Cities within city!

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

************************************************

These metropolitan cities are so big that many inhabitants spend their entire life without the need of visiting few other parts of city for any purpose be it business, socialising or recreation, and when they do visit that other part of same city for the first time, it's sometimes not less than a shocking experience, pleasant or otherwise - experiencing drastic change in built-up scale, a very distinct manifestation of architectural style, a juxtapose density, visible economic stratification, attitudinal and behavioural changes are observed, obvious difference in level of upkeep, city beautification and public services, varying degree of management witnessed, sometimes changes witnesses in regulatory enforcement, citizen compliance and level of citizen engagement; difference in lifestyle, life choices and opportunity landscape is worth noticing as well.

Several forces are at play here making different part of city very different in appeal and experience, like - chronology of development, different developmental vision for different city zones in an effort to create specialised nodes, different economic activity and status.

Silver-lining; Heterogeneity and diversity in a large metropolitan city was never an outdated idea, additionally possibility of intracity excursion and tourism is there. Learning opportunity from each other is also there. A city with multitude of experience is always welcoming anyways.

In all likelihood it can be safely assumed that there is critical mass in terms of a chunk of city with a cluster of habitation and segment of economy which makes it autonomous in many senses, making it a small city within a larger metropolitan, and metropolitan city can be perceived as agglomeration of several such smaller cities, of course huddled together with a symbiotic relationship.

Author:Anoop Jha

#urbanplanning #cityplanning #townplanning #habitat #urban #smartcity #cluster #neighborhood

Creating dynamic street environment- A cure for repetitive monotony of city!

If you try recollecting past experiences, you will realize that an element of surprise can help you cope with the city stress- traffic, crowd, or simply say hectic repetitive chaos and it need not be scientifically proven.

So can we think of creating everyday surprises - pleasant of course, but can be weird sometimes - along the much traded route of our cities - a suddenly changed striking colored building, pink or florescent or yellow; a sudden surge of artificial wind in a subway, a sudden burst of soft rock music at bus shelter; a glowing bus or a decorated tree and so on, its like taking street performance to the next level which includes whole environment rather than just performer.

Join Anoop on Linkedin  

or follow on Twitter @urbanoregional

Why architectural clients should be more demanding today?

Need of "Creative demand" and false in-vogue benchmark of "what is good!"

In a time of century when you should be asking for interactive customizable digital walls for your indoors as a client you are still busy choosing wall colors and wallpaper patterns, in a time when you should be demanding multiple mood lighting possibilities for your every room you are apparently happy and content with your stylish off-the-shelf chandelier and much propagated energy saving CFL lighting fixtures, when you should be asking your architect what kind of living experience he or she is envisaging and designing for your home, you are busy asking what would be the effective sqft area of your house, when you should be deliberating about multi-tier security system for your hard earned asset called home,  you are busy choosing stylish looks of your door knob, when you should be looking for indoor ambiance inspired by your sun-sign, you leave this design choice to the idiosyncrasy of architect after little deliberation, who will now design "your" house inspired by his or her "own" sun sign traits - if you believe in such thing called sun sign! And there are ample other examples which demonstrate you are more or less content will "Less" when it comes to Architecture for your home.

You do demand as an architectural client but mostly in a wrong direction. And you know, you only get what you ask for.  You really need to channelize your demands towards design, ambiance, technology integration, customization and personalization and to the little architectural elements which is going to make your life better and effortless at home. All you need to do is to be little more creative in your demand. Also you need to shed this notion that “popular is good”, that’s not the case when it comes to architecture because you as an individual or a group of family might have a totally different needs and aesthetic perception than your friends, or neighbor or that guy with million dollar Mansion, so your house need not necessarily be exactly like others no matter how tempting those options are.     

You see, if you are of this opinion that insisting your architect for your favorite pink or blue color for your living room wall makes you a good client, then you need to take a look way back to realise that those cave men were more creative for their homes, decorating their caves with such amazing cave paintings or drawings, even after thousands of years later you are still struggling to decorate your living room wall with pink or blue or some painting of great artist! Have you really evolved in this large span of time or are you repeating the same old story in some way or other. That full clad digital living room wall which you can color customize everyday or on which you can write your daily to-do-list or which can remind you of unpaid bills in a flash or where you can leave a message for your loved ones while leaving home is just an example to make your realise that there are no boundaries which defines and restricts architecture or interior design. 

