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!! 

Thoughts on Complete Street Design

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

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

Technology to increasingly make world a level play field.

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

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Few years ago the best pizza delivery guys were those who had addresses on their fingertips, likewise the best drivers were those who had every city street memorised. Come today and that difference in skillset of various pizza delivery guy and different drivers is gone. Everyone of them is more or less equally empowered and informed about neighborhood street and addresses thanks to map based realtime tracking and navigation. No one considered how technology is going to change the rules of game increasingly making this world a level play field for all one segment at a time.

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.  

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A den of your own in a public realm!

Soon you will be carrying your very own personal space in your pocket or purse!

Yeh true we all like crowd, faceless crowd rather, even the cloistered ones ocassionaly dream of getting lost in the sea of masses. Social animal they call us though everyone's  "social" is different. In a crowd called social some prefer dialogue, some monologue, some play observant and some like to withdraw in a safe corner.  But for sure everyone's life revolves around this thing "social" and everyone craves for this thing called "personal" (space) at the same time!

Like duality is a natural phenomenon observed in nature, "bittersweet taste for example", this perpetual  duality also transposes and gets reflected in human psyche,  "should I? Shouldn't I?" Hence as social is natural to our instinct, so is the craving for personal.

While we are busy planning our cities and communities we often tend to forget about individual needs and craving for secure personal spaces. A space of their own in a public realm- A need which was never talked about, never asked, never fulfilled and not intended to be given any time soon by urban planners and designers.  If you think you have been considerate enough on this issue as a planner, an urban designer or a landscape architect can you think of when did you last design a chair for a park or street instead of bench? Or for that matter when did you even last see a chair instead of bench in any public space? Why do one has to share a sitting space or bench with some stranger in a park or street, charming or otherwise. A solitary chairs in public space is a rare sight if so exists.

Its unfortunate that a solitary person in public realm usually has threat perception attached to it though this very crowd is made up of multiple individuals, seeking their own private space and identity.

So till the time virtual-reality  and holographic spaces takes over the public plaza and streets and parks to cater to personal spaces, we can have an intermediate solution today-Something like  a "space foam" or "3d reinforced fiber mesh" or a "statically charged reinforced siderweb polymer" or "anything which is light, structurally stable and yes biodegradable with self ufolding,  collapsing, binding or with "Spray ability", any one of these in a pressurised Can, something like Shaving Gel Can or Pepper Spray container.

Imaging you 3d spraying (not 3d printing) your own space, like a Cocoon, a temporary human scale shelter when u feel like running away from the crowd, and all from a disposable refillable container you can carry in your pocket or purse.

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Urban development is contagious, keep an eye and let it spread!

One gear triggers other and whole machine gets activated.

Process of urban development is spontaneous, sometimes sluggish sometimes fast but always forward looking, if left on its own it will automatically morph and mutate and expand, to cater, to accommodate, by utilizing whatever little or more they have, by seeking and digging what and when they require. And we are not talking about another Squatter!

Left on its own city might sustain and prosper or it might entangle and be a mess, but it will grow for sure, that’s how we have made our journey from jungle to habitat spanning centuries. We need planning upfront today different from mud house age since our needs have changed and so the externalities, otherwise natural mutation of habitat or city should technically be sustainable a phenomenon.

Development has inertia of growth inbuilt we just don’t know in which direction, though we really don’t have to push is so hard we have to just push it to keep it rolling and have to give it a logical direction.

Upfront capital being a key constraint in urban development sector, an example of mutating self-sustaining habitat can be an additive model of shelter where you give only that much of infrastructure which is basic but with provision of ample spatial flexibility and assistance at disposal, and letting them build further on their own, based on their capacities, choices and needs. Creating some rules to play with and giving them an assistive hand when and where they require.

A favorable environment, assistive and vigil governance and a scientific approach are what we need to see this natural development phenomenon unfold and sustain.

Art on Autopilot - Since you dont have time!

Long back read that some sculptor spent his whole life making several sculptures for a large garden, sounds cool but what a waste of life, seriously! In case you paint a Monalisa or something than you might think its worthwhile, since you made a masterpiece for generations to come, but all of us ain't Vinchi. 

With whatever capabilities we possess we can have two possible choices to make, one is to make a masterpiece to be remembered or to create abundance of art for yourself and for humanity. Abundance can give you instant opportunity to channelise your creative energy rather than waiting to make that one masterpiece for which you are waiting since last 10 years. And we are not talking about just fine arts, it can be anything, any form of creative affair which you love to be engaged in, you see even pattern of numbers is art for statistician, that's art for her!

So how will you create abundance when art is not your bread n butter and you are ever occupied with inexhaustible to-do list for your lifetime. Solution is to put your art on an autopilot mode. Making art anywhere everywhere, art which consumes least amount of time but is still an art to your satisfaction.

To keep your thinking wheel rotating an example can be like; take a complex peice of sculpture or object or take simply a junk, spill a bucket or mug of  water in front of it, see the amazing reflection in water, now click or capture or paint or draw that reflection or the whole environment or simply observe and feel blessed to see your creation, additionally spill some paint in the  water or add a mirror in the backdrop if you want or just do anything you like and your are ready with your art piece.

Idea is that it might take substantial time to create that very sculpture or art piece for example, whose reflection you are trying to capture but the moment you added thin film of water or a mirror for example the whole dynamics changed, now the whole setting is complex enough to qualify for an art, your personal art. See Master Artists used to paint pomegranate and guava to create classic masterpiece called “Still Life”, you simply cut them in half and one-click-capture the intricate pattern or just cut-n-shape them in cube and you are ready with your modern piece of art.

The best thing is that it’s you who have created this art, and you own this art; at least it gives you satisfaction to see your creativity manifested, in a blink of eye almost. This shortcut of art is just an example, because you were really running short of time to be devoted to art but you really wanted to create some, now you can think of infinite possibilities to dump the excuse that you could have created something only if you had time. This is how you beat the art!  

Digital art is so convenient

You can paint or draw on a touch screen, on the go, deriving primitive sense of satisfaction by applying  paint with your bare hand; without need of arranging the paint brush canvas logistics and all of this without getting your hand wet. Only drawback  is that you will miss the fresh raw smell of paint and oil. Go for it!

Habitat Automation - Can our computers generate architectural concepts on their own?

Automation of Architecture seems to be the only way to fulfill this world dream of a home for everyone!

We all know computers are really good at visual simulation, 3D Modeling and Rendering etc., but when it comes to architectural concept design part can we also assign this task to computers or do we still have to rely solely on architects, for may be another century. We can’t really afford to wait even for another decade considering the handful of Architects in world and ever mounting unattended architectural needs of millions and more across the world, resulting in epidemic architectural indiscipline, in forms of unorganized colonies, squatters etc.  You see the problem is the moment we tag these habitations as squatter or unorganized it becomes a taboo, government and architects tend to lose their interest in such settlement thinking they will deal with it later, they simply let it happen blaming the scarce current resources, letting it morph and mutate, left unattended and when it becomes unmanageable, planners and NGOs come into picture doing their standard Slum Networking and Regularization stuff.  Don’t you think if these guys would have collaborated and helped those guys in the beginning while they just started making their home on their own, in absence of any substantial external assistance and in absence of contextual building bylaws, things would have been very different? Though we know that one of the major reason of such unorganized growth is demand supply gap of skilled manpower specially architects and planners. This gap will always be there so what will we do?

We can’t design and build home for everyone on earth with these limited skill supply, but we can sure help everyone design and build their home on their own with some robust mechanism in place, with very little assistance so that everyone in this world has a place called home.  If there isn’t enough architects and planners in world than we will have to find out some external tool which will assure a home for everyone! We will have to automate this very process of architectural design making it universally accessible at almost no cost, and please do consider that we are not at all talking here about mass housing or government welfare scheme or something. We are talking about knowledge transfer, relaxed, easy to understand and innovative and stratified building guidelines, innovative use of locally available materials and most important of all - automation of architectural design process itself. We are here talking about shear intelligence of computer to do more than 90 percent of architectural design including concept design and delivery part while architects and governing body to take up the rest 10 percent or so of task just to assure the quality of delivered options, rectifying fundamental issues, if any!

With millions of reference images floating freely on internet in form of architectural plans, schematic views, sectional profiles, site plans, neighborhood plans, area plans, city and regional plans, while many millions coming soon, along with almost unlimited supply of architectural and settlement patterns in form of satellite imageries, it won’t be a Herculean task for present and next generations of computers to understand the logic of all this and to produce a somewhat rational building or neighborhood plan and form on its own through its embedded logic and algorithm. Little bit of last mile human intervention and everyone in this world has a blueprint for their home.

Imagine feeding a set of crude data like your architectural wishlist, site location, plot dimension, uploading few pictures of site, surrounding and neighborhood, stating your financial position and budget, then exploring computer generated wonderful building options based on your data input, customizing it within the defined domain if you feel, choosing final one and downloading your own home in pendrive, or mailing it to competent authority or architect for few minutes of final approval. Now, here you are printing plans for execution on site within couple of fun hours, club this phenomenon straight with 3D-Printing thing and here is your home ready to move in, in another couple of hours.

As policy makers we need to be very realistic about finite resources at hand and look for new ways to complement the conventional process, while breaking away from certain self-imposed dogmas and diehard utopian dream built around human habitation needs and conventionally defined standards, dogmas evident from the fact that we have elaborate building bylaws for brick and mortar, and steel and glass, but no clear set of guidelines for houses