Projection for long range development vision- What are the limitations?

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

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One of the inherent limiting factor of long range development vision, especially City or Metropolitan Development plan is "Projection". While multiple alternate growth scenarios - like in case of population projections- are assesses including business as usual, exponential case scenario etc. through a scientific, statistical and pragmatic approach, but soon afterwards while selecting the optimal case scenario out of handful of alternatives, science tends to get replaced by somewhat abstract sweeping logic and individual or herd preferences and usually a "bullish scenario" is selected unanimously, because "vision" is perceived to be bright and luminescent,  and rest other scenarios are sidelined.

Now very much convinced with the assumptions and choice of decision, projected numbers (say derived future population) assume concrete significance and starts dictating physical planning and form of city (like BUA, FAR, PCU), but in actuality such numbers (say projected population) may or may not be achieved or may exceed projected numbers, only to be evident half a decade later or so. Over stressed city infrastructure and ghost cities both are  results of over reliance on single final future scenario and discarding equally valid other possible scenarios.

It's worth acknowledging that a single market ready technological advancement in span of 3 to 5 years, has potential to disrupt 30 odd year vision plan just like that.

Vision and long range planning should be as agile, accomodative and resilient as possible; to be revisited, reinvented and reconfigured in short intermediate spans and it should also have a monitoring dashboard mechanism with a continuous feedback loop.  Additionally, vision document must elaborate and articulate multiple scenarios, their impacts and concrete response measures, plan-B, Plan-C and so on.

Author: Anoop Jha

Statistical bias and insufficiency!

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

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The problem with statistics other than it's 1) susceptibility to misinterpretation and 2) confirmation bias is that 3) the moment you try to universalise statistical outcome, it gets diluted and loses its granularity and significance and 4) if you hardly get any robust and substantiated temporal data of a specific region or set of subjects (with its innate challenges, strengths, context and conditions) to support your argument it anyway still remains too remote, meagre or ephemeral to be of any material significance to the other three fourth part of world.

e.g., wrt above numbers

1) #Commercial / #political interest statistics

2) #Agenda / #ideological driven statistics

3) encompassing subjects like #poverty #urbanisation

4) statistics wrt #ecology, #heritage, #bicycleusage

If not true for all sectors, segments or subjects; same has been recurring  theme and daunting issue with majority instances of statistical interpretation/ outcome

Statistics to be presented with a note of caution and to be received with a dash of scepticism.

Author: Anoop Jha

#Statistics  #modeling #projection #urbanplanning #governance #commerce

Why public transport system should reach breakeven much before projected

Dilemma of perceived order and actual chaos

A case of typical buzzing metropolitan city of any developing country

Ever wondered while travelling in a suffocatingly overcrowded metro or local train that whether they might have shown similar huge footfall numbers in their design and financial reports? Don’t think so. Because they can’t!!

No guideline in the world allows such high density of footfall per unit area within any public transport system, because that is insane, that is inhuman. But unfortunately its happening, because huge gap of demand and supply. And we accept it, we don’t mind, we don’t question, we don’t have option, we not only accept it, we often praise it, of course public transport is a wonderful system of mass transit, but no wonder why a huge segment of population still prefer to travel by their own car, spending money and time like anything, just to get a private breathing space inside their personal car.

When it comes to transport numbers and financial projections for mass public transport system in overpopulated cities of developing countries, it’s usually purposefully flawed. Why? There is a catch. Metro and rail coaches are designed to accommodate a fixed maximum carrying capacity based on standards and international norms. Sounds good!! Because these standards consider the acceptable optimum and comfortable footfall/ ridership density as there thumbrule with some inbuilt tolerance for unexpected occasional growth in ridership and of course while doing design and financial projections for the MRT projects, consultants take these standard thumbrules as there basis for calculation with some contingency/ margin and they model there business plan as per this acceptable norms. They can’t show realistic overcrowded scenario in their financial calculations and projections because no financing agency/ bank/ partner will accept the model which is prepared by breaking the rule- like standard acceptable ridership density. Technically and morally they can’t propose a transport system which will be operating at an efficiency of 150-200% of its design capacity even if it is an inevitable case, because its unsafe, because it’s not acceptable on many grounds, at least they can’t disclose it in public domain otherwise there would be too much of hue and cry on the subject.  So when they come up with a financial projection with specified breakeven point, that breakeven point might not be realistic, it might be far beyond the actual realistic date. In actual overcrowded scenario more footfalls should help achieve breakeven point much early than projected.

It’s high time for those metropolitan cities which are struggling to provide an adequate and morally acceptable comfort level to its people, either in its transit system or may be in domain of housing and who repeatedly fail to provide the same due to unmanageable population growth and financial constraints, should recognize their constraints, and devise an operational methodology which is more realistic and suitable to their specific need.



May be they should accept inevitable higher population density and need to revise the ridership density thumbrule/ standards, reflecting real life scenarios of the city accepting their limitations, and should use the same in design and financial calculation. Understanding its limitations and inevitability of growth, may be a high density city needs a tougher and much robust metro and rail coaches with robust inbuilt facilities, robust air-conditioning system, higher air exchange rate, temper-proof interior, with more sophisticated audiovisual information system for fast and safe passenger exchange to avoid chaos due to confusion, may be they need better imbedded security system, may be they need to be educated in the school itself how to travel and behave in an overcrowded public transport system. May be they need to be educated in the planning schools to take into account real life scenarios while learning projections, maybe planners should be taught to challenge the validity and contextuality of thumbrules, established norms, methods and age old theories rather than simply imitating and following them in decades of inertia.  We will definitely have more and more sophisticated simulation tools for better understanding of the situation and more realistic projections, but we will still need human perception and judgment for a holistic planning which is beyond those formulas.

Some thoughts on socio-economic projections can be found here in another post titled “How reliable are socio-economic future projections?” http://planningurbanoregional.blogspot.in/2011/11/how-reliable-are-socio-economic-future.html

By- Anoop Jha

Future-proofing urban planning

By Anoop Jha

Understanding future dynamics of urban environment

Urban planning projects present a multifaceted and dynamics set of challenges over its project lifecycle and during its subsequent operational phase. Due to dynamic behavior, polycentric domain, complex cross-sectoral interaction, varying scale and time of execution and operation within urban environment it is difficult to perceive future problems, constraints and direction of growth.

Only possible solution to understand the future dynamics of urban environment is to extract static elements in terms of quantitative measurements from the array of dynamic qualitative urban environment and actions like climate, social interaction, active transportation, combining them with the static elements of city like urban built form, concealed infrastructure. Each element of this derived quantitative inventory need to be assigned some index based on its weightage, and based on these indexes a comprehensive urban vulnerability matrix need to be prepared.  After a thorough and periodic assessment of vulnerability indictors from evaluation matrix, relevant revitalisation, prevention and recovery strategies against each item of this matrix need to be listed to for future proofing urban development and environment.  

How reliable are socio-economic future projections?

By - Anoop Jha

There are always some uncertainties of projections in planning process.

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

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

Pedestrian Vehicular conflict : why can’t we seem to find a solution?

By - Anoop Kumar Jha

Missing Human Behavioral Analysis aspect in Transport Simulation Model

No matter how functional and mathematically sound a transportation plan and related infrastructure design for any city or stretch appear before implementation, there is always a conflict between vehicular and pedestrian circulation which appears only once the transport plan is in place and functional, it’s the story of every city and every stretch. Blogs and forums are filled with discussions and captured photographs of such pedestrian vehicular conflicts.

It’s a conflict between pedestrians desire to take easiest and shortest route and transport planners age old scientific approach planning with modern simulation tools. Its conflict between “human desire” and “scientific approach”.  

In a country like India, apart from education and enforcement there is one missing crucial aspect which leads to pedestrian vehicular conflict in urban setting, that is understanding of human behavior and learning from past and other projects mistakes. It appears that common man collectively always appear smarter than the panel of planners, designers and implementation and enforcement agencies, because no matter how sound they make any system or transport plan people always find out loopholes in it. People are willing to take the dangerous shortcuts, break the law and even risk their life to reach the destination quickly. There is almost similar pattern and language of such human behavior across the cities and towns of India when it comes to intra city travel, but transport planners do not seem to observe and learn from such cases. Its high time that they should observe, document and incorporate human behavioral analysis in the transport simulation model to arrive at a successful transport plan for a city. 

Transport plan, systems and tools also need to be regionalized or localized, because what works in Bogota  or America or Europe might not work in Delhi or Surat or Jaisalmer  if replicated in-toto. 

Commercial Development Cost: PPP Projects

Cost Comparision of Commercial PPP projects 
(Cost in Rs. Cr.)

Post by: Anoop Jha

PPP based Water & Sewage Infrastructure Costing

By - Anoop Jha


Cost Comparison of Water Supply, WTP & STP PPP projects 
(Cost in Rs. Cr.)

PPP model water projects

Water related projects vary in scale as well as nature, which ranges from National level river water management to state level irrigation projects to city level flood management to neighborhood level water supply and distribution system. considering the widespread and vital nature of water system these projects demands huge capital and recurring investments in Operation and Maintenance (O&M). Governments revenue inflow might not be sufficient to take care of all demands of water related projects, so long term private participation has been encouraged in recent past in India for commercially viable and attractive projects mainly in form of public private partnership (PPP), mostly in urban infrastructure segments  like water supply and distribution as well as health and sanitation. larger project baskets like flood management, irrigation canals, dams, etc are primarily under control of state and central government.  

Urban Infrastructure : Investment Vs Operations and Maintenance (O&M)

Investment Vs O&M

Urban Infrastructure Cost

Per Capita Investment Cost by Sector

(Rs at 2009-10 prices)

Source:  Report on Indian  Urban Infrastructure and Services 

Per Capita Operations and Maintenance Cost (annual) by Sector

Source:  Report on Indian  Urban Infrastructure and Services 

Urban Infrastructure Investment Requirement (2012-31)

(Rs crore)

                            

Source:  Report on Indian  Urban Infrastructure and Services 

Operations and Maintenance Expenditure by Sector (2012-31)

Source:  Report on Indian  Urban Infrastructure and Services 

Pattern of per Capita investment in different urban infrastructure sectors and O&M cost are somewhat different from each other, while Urban Roads demands more capital investment , Water Supply, Sewage, SWM, Urban Road & Transport require more O&M investment. 

"Water utilities in India are typically able to recover only 30-35 per cent of the operations and maintenance (O&M) cost.Even with current levels of highly inadequate service, solid waste management accounts for 25-50 per cent of a ULB’s expenditure (World Bank 2006), but cities recover less than 50 per cent of the O&M cost, according to a study by the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. ULBs will be required to invest 54 per cent on capital investment and close to 25 per cent on the O&M of physical assets by 2021-22. In practice, user charges cover less than 50 per cent of the O&M cost of basic infrastructure services in India, on an average"

Source:  Report on Indian  Urban Infrastructure and Services