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

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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!! 

City’s problem isn't congestion; problem is the way we approach to solve the congestion!

Majority of city's problems can be solved by simply restructuring policies, but physical infrastructure is more lucrative an option for many.

You can pump millions of dollars in augmenting and upgrading city infrastructure, of course you should, but city in its functionality will still remain a mess and increasingly convoluted unless you pause and think that what has been wrong with our planning approach, why it is that our planning solutions always seem to lag far behind the pace of growth, is it revenue constraints? No! Is it land constraint? No! It is nothing but common sense deficit. It’s simple, if it doesn’t work go back to the drawing board, put you approach up-side-down or whatever, something different need to be introduced; at least as an experiment.

Our conventional planning approach borrowed from industrial age has remained more or less the same since decades, that is to put it crudely "Planning means addition", more people - let’s make more housing, more congestion - let’s make more flyovers, more heat let’s put more air conditioners and so on.

Buildinganother affordable housing is not a problem but it’s also not the solution. Building another flyover will of course ease the traffic for sometime but it is also not the solution which cities are looking for. The single largest criteria of a livable city can be effortlessness of any city, but effort seems to be the mandate of our city life. 

Have we ever considered why such sheer number of people are heading to metropolis in the first place apart from recreational purposes, it’s not because metropolis provide better employment opportunities, it’s because we simply fail to provide livelihood opportunity in small towns and villages. Can we suggest something to calm down this vary pace of regional population flux, instead of simply focusing on making another housing colony here in every metropolis, can we propose something which will help people earn their livelihood in the place of their choice not only in the place where they often come to struggle and survive.

Have we ever considered before making another flyover that why so many people and car out there on the roads in the first place, is it really necessary in this so called wired era for every single individual to commute to work to accomplish a job, is it that being physically present at a specified location every work weekday is of such monumental importance in a time of century were everyone claim to be virtually connected to everyone and having access to the resources of whole world on their finger tip. Considering this can we suggest something to reduce the very need or frequency of people to come to streets, people who commute to work 5-6 days a week or 24 to 40 hour a week. 

Why people have to waste a substantial portion of their productive lifetime commuting on city roads or tracks, commuting long hours to work mostly doing nothing, may be listening to music or playing video game on their tab, why to commute to work unless they work in a factory like production environment.

You see we are so caught up in the debate of public transport vs. private transit vs. walkability that no one is willing to ask this fundamental question why does every one of you have to commute almost every day for the purpose of work choking almost every street of city, why have we created such system or business environment or society in general. We simply can’t seem to think of any other possibility than expanding infrastructure trying to meet the pressure of self imposed need of commuting for work.

Whether travelling through private or public transport or walking to work, it’s still a waste of precious time, energy and resources. Can you even imaging the lost opportunity cost of millions of people spending several hours commuting to work-home-work almost every day of their productive like. After decades of industrialization is it still so important even today for 200 employees of a random organization to agglomerate everyday at a specific place called office at a specific time to accomplish some work, majority of which can be done from anywhere in the world, majority of which on majority of days does not fundamentally demand physical presence of worker or employee in office. Can’t we instead of simply expanding the city and transport network think of reducing the number and frequency of trip to work? Can’t we think of increasing the share of recreational trip and reducing the work trip instead of aggressively focusing on increasing the share of public transport?

This conventional additive approach of planning is a vicious cycle of inefficiency perceived as virtuous cycle and promoted relentlessly without delving deep into the roots of problem and without pausing and questioning the inertia of planning process. Instead of this additive approach, a supplementary approach of planning is needed for fostering and supporting equitable growth across the region, and at the same time conventional planning wisdom which is dear to many, needto be questioned!

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!! 

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Elevating financial profile of a community is much easier than perceived.

