As unsustainable as Print Command (Ctrl+P)!Universal blanket standardization of best practices to save our planet.

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

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(Reshared; original post 2012)

Oh, another bunch of refined paper goes to waste-bin thanks to extremely complex and varied document printing processes across the varied software environment, across the government, corporate and educational institutions, across the world. Taking heavier and heavier toll on environment with every “Ctrl+P+Enter”, possibly every second rather micro-second in some corner of world.

It’s fairly easy for a planner specially an architect planner to acknowledge this fact of unsustainable printing practice and track down the reasons behind that due to their diversified nature of work, active participation in software environment and multiplicity of technological affinity. An average planner with architectural background is usually familiar with at least 10 to 15 software even excluding downstream subsidiaries of parent software programs, comfortable working with 7 to 10 software and currently must be using 3 to 7 software applications spread across desktop to online to cloud based environment; Some frequently used software tools ranging from drafting to data gathering and aggregation, to data analysis and interpretation, to collaboration, to mapping and image interpretation to presentation and simulation and so on, printing system ranging from tiniest of printers to the largest of plotters available. And he or she can easily recognize that one thing common in all these tools, systems and activities, is that nothing is common when it comes to Ctrl+P, i.e. print command i.e. printing process. Hence the huge environmental losses!

It’s not that you must have a global authority to control printing behavior across this technological landscape, its more about morality of tech-producers, corporate management as well responsibility and choices at user’s end. Still, it won’t be a bad idea to have some form of global printing governance and management through a nodal or distributed agencies across the globe just to identify, evolve and clinically establish the best probable practices in printing, standardizing and implementing the best printing practices and related programming practices through integration at software programming stage itself or to introduce plugins at regular intervals as tech-retrofit or to printducate (education of best practices about printing) while kids are still getting educated or even through organizational incentives if needed. Some examples of technological intervention even if you consider these at lighter note can be like default “Always draft mode otherwise specified” setting across the printer and plotter community and product lines across the world no matter small or large, something like having two big display/ push buttons one green and one stark red which will appear the moment you press the Ctrl+P (print command), green bottom (default draft mode) saying something like- “Thanks for choosing me because you are helping mother nature to thrive, btw do you really need to do even this?” and the red button (customizable for higher resolutions) saying “think twice before going ahead with higher-resolution, with this single click you might add little more burden to our mother nature, can’t you think of some other way to communicate to help save little more of ink cartridge and little more of paper?”

One interesting and probably right observation and recommendation is that we might need to revise the definition and perception of Draft Print Resolution. At present drat image or text resolution is kind of too much pixelated draft, and creates vast disparity in the outcome of high-resolution (even normal-resolution) and draft-resolution print, hence more and more people are opting for either high or normal resolution across the organizations, leaving draft unattended. We need to raise the print resolution of default draft resolution little higher than the present configuration so that people do not immediately make higher resolution print choices discarding the draft.  There is one dilemma here as well, a common educated person, environmentally conscious as he or she thinks of himself or herself, making more damage to environment than the average person with stubborn but consistent printing behavior.  Most of the environmentally conscious persons take draft mode printouts as a natural choice to protect the environment only to realize that printouts are too hazy, unclear, un-presentable to the client or audience and they end up taking same print again in normal or higher resolution format (shear wastage point No. 1, in the name of being environmentalist), they also tend to take higher size/ A3 content on an lower size/A4 paper in their deliberate (sometimes showing-off) effort to save paper/ environment, only to realize that the texts printed are almost unreadable or at least not presentable and hence they end up taking printouts again on larger size paper (shear wastage point No. 2, in the name of being pro-green or something), same story in case of slide Vs handouts as well. All of this wastage can be avoided just by keeping print command in universally default draft mode while making draft mode with little better resolution format so that people don’t always have to make choices between mostly discarded draft mode and frequently chosen normal or high resolution mode for print.