The best part is that architects like challenges, so if you demand "more" as a client in terms of stretching the possibilities of design and innovation, they would be more than happy to help you and probably will give you something many shades better than your expectations, all you have to do is to be little more creative in your demand. 

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!

Historic City of Varanasi and tourism heat map along the edge of river Ganges.

Image Source: Google Earth & Sightsmap

A place called Street!

Route De Sospel, Menton, Monaco

View Larger Map

Life at Edge

Satellite view of urban settlement trail along river edge


View Larger Map

Said to be the most photographed in the world…

Golden Gate Bridge

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

Real Estate price at user’s end: Transparency is the way to win-win situation!

When demand is so high there is no point keeping hidden costs and policies. 

Planning to buy a home? For some, it's joy of their life, for some it’s a mission, for some their livelihood but for many, it’s a pain. Pain of market research, confusion of what to choose, whom to trust, struggle of monetary arrangement, fear of being cheated, horror of future encounter with inevitable unpleasant surprises associated with real estate deals in constantly changing landscape of real estate market, volatile banking and public policies, unstable political and people’s affair and so on.  

There are so many places where your real estate judgment might go wrong no matter how smart, how educated and how networked you are. Forget about the traits and circumstances which are beyond your control. So volatile this whole affair is that at times it feels like it's a game of luck to finally secure a place without any conflict of guesswork and reality, which you can call your home sweet home.  

Long completion cycle of real estate development especially in case of housing and apartments, makes it more vulnerable and susceptible to volatile market and changing policy environment, susceptible to changes in policies and contracts leading to additional fiscal burden, majority on customer’s side and some on developers as well and to monetary losses occurred mostly to buyers who failed to understand the fine intricacies of initial contracts and hidden policies.

In midst of all this confusion you either hire or get channelized through someone or a firm apparently specialized in real estate dealings to make your life easy, only to realize that they have their own hidden policies and excuses to add to your frustrations.

Acknowledging and understanding the inevitability of market dynamism and inevitable growth in housing demand with little bit of fluctuation here and there time to time, a whole new approach is needed in the functioning of real estate affair.

You are a customer; you want to buy a house rather home, you know your financial condition, you know your aspirations and limitations. You see a home advertisement at fabulously low price in local newspaper or on internet with an assumed star (*) or applied conditions, you are already comfortable with that, you match your budget, you find out more just to realize that there are considerable hidden charges, you think for a while, going ahead seeing the same prevalent story everywhere, you go to bank for monetary help, they have their own complex structure of policy documentation difficult to fathom right away, leave it aside for a while because you urgently need loan for your sweet home, you do the deal formality with developer  while realizing that there are secondary and even tertiary level of hidden charges. Finally your deal is completed, but someone just comes to you and tells you that there are additional visitor parking charges subjected to availability, really high annual club charges you can’t escape, Monthly fixed or accelerating maintenance charges for several amenities you won’t be using ever, not to speak of the security and other welfare charges which issues would occurs later in future if you want to live there. And unfortunately you can’t hold developer liable for many of these things because they will say these monetary activities are beyond their scope of contract and deal. Oh, and don’t forget recently revised property related tax policies which is going to go increasingly taxing on your already demanding fiscal health.

Now, you are a developer, you are in this business for long, you know the intricacies very well, you adjust your position as market and policies change, you see that your business in not going to go down ever in future due to insanely high housing and real estate demand apart from occasional dip, you are in a position to dictate the terms so you don’t have to worry. Of course changes in real estate laws and public policy as well as volatility of politics and people’s affair are going to affect your business, but you are sure you will be able to recover what you want from those existing or prospective customers.

For every single customer who can’t afford the price you are offering for a piece of real estate work you are creating, there would be dozens of willing customers to buy the same piece of project. Acknowledging the strong and more or less stable future real estate growth, as well as abundance of customers, it’s your responsibility as a developer to be as transparent in your offers, deals and policies as possible. It will benefit both customers as well as developer. Customer will know early what is within their reach based on their financial position and assessment of realistic real estate offers and their search for house would be less painful and more fruitful, speedy and less frustrating. Developers should declare every possible instance where an additional cost burden can occur to a customer along with its tentative quantum, should declare every possible project constraint and policy in big bold font, emphasizing every liable policy changes and unexpected future charges based on their industry and regional experience. What worst can happen by this approach? You might lose a customer or two, but with such a huge customer base, who cares! It will sure have advantage both ways. Developers will get real customers rather than ghost customers, their transaction turnaround time would reduce considerably, their dealing process would be smoother, more transparent and honest and they can reinvest that saved time and money back into customer service, building repeat customers and word-of-mouth publicity as well as providing better customer service. Not to speak of huge value addition to company’s brand image. Customers will have in tern fair choice of selection, without any hidden fiscal or psychological burden, after all one can only buy a house with a price tag which he or she can afford.   

Public agencies would always be there to help, assist and control the exceedingly high real estate prices to keep the ball rolling and to keep it within reach of a city dweller, common or exclusive. Considering the positive effect it’s an option worth exploration.

By: Anoop Jha

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.

Planner’s Dilemma – A case of developing nation.

Choked Public Drain, Whose fault? 

Repeatedly choked public drains, is it due to under capacity drainage Infrastructure, an unplanned network, inadequately planned disposal system, underestimated growth, unexpected demand, immigration externalities, over exploitation of resources, lack of vision, out dated technology, inefficient management, uneducated population, citizens with low or no sense of public responsibility, lack of willingness, lack of database for timely assessment, no early warning system, underreported occurrence, over hyped issues,  diverted attention, prevalence of corruption, discrete tax structure for usage of public infrastructure, lack of maintenance, insufficient funds, absence of relevant law, loophole in policies, or may be implementation failure?

Drainage/ sewage disposal issue is just an example to illustrate; there are innumerable examples and issues like this in an urban setting whether its inadequate water supply, transport chaos, interrupted and poor power supply etc, and innumerable reason for the each of these issues.  It’s a very common phenomenon in towns and metropolitan cities of developing nations, but what’s the solution.

After some time of tolerance people start losing their patience due to public infrastructure system failure like this, then some hue and cry, some demonstration, followed by media coverage, then suddenly public agencies wake up, some blame game, then some investigation committee, followed by months long survey, then few months of compilation, then some kind of outcome and recommendations, by that time people already start losing their interest in the subject, by that time there are  other hyped issues to deal with, and this show goes on. Somewhere in this cycle of events planner or some planning consultancy firm gets introduced to assess the situation and resolve the issue. Do you wonder how much or how little a planner can help to resolve the situation at least bringing down the scale of chaos.

Do you see how many vulnerable points can be there in the value chain of any system as we saw in the blocked drain example? More the number of elements more the chances of failure of system.  A system with a long operational or value chain can only work efficiently, if all the possible elements of interest work efficiently individually and cohesively together as well. When an urban planner or similar is approached by public/ private agency to resolve such development or redevelopment issues, they expect an out of box magical solution. Planners can of course suggest a wonderful infrastructure solution at some reasonable cost; they can propose some implementation and regulatory strategies as well, but one has to understand that a “multifaceted urban issue” needs an “inclusive solution”. Planners need to be empowered to have a say on any or rather every element which might affect the proper functioning of any urban or regional system, even if it’s an aspect which is tangential to the core system but which can impact the system in future. Planners have to address or at least talk about each and every tangential aspect of any core issue while suggesting a solution blueprint for development redevelopment projects. For example, one might argue how a drainage problem can be related to education of citizen, they can always say while problem like this demands infrastructure solution why to talk about education? Let’s consider this.  No matter how well you plan the infrastructure, if there are uneducated users, infrastructure is not going to work as the way it was perceived and planned. Even simply being educated is not enough, there has to be education with a sense of responsibility, a sense of citizenship.

What a planner can do in this situation for example. A planner has to talk about the relevance of educated citizens in proper functioning of the public infrastructure in its strategy report; he can go to the extent proposing restructuring of school curriculum, so that users become responsible enough toward public infrastructure while they are still in school. suppose If people are educated and responsible as well but still not using public infrastructure as intended there might be flaw in signage design or placement, planners need to talk about that in its development report, they might need to talk about the role of education through technological infusion to masses through different communication channels before they are about to introduce a new technology in public domain along with ways of infusion. Similarly they need to propose some short to long term strategic inputs for all the ancillary aspects revolving around the core public system or infrastructure issue no matter how distinct they appear.

Urban underground art : perception and mainstream absorption!

A case of graffiti culture in a city environment.  

Some say its vandalism, some find it an art, some say its irrational some say it’s cool, some see it outdated, at places it’s in vogue, reasons can be many, from fun to revolution but result is one - Graffiti. In this varying landscape of purpose and perception, there is always an apparent struggle to conclude what is right and what is wrong in an urban environment. What with graffiti? Why this perpetual struggle between city administrations and those who create such art-pieces, some anonymous, some leaving their stamp.

Graffiti is an art form standing at the edge of law. Some do it for thrill; some to put across their message, for some it’s an outlet, some do it for recognition and some to revolt against established values and norms. Even after decades of existence there has not been any consensus on the subject. City administrations are either strictly against it or will shy away from the subject saying that they have larger issues of city infrastructure, education, poverty and all at hand to deal with. Go ask a planner, what with Graffiti, what to do with it, you will find them clueless, though some of them might tell you few ways to curb this phenomenon.

Why graffiti culture exists in first place? Unless we try to understand the psychology of underground art, we can’t find a reasonable answer and solution to it. May be it’s the very imposition of rule to curb this behavior, triggers and sustain this behavior. Thrill of breaking the law, mixed with artistic skill, daring move and motivation by some cause, results in graffiti.

Isn’t it good to have wonderful artists in your city? But an artist needs to express and if you won’t give them enough opportunities and enough canvas they will express themselves in any manner, anywhere,  even if it’s a wall, and in this case public properties become soft target. Art itself has no boundaries, but we divide it in good and bad, civilized and vandalism. Piece of art by those few artists who have enough opportunity and money to display their work of art in an upscale gallery becomes a civilized and socially accepted art while the similar piece of art or poor or better if expressed on the walls of city streets and subways and any abandoned structures in form of graffiti gets a tag of vandalism. Can we do something about it?

There are few cities which provide long public walls at sea shores and other specified places specially for making graffiti, for those underground graffiti artists, who do not have to remain underground any more. They are making wonderful graffiti, day and night on these public canvases provided by city administrations, they don’t have to paint the subways and public structures anymore. Temporary, though they have a place for their creative outlet. We can always have some control strategies in place to check the nature and subject of graffiti to respect the feelings and sentiments of citizens.   

They say Taki or someone invented it, I think it exists before the dawn of civilization, remember those wonderful paintings from prehistoric caves? Its basic instinct of human being to express, expression in tangible forms, expressing it for good, to document, to leave it for generations to come, tools doesn’t matter, modes of expression is irrelevant and changing constantly. From prehistoric caves to modern urban wall they have expressed it and they will find out ways and means to express in future. So, it might be a good idea to start thinking of some city level policy intervention measures to provide an appropriate and recognized platform for easy and legalized creative expression, rather than negating its existence and simply trying to get rid of it.   

Planners and city administrations need to come forward and suggest strategies to integrate underground art in their city development plans and urban landscape. Making this form of art publicly acceptable and giving it mainstream recognition by taking illegality, obscenity any kind of provocation out of it. They need to propose strategies to recognize urban talent which has remained underground till now, and propose plans to nourish them by channelizing their talent in right direction and at right place. Simply creating and imposing the anti-graffiti law and trying to maintain the same is not the answer to this ever growing phenomenon, we need to channelize that creative energy in the right direction and at right places by creating favorable environment and instruments in city landscape.

                                                         

By: Anoop Jha

There is no shortcut to Good Architecture or Urban Design

Losing purity of form in contemporary architecture

You must have seen bizarre buildings, distorted mega sculptural elements in public places scattered all over the urban fabric. This entire gimmick in the name of creativity and uniqueness!! It’s like; short term YouTube or social media fame. It may grab attention of public for sometime but such architecture or urban design or public landscape elements are not going to sustain for long.

Though different era of history has witnessed different architectural styles, elements and treatments but fundamentally, beauty of architectural forms have remained timeless and it is timeless indeed. Timeless architectural aesthetics can’t be confined in any time-span or region. Architecture demands a fair representation through lucidity of form with innocence and tenderness of its complex but aesthetic attributes, which is getting lost somewhere in the race of success, uniqueness and technological race. Suddenly so much advancement has taken place in building materials and construction techniques and it appears that architecture has become an experimental ground to execute hidden bizarre instincts of architects who seem to be unable to handle this outburst of Techno-architectural possibilities. 

Art of Urban exploration

By - Anoop Jha,

Then, Now and What Next

Historically cities have provided great inspirations to writers, artists and likeminded people,  reason being, cities have very rich, eventful and intricate interaction patterns when it comes to life experiences and have rich interspatial fabric with dynamic interplay of light and shadow. Different cities at different time periods have lacked at different  fronts and same with the contemporary cities, but ever wondered why, the focus of literature and art has shifted from aesthetics to state of city amenities? Of late people have started approaching the cities very critically, finding loopholes, pointing responsibilities, and so on.



Of course these are necessary for the well being of citizens and development of cities, though understanding the constraints of contemporary cities, but cities still provide ample opportunities and inspirations for enthusiast with artistic inclination like writers, artists, photographers etc. to appreciate and document the beauty and existing state of cities from aesthetic point of view for the generations to come.    

Why we can't & shouldn't get rid of open spaces of city.

Holistic environmental economic view 

Open and Green Spaces have been integral part of the fabric of city historically and served as a democratic interaction place for citizens in the sea of individual private territories of a city. Though green landscape philosophy and clean ambient environment techniques have evolved and spread widely in course of time from open public realm to building interior, to terrace garden, to artificial air purifiers etc. but the material or psychological need of public open spaces in the city can not be replaced by any other present technology or method. So its not only the need of green spaces but the need of pubic space which validates the existence of such open and green spaces throughout the city and this need cannot always be evaluated on monetary terms. Government and municipal bodies  need to find out new innovative fiscal strategies to raise funds to operate and maintain such spaces rather than getting rid of green space for immediate economical benefit. 

Fallacy of Neighborhood Planning

By- Anoop Jha

Isn’t it that urban planners, landscape architects and urban designers have heard “neighborhood planning” and stuffs like that so many times, so many literature and theories revolving around these concepts are floating  everywhere from college library to, store bookshelves, to free internet, to paid ebook, that one feels little repulsive about these concepts. These concepts and theories are quoted in every urban design, landscape and planning lecture and workshop, seminar, government development and area planning proposal and have been repeated so many times, so many standard templates for neighborhood street sections, hardscape details, footpath design, street furniture etc. are available that it no more sounds exciting that someone is planning or designing neighborhood.

It all began few decades ago when people started getting aware of their surrounding environment , became conscious of their rights of healthy urban living and better neighborhood as a citizen, then planners and designers came forward with a better neighborhood concepts, which has been explored for decades now. They need to come out of this hangover or inertia of decades old new urbanism, it’s time for a new refreshing burst of creativity, radically refreshing approach to define emerging livable cities, not just taking individual pockets of city which we call neighborhood and planning and designing them up to the side curb detail but it’s time to perceive a city in totality and not just dealing with individual pockets.

Its time of revolutionary urban thinking which is made possible due to emerging near impossible technologies, amazing breakthroughs either already achieved or likely to happen very soon, Its time when definition of work, living , Landuse,  commuting, communication all are merging together  with boundaries fading, in this dawn of new era how relevant are the decades old planning theories and design philosophies? It’s time to Pause, think and provide a new solution for future urbanism.