By – Anoop Jha

Creating community potential inventory and building capacity

When it comes to economic development of a region or community, there are always two choices available for the governing authorities. First, to let the business go on as usual that is apparent in majority of cases, second, to take deliberate catalytic measures to enhance the economic profile of a community as a whole and hence elevating financial profile of the individuals and households. In the first case, all the efforts of government remains targeted to somehow sustain the past economic growth rate of the region, general governing psychology is to please the community with showing little increment in overall growth rate, hence securing the vote bank and if that is not possible there are so many tricks to present even weak economic profile and data in number of glorified ways. If you want to taste a flavor of statistical manipulation, a widely recommended book is “How to Lie with Statistics -by Darrell Huff”. Anyway, coming to the second case, it takes a vision, intelligence and determination of government and policy makers to elevate the financial profile of a community and individuals in a real sense, which is after all not that difficult as historically projected by government itself by blaming lack of resources or by policy makers, relying too much on age old economic theories, failing to understand and tap emerging possibilities, or by mainstream media which is more concerned about blaming administration and debating on trivial statistics rather than educating and helping community to find out other additional possible economic resources and options.

There is one fundamental flaw in the way government approaches the community economics. Their current method and thrust is to gather information form community, derive inferences from its analysis, propose measures to tackle it and allocate the fund to achieve the same for the given time period and done for a while. But this model is not sustainable because in this model community is totally dependent on external aid and support while their potential remains untapped. Community needs an economic model which puts community economic growth on autopilot mode; of course they need some kind of assistance from government also in terms of strategic structure, creating infrastructure and some monitory help in the beginning. A better model of economic growth for a region would be to extract the previously untapped potential of a community, every household, and every individual for their own development. A community holds key of its own success, they have huge unrecognised potential in totality, which if tapped and nourished can help them create a much better economic profile.

Census or community data are mostly related to demography and they are quantitative in nature. Here is a list of data items collected during survey by Census of India. http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/data_item_collected_in_census.aspx  

What is lacking here is the qualitative data.  Qualitative data is essential to understand the potential of individual and community as a whole, and to formulize a holistic economic strategy for the region and community which is beyond time or resources.  Government should also include qualitative items in census survey while asking questions to individuals and household like what is their strength, what economic activity they would like to peruse given a choice or if made mandatory? What are their economic aspirations? What are their hobbies or talent in which they would like to get training and government support to take it further as an additional household economic activity? What are the three immediate measures and assistance they are expecting from government as an individual or household to peruse their dream leading to economic development? What are they good at? What are the excess resources which they would like to share or transfer to society or community if needed, whether its material, time or knowledge?

Government need to prepare the inventory of potential and talent lying within the community itself. They have to find and create and nourish entrepreneur in every household and should provide every possible support and training for the same, if they want to raise the economic profile of any community, society or region. These entrepreneurial activities can be in addition to their primary economic activities. They need to create entrepreneur out of every housewife, out of every teenage, out of senior citizens. Each one of them have latent talent which need to be unlocked for they own sake and for the sake of better and autonomous society. All they need to do is to identify the potential, building capacity on that direction and create linkage between talent and market, rest of economic activities and growth will follow on its own.

Pro-poor Regional Planning: Strategic proposal

By- Anoop Jha

Mainstream Socio – economic Integration of poor and underprivileged

Impact of Regional Planning is slow but it is long-lasting. It is directly related to growth of region hence it has to be inclusive for downstream befits. It has evolved to cater to a much larger population base. It shapes the socio-economic future trends of the region and even the nation. There are different strategies which can and should be adopted as part of the Regional Development Plan and Regional Tourism and transportation Plan. Some of the pro-poor strategies for regional planning are as follows –

Social Integration of poor and underprivileged strata of society

Reviving and reinforcing local art, culture, history, of the region   

Promoting local Artisans, craftsman and artists,

Establishing Service and food processing industries

Creating zonal art, craft, food-grain, Wholesale and retail markets as active and vibrant nodes

Networking nodes through all weather road

Small scale industries

Training

Storage facilities

Hospitality

Natural eco tourism, Food and eateries 

Rural tourism

Culture trekking

Nurturing talent pool

Resource mobilisation,

Micro financing and community based program