A random thought which also comes to mind is that may be the life cycle cost of providing every student and employee an upgradable device like ipad or tab or something for the regularized communication, discussion and presentation purpose within the premises or on the go might be much less than lifecycle cost of all the printing gimmicks that goes across the educational and organizational landscape (someone need to do the math), annual, monthly, quarterly, weekly and daily reports sometimes in hard copies, documentation and stacks of documents in so called database or reference library, presentation pamphlets, organizational profile handouts, educational assignments, submissions and so on and on; you know it better or better know it early! Similarly the lifecycle cost of buying and operating ipad or tab or something for reading news (which also has added customization advantage) might be much-much less than the lifecycle cost of buying newspaper for rest of your life. Just a thought though!!       

Need for printed information is not going to go anywhere anytime soon but we can always find out better ways to communicate and better print management at product design end as well as programming and user end, to save the paper and ink cartridge, just to contribute a bit for making this planet a better place!! 

In 2095 when everyone in this world will be prosperous enough they will realise money wasn't the cure mankind was looking for.

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

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So whats this pursuit today for?

We have vision and plans for cities, organisations and society for another 30, 50 and 60 odd years and we are bullish and content about that, but that's still myopic considering its been thousands of years since we emerged as human from monkey and we are yet capable of seeing just this deep into the future. Mankind's wit, confidence and reliability of calculations can only be judged with this fact that while most of us know what happened 300 years ago in world event, almost none of us know neither care to know who were our forefathers 300 years ago down the family tree. So our judgement, planning and projections are just limited to more or less couple of decades beyond today since only that's how far we are able to gaze and comprehend thinking that's what we will be able to control and we keep planning and improving our and world's living standards.

All this socioeconomic efforts currently points and culminates towards single point solution and agenda - "Money", as we think money is the only ultimate cure and panacea for human misery. So consider a hypothetical future year when everyone in this world will have enough money to get a good and convenient life, then what? Will we simply keep improving lifestyle and comfort of mankind to say we are evolving and in business as usual we might evolve and mutate into something biologically like we became human from monkey. Is that all? Its hard to accept that purpose of human life is just to strive and adjust to better lifestyle, better food and better comfort, Is that what we are targeting and moving towards or is it a futile chase. Can we give our kids a better larger purpose to target and approximate than spoon feeding them to simply accumulate wealth throughout life and perish. Does anyone see convergence and culmination of future social planning and spiritualism for instance?  Does anyone think about satisfying poor man's intellectual hunger or our thoughts are only limited to giving him a piece of bread thinking we have done our bit? 

Scaling of opportunities, a bigger challenge than scaling up urban infrastructure!

Tackling immediate soft urban challenges through resource prioritization!

Infrastructure expansion is where the money and interest is and is a never ending process as well, so it will keep scaling up in background anyway and will be taken care of diligently, with or without much intervention. Public sector has more of a catalytic and mentoring role to play in that direction. Skill is what we need to focus on today.

Like they say “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him how to catch a fish and he will eat for his lifetime”.  Scaled opportunity is what an urban dweller needs irrespective of which Socio-economic strata they belong. More opportunity to masses means more involvement in the urban dynamics, and hence being more engaged in the process of building the very city which provided the new scale and dimensions of opportunities. Scaling of opportunity are less resource intensive and has higher ROR than scaling or urban infrastructure and might be more sustainable an approach!

Further scientific modelling and analysis will be required to validate and assert the idea.  

Join Anoop on Linkedin  

or follow on Twitter @urbanoregional

Key traits of future cities! #futurecities

[Post By- Anoop Jha]

A complete new mindset is needed to craft future cities-

Focus on judicious use of resources rather than creating abundance.

Focus on leveraging and channelising externalities rather than eliminating it.

Harnessing untapped second hand energy.

Eliminating wastage by design rather than repeated appeal and imposing penalty.

Waste to be increasingly viewed as resource rather than burden.

Focus on eliminatingneed of artificial day-lighting instead of promoting LED.

Engineered to the very core to sustain.

Decide your own workplace rather than “walk to work”.  

Carry your personalised holographic and sonic environment wherever you go. 

Do you consider marketability of your design based on color demand?

Something they didn't tell you in Design school!

Something like this.....

• If they are looking for "Red" Give them "Red"! Even if you personally like purple or yellow.  
• Red color product will have way higher mass demand than Purple one, no matter what the product is or how well the product has been designed. 
• The only place were you can sell purple color product is in the niche market, while red and blue captures both niche and mass market.
• The only way you can make profit selling purple color product is by targeting high end segment with higher margin. 
• Its okay to be emotional about your product and defensive about your design, but you need to listen to market aspirations first and modify your  design as per demand, even if that requires keeping your ego aside. 
• If you haven't shipped it, it really doesn't matter how cool your design values are.  

As unsustainable as Print Command (Ctrl+P)!

Universal blanket standardization of best practices to save our planet

Oh, another bunch of refined paper goes to waste-bin thanks to extremely complex and varied document printing processes across the varied software environment, across the government, corporate and educational institutions, across the world. Taking heavier and heavier toll on environment with every “Ctrl+P+Enter”, possibly every second rather micro-second in some corner of world.

It’s fairly easy for a planner specially an architect planner to acknowledge this fact of unsustainable printing practice and track down the reasons behind that due to their diversified nature of work, active participation in software environment and multiplicity of technological affinity. An average planner with architectural background is usually familiar with at least 10 to 15 software even excluding downstream subsidiaries of parent software programs, comfortable working with 7 to 10 software and currently must be using 3 to 7 software applications spread across desktop to online to cloud based environment; Some frequently used software tools ranging from drafting to data gathering and aggregation, to data analysis and interpretation, to collaboration, to mapping and image interpretation to presentation and simulation and so on, printing system ranging from tiniest of printers to the largest of plotters available. And he or she can easily recognize that one thing common in all these tools, systems and activities, is that nothing is common when it comes to Ctrl+P, i.e. print command i.e. printing process. Hence the huge environmental losses!

It’s not that you must have a global authority to control printing behavior across this technological landscape, its more about morality of tech-producers, corporate management as well responsibility and choices at user’s end. Still, it won’t be a bad idea to have some form of global printing governance and management through a nodal or distributed agencies across the globe just to identify, evolve and clinically establish the best probable practices in printing, standardizing and implementing the best printing practices and related programming practices through integration at software programming stage itself or to introduce plugins at regular intervals as tech-retrofit or to printducate (education of best practices about printing) while kids are still getting educated or even through organizational incentives if needed. Some examples of technological intervention even if you consider these at lighter note can be like default “Always draft mode otherwise specified” setting across the printer and plotter community and product lines across the world no matter small or large, something like having two big display/ push buttons one green and one stark red which will appear the moment you press the Ctrl+P (print command), green bottom (default draft mode) saying something like- “Thanks for choosing me because you are helping mother nature to thrive, btw do you really need to do even this?” and the red button (customizable for higher resolutions) saying “think twice before going ahead with higher-resolution, with this single click you might add little more burden to our mother nature, can’t you think of some other way to communicate to help save little more of ink cartridge and little more of paper?”

One interesting and probably right observation and recommendation is that we might need to revise the definition and perception of Draft Print Resolution. At present drat image or text resolution is kind of too much pixelated draft, and creates vast disparity in the outcome of high-resolution (even normal-resolution) and draft-resolution print, hence more and more people are opting for either high or normal resolution across the organizations, leaving draft unattended. We need to raise the print resolution of default draft resolution little higher than the present configuration so that people do not immediately make higher resolution print choices discarding the draft.  There is one dilemma here as well, a common educated person, environmentally conscious as he or she thinks of himself or herself, making more damage to environment than the average person with stubborn but consistent printing behavior.  Most of the environmentally conscious persons take draft mode printouts as a natural choice to protect the environment only to realize that printouts are too hazy, unclear, un-presentable to the client or audience and they end up taking same print again in normal or higher resolution format (shear wastage point No. 1, in the name of being environmentalist), they also tend to take higher size/ A3 content on an lower size/A4 paper in their deliberate (sometimes showing-off) effort to save paper/ environment, only to realize that the texts printed are almost unreadable or at least not presentable and hence they end up taking printouts again on larger size paper (shear wastage point No. 2, in the name of being pro-green or something), same story in case of slide Vs handouts as well. All of this wastage can be avoided just by keeping print command in universally default draft mode while making draft mode with little better resolution format so that people don’t always have to make choices between mostly discarded draft mode and frequently chosen normal or high resolution mode for print.

A random thought which also comes to mind is that may be the life cycle cost of providing every student and employee an upgradable device like ipad or tab or something for the regularized communication, discussion and presentation purpose within the premises or on the go might be much less than lifecycle cost of all the printing gimmicks that goes across the educational and organizational landscape (someone need to do the math), annual, monthly, quarterly, weekly and daily reports sometimes in hard copies, documentation and stacks of documents in so called database or reference library, presentation pamphlets, organizational profile handouts, educational assignments, submissions and so on and on; you know it better or better know it early! Similarly the lifecycle cost of buying and operating ipad or tab or something for reading news (which also has added customization advantage) might be much-much less than the lifecycle cost of buying newspaper for rest of your life. Just a thought though!!       

Need for printed information is not going to go anywhere anytime soon but we can always find out better ways to communicate and better print management at product design end as well as programming and user end, to save the paper and ink cartridge, just to contribute a bit for making this planet a better place!! 

Sometimes you appreciate unintentional grunge architectural experience!

Even architects refrain to talk about the darker intuitive side of architectural experience.  

Looking through a dirt clad window glass pan on a rainy day at  your half a century old sparingly used ancestral house, mysteriously thrilling fog and  street light setting as viewed from the window of a motel room in no man’s land where you stayed last weekend on your way back home from a road trip,  flickering interplay of light and shadows projected on the walls and roof  of your bedroom by the light of traffic passing by on the adjacent street,  bizarre abstract patterns on the under maintained damp bathroom or subway walls,  grunge white noise of much awaited rain pouring on the garage tin shed,  looking at the engulfing silence of valley from the balcony of a remote hill resort experiencing the shear lack of artificial urban sound of which you are used to or an experience of strange inquisitive damp smell while you are getting down the basement stairs in a dimly lit surrounding, you at times experience unspoken, unperceived, un-designed and unintentional side of architecture further accentuated by the time of year and day, your mood and company or absence of other people at that particular time.   

At times you feel so tiered of popular architecture, popular formula of architecture, formula of what should be and what not and all the glorification and stubbornness around what is popular, those are kind of beautiful, but they are every were, architectural orders, theories so much overvalued so abundantly repeated, interiors so much commercialized so much in order, so much restricted, so much formalized, you are left with no choice but to live in an environment which appeal to neighbors, your housing society and society at large, even You don’t know what you really want to experience. Spoon-fed architectural experience of what is good and what is bad being taught to architects as well as future prospective clients in the school. They are taught to create wonderful architecture but no one encourages them to create wonderful personalized architectural experience no matter even if its eccentric on conventional benchmark, experience of space which you can’t really create with the popular architectural tools, styles, mass education, thumb-rules available and being used widespread today. For example if you have already decided that a particular room, should have a particular lux level of lighting, particular illumination level,  uniformly distributed across the room with slight variation here and there as prescribed in the architectural bible or bylaws or general practice or as limited by the market availability and client’s choice of fixture, you can’t create an architectural experience which is thrilling, mysterious, inquisitive and even hauntingly sticky at times even for a moment, which are human psychological needs and part of their personality to experience such environment, at least just for sake of fun. No wonder at times you cherish that moment of darkness in the rainy damp evening or moonlit night when suddenly there is power cut for a brief period, because you have just experienced the dimly lit darker side of architecture which was never intended for you to experience in its original form, but only you know that how much it means to you to experience that very silence of spatial darkness, that mysterious view of dusk from the dark corner of your room, that stillness of ambiance and lack of bright LED light, that passionate experience in the beautiful and diluting sphere of space and light created by that single candle lit on the dining table, that momentarily grey sheds of otherwise bright and warm colors of interior walls. We are talking about darker side of architectural experience which induces a momentarily feeling of introspection to the occupant through its very silence, stillness darkness and grunginess, many writers, directors, photographers, architects, and artists will be able to relate to such experience. Grunge architectural experience which in thought provoking and inspires you at times and which is innate human psychological need somewhere buried in the subconscious under the monumental load of popular architectural experience!  

By: Anoop Jha

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

Why such vast gap exists in statistical interpretation of a single fact?

Statistics considers raw data while people tend to value associated sentiments.

If you are going for a primary survey with a standard template of closed ended questionnaires or some kind of table to be filled with numbers you might not be doing real justice to the survey. You might have a reasonable amount of data at end of the day to conclude your assignment or research, but you won’t be able to do the realistic assessment of the situation. You might fulfill the acceptable standards of data gathering; you might even publish the result and can even bag an award or two, but if the very people who got surveyed are not being able to relate to the statistical conclusion, or if they do not validate it, all the efforts of data collection and analysis goes to vain.

You will be surprised to realize that still at many instances the situation shown of paper and the actual situation experienced by the population is drastically different, though data for situation analysis was gathered from the same population or community. Then why this vast gap of interpreted and locally experienced situation exists? Why this constant apparent difference of opinion between government’s point of view and what media and NGO’s showcase about the city, region or community etc. There are few possible reasons, first is that statistics is very flexible domain, though outcome seems very impactful there is enough scope to mould or influence the direction of outcome, still staying within legally of intellectually acceptable limit. The kind of data you select to gather, variety of assumptions you take into consideration, mode and tool of statistical analysis you choose to go with, time span considered for analysis, selection and heterogeneity of sample itself, there are so many such variables that one can interpret and influence the outcome in any possible direction depending on the purpose or intention. Larger the data set, greater the flexibility of interpretation.

Government being a powerful entity with ample manpower and resources has generally upper hand when it comes to data collection and interpretation and usually less probability of misrepresentation, but again it depends on what they want to prove or convey. Media and NGO who generally lack enough data due to manpower constraint to prove a fact applicable to a larger domain generally tend to rely on emotional values attached to the subject or region and sentiments of population or communities to prove their point. They generally choose small set of data though having high perceived or emotional value and exploit the associated sentiments. On one hand there is ample scope of playing with data and on the other hand equally or more or less scope to play with people’s emotions and sentiments but ultimately both leads to distortion of fact. And this show of constant blame and justification goes on and on. Actual fact seems to lose the significance while this argument is on, later no one really bothers to reach to the actual fact.

Unless statistics as a knowledge stream would device a method and make it a mandate to consider or quantify and incorporate the emotional and sentimental values attached to the subject of research and aspirations of communities to the extent possible along with some kind of post analytic appraisal and indigenous validation method, data representation would remain deceptive and at the mercy of decision making individuals or groups. Meanwhile we as a layman can mitigate this doubt of data misrepresentation by keeping a questioning, skeptical or neutral attitude towards impactful data being presented day to day from both government end as well as media and social welfare representative’s end, without being panicked, without arriving at immediate conclusion, cross verifying the fact from different sources, applying our own head and intuition, knowing and reminding them that their job is to inform us not to instigate or incite us. You are capable enough to judge yourself; all you need is a fair amount of fair data and statistics or simply a fair representation.

By : Anoop Jha

Anything you find out in Google in 20 seconds shouldn’t be asked in interview!!

Rethinking entrance process for higher education 

University entrance interview, a day in a life of aspiring students, which is going to play an instrumental role in deciding their future course of life, on this occasion one has to be very careful to ask the right questions, and to assess the candidates holistically. Even in that short period of interview candidates should be judged not only on technical grounds but on many more qualitative parameters as well, like their tenacity to learn, adaptability to new environment, receptiveness to new thoughts, respect to righteousness, having courage to put forth their ideas in which they believe, an ever questioning and inquisitive mind etc. different institutes use different mix of these and many other parameters to identify the right minds for their institutes and universities. Good news is that today institution’s focus is already started shifting from simply technical and quantitative aspects to perceptual, analytical and other qualitative aspects of candidate’s persona in the academic interview process.

Still many prominent educational institutes have apparently not been able to embrace the pleasant change which new information age is providing today. They still seem to be caught in the same old technical assessment issues when it comes to academic entrance process. Still asking basic technical and quantitative questions like it’s a quiz show running instead of an interview. For instance; questions like “Who conceptualised Garden City?” or “what are the sources of municipal finance?” or “What are the main elements/ components of so and so?” or “what do you know about such and such thing?” are wrong questions to ask today. Who designed what in which city in which year in which architectural style, how does it matter here, who cares? Asking such questions to a kid already or soon to be laced with smart-phone is irrelevant these days. Right question to ask are “How relevant you think is the garden city concept today?” (Explain the concept first, even if you have to), “What do you think can be possible innovative sources of income for a municipal body?” (no matter how bizarre is the answer, let’s face it) what are the takeaways from that architectural style (show them the images even if you have to, even if they don’t know a bit about that building or that architect), ask them about their perception, what do they think what’s so great or ugly about that design without being judgmental or biased, how relevant is that design today and so on.

When they have all the quantitative information at their fingertips through internet, social and professional networking and all, they can’t afford to memorize encyclopedia of architecture or planning to get admission in architecture or planning institute, there is no need to do that. These new breed of candidates should be rather judged on their aptitude to analytically infer and logically translate the available information for a better world. They should be judged on their apparent intensity and inclination to learn rather than memorizing capability. After all they will be here in institute for few months or years, so they can always be taught those technical aspects they don’t know yet, but these technical and factual questions are no ground to judge their capabilities, no ground to accept or to reject them at this point of time.  

By Anoop Jha    

    

What with urban farming? Can we make it happen?

Urban farming, a real good concept, something which might save the humanity from starvation. How far we are from autonomous urban system, system which generates enough food for itself, food affordable enough to reach the lowest economic strata of urban system, food pallet diverse enough to suite the heterogeneous  appetite of cosmopolitan city.  Why it is that we started doing agriculture thousands of years ago, but basic principal of agricultural has remained same apart from high-tech agricultural  machines,  tools, pesticides, genetically modified crops etc., why it seems stagnated, while in the course of evolution world population is shifting more and more towards urban centers but the source of food which was in the rural areas have remained there itself, of course it triggers economic growth, employment etc. through to and fro movement of processed and unprocessed food between urban and rural areas, which perfectly makes sense, but have we done it purposefully, or is it that we couldn’t devise a full blown method to get our food produced in the city itself,  apart from small experimental efforts of terrace farming etc. dotted here and there on the city map. Of course, city chooses its own priority activities in its core while pushing and spreading less important activities towards periphery and surrounding rural  regions. Is it that we are  treating urban farming as a luxury lifestyle item like terrace farming which can be shown to our guests with pride, is it that urban farming has just become a formula to get noticed in the race of green architecture, or a green USP to convince the client and sell the project to a wealthy end user, is it just a tool to prove that you are environmentally enlightened or has it really a potential to feed the city.

Can we make urban farming a concept easy enough  to be grasped by an average city dweller since gardening and farming involves skills and knowledge which is not taught in school,  a process easy enough to be implemented in the every balcony and every terrace of the city, can government provide training and  motivation to its citizen with supportive policies to make widespread urban farming a reality.



Can we expect array of fruit trees along the city streets in the near future, can we expect orchard and vegetable farming in the public parks and abandoned land parcels as a sustainable urban landscape effort. Can we expect urban farming in majority of houses,  apartment and premises of any city, implemented through training, stringent bylaws, tax saving policies,  subsidies and persistent efforts.  Can we give our child an opportunity to witness agricultural life cycle in their own private premises to better understand the process of life.     

Have we ever thought that urban farming might not be a luxury to showcase but an inevitable necessity for every city, which we are delaying and prolonging somehow?  

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.    

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. 

Walkability demands flexibility : new approach to neighborhood planning

By - Anoop Jha

Number of available choices defines quality of urban environment and experience

Walking and jogging  trail

Image shows actual walking trail around a lagoon in some part of Santa Barbara, with different route options for people to choose from, one shorter complete loop around waterbody and other longer route which also includes dotted segment. Close view  of lagoon is an incentive to walk extra length of dotted route otherwise people can take shorter route if they are in hurry or tiered. There has be different available exit choices for people, to make any pedestrian or walkable plan successful whether its planning of park or commercial complex or mega exhibition pavilion.

[Handpicked Books]