of car rather than opening window for few moments, is it that there is no one to educate them about how much fuel can be saved over the year by such practices, does it even really save some fuel or just a vague assumption? May be, may be not? But may be traffic signal itself has to play an important role in this regard.


[Handpicked Books]

 

Current traffic signals are not smart enough to cope with the growing vehicle population and complexity. Need some proof? It can’t be called smart if signals are out of sight for majority of vehicles of quarter mile long queue. It can’t be smart if one doesn’t really know that how long they have to wait which is the case for majority of junctions. It can’t be smart if traffic signals of adjacent road junctions are not synchronized with each other for most efficiency, and it they are not flexible enough to adjust its signal timing as per fluctuating traffic volume at different hours of the day. It can’t be smart if it fails to convince or persuade people to follow the rule or to remind them the cost to neglecting the traffic rules.

Smart signals need to communicate with commuters in every possible way. They have to be more informative, strategically placed, built on flexible software platform, logic based traffic signals which should appear to have presence of mind, and they should be integrated with the installed cameras to gather information, derive inferences and act accordingly. They should be able to convey to commuters, what is the best time to turn off and on the vehicle engine for maximum fuel efficiency on a junction. What about an intricate pattern of parking size grid marked on roads approaching junction, assigning a dedicated waiting space for vehicles for maximum efficiency, safety and visibility? And so on!!

We plan new transportation systems, but with old tools!! We need to sharpen the old tools to make than smarter and to make the whole system efficient. 

Why city forms are like the way they are?

By - Anoop Jha

Inspecting reasons of changing development patterns from core city to contemporary development.

Morphological Differences in old & new development

While issue of changing city morphology across time is being discussed its imperative to ask what difference does a time span induces which alters the physiology and psychology of urban development?

After analyzing several old and new city developments patterns, some catalysts which emerge as possible reasons of change since Old Town to New City Era can be as follows - 

Rise of Multi-nuclei development

Multiple developer entities

Multiple governing agencies

Rapid mass housing requirement

Stringent Fire Norms

Increased Building Height

New construction materials & technologies

Changed mode of private & public transportation

Landuse classification restructuring


[Handpicked Books]

Utility distribution requirement

Landscape requirements and norms

New active climate control tools for buildings

Easy exposure to international benchmarks

Increased requirements of privacy

Changed Living style and  social interaction  pattern

New trend of concept based development

Targeted development to please stakeholders

Breaking the monotony of planning

By - Anoop jha

Interesting twist to parking plan

Parking Grid

Parking lot circulation showing innovative approach of planning grid which serves two purpose

1)It gives a holistic touch to industrial style rigid  parking grid with main organic collector route

2)It puts a desirable physical limitation on speed of car in parking area due to its curvature and alignment

Biological Clock of City : Collective Dynamism of Population

By- Anoop Jha

Relevance of City Dynamism in Urban Planning

Biological clock of a city can be understood as a collective activity of resident population across the hours, days, seasons, and decades. These varying patterns and shift in activities depend on the characteristics and collective traits of cities or urban settlements like – Character of city like historic, metropolitan, ecological or place of tourist interest, industry type i.e. service, manufacturing or agro business, Economy and business of city, Trade and commercial activities, Religious activities, rituals, Public transit system availability and regulations, political stability and governance.    

A city or town metaphorically behaves like a living organism and hence each one of them has a unique signature activity pattern. In spite of static nature of cities it has lots of innumerous dynamic activities going on within it’s envelop and beyond. Pace and extent of these activities are cyclic in nature and varies across days and hours in somewhat predictable ways and seem synchronized with diurnal variation i.e. cycle of day and night, e.g. two visibly distinct peak hours of activities in any given particular day across the cities. Cities also seem synchronized to different seasons and show different patterns of daily activities as per that season, e.g. Majority of population getting off to sleep early in winters and shops being closed early, accompanied by lesser traffic and activities on street in winter w.r.t. summer.

The reason studying “biological pattern of city” can be an interesting and important are for planners is that till now, while planning or developing a city they have historically and inevitably always assumed that city is a static entity and then they prepare a Masterplan for that city, While it’s a fundamentally wrong assumption and process of planning for a city. Let’s take a fresh look on any random city, you will find that it’s a living, thriving and dynamic entity. The word morphology which is synonymous with mutation, when used in context of urban pattern itself states that city characteristically resembles a living and dynamic entity.

Challenge for the new age planners is to recognise and accept the fact that they are planning for an active, constantly changing and mutating dynamic entity called “City” rather than the past and contemporary notion of city as a static built mass, with some activities being marked in static zones of Landuse in different color on Masterplan. Urban planners not only have to consider the character of the particular city to be built or redeveloped but they also have to consider the present or future activity pattern as well as temperament of the city. 

Comprehensive list of Landuse Categories

Masterplan and Urban Landuse Activities

Urban Landuse

RESIDENTIAL

Single House/Plot/Flat

Group Housing

Guard residence

COMMERCIAL

Retail Shop/Plate Form

Repair shop

Personal service Shop

Vending booth

Showroom

Weekly Market

Convenience shopping centre

Local/ Sector level Shopping Centre

Shopping Centre/ Commercial Centre/ Shopping Mall

Informal commercial unit/ Platform

Wholesale Market/ Mandi

Bakery/Confectionary/Atta Chakki

Coal/ Wood/ Building Material Market

Vegetable/ Fruit Market

Cold Storage

Hotel

Service Apartment

Restaurant/ Canteen/ Food Court

Drive-in cinema

Exhibition Hall/ Exhibition centre

Banquet hall/ Barat ghar

Petrol/ Deisel/ Gas Filling Station

Oil depot and LPG refilling plant

Gas Godown

Warehouse/ Godown for Non-Hazardous Items

Warehouse/ Godown for Hazardous Items

Automobiles Showrooms/ Showroom cum service centre

Freight Complex/ Logistic Park

Steel/ Cement/ Building Material Yard

Weigh Bridge/ DharmKanta

Cinema/ Multiplex

INDUSTRIAL

Service/ Cottage Industry

Flatted Factories

 Information/ Software Technology Industry

Small/ Light Industry

Industrial plot (specific industry type)

Medium & Large scale Industry

Film Centre/ TV, Radio Programme Production Centre

OFFICES

Govt./ Semi Govt. / Public Undertaking/ Local Body Office

Office/Corporate office

Professional/Personal/Agent Office

Banks

Project Development/ Management/ Maintenance office

Satellite/ Wireless/ Telecommunication centre

PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / INSTITUTIONAL FACILITIES

Guest house/lodging/boarding house

Hostel

Reformatory and Orphanage

School for mentally/ Physical challenged Persons

Crèche & Day Care Centre/Play & Nursery School

Old age home

Primary school

Secondary School/Integrated Residential School

Vocational Institute

Degree/P G/professional (medical/Engg. etc) college

University

Post Office

Telephone Exchange

Police Station/Fire station

Police Post

Library

R & D Centre

Health Centre/ Family Welfare Centre/ Dispensry

Trauma Centre

Hospital/ Medical college

Clinic

Nursing home

Clinical Lab

Veterinary Hospital/Dispensary

Health club/Gym

Dance/ Music/Art centre

Yoga/ Meditation centre

Milk Booth

Religious Building/ Centre

Community Centre

Convention centre/ Conference Centre/ Auditotium

Planetarium

Socio-cultural Centre

PCO

Internet/ Information Centre

Social Wellfare Centre

Cremation/Burial ground/ Crematoriu

PUBLIC UTILITIES

Sewerage treatment plant/ Pumping station

Sanitary landfill site/ Solid waste treatment plant

Tube well/ Over head tanks/ Under ground tanks/ Renny well

Electric sub-station

Public toilet

Transmission tower/ Mobile tower

TRANSPORTATION

Open parking

Covered/Multi-level parking

Taxi/ Auto/Rickshaw Stand

Truck Terminal/ Transport Nagar

Bus Stand/ Shelter

Bus Depot/ Terminal

Motor Garage/ Service Garage/ Workshop

Traffic Park/ Children Traffic Park/Training Centre

Loading/ Unloading Facilities/Space

Transport/Cargo booking centre

Container Depot

Toll Plaza

Helipad

RECREATIONAL

Park/ Play Ground

Multipurpose open spaces

Golf course/ Race course

Stadium/ Sports training centre/Sports complex

Picnic Spot

Indoor stadium/games Hall

Amusement/ Specialised/ Theme Park

Recreational Club/Swimming pool

Museum-cum-Auditorium/Conference Hall/ Art/Exhibition gallery

Open air theatre

National Memorial

Source: Noida Master Plan - 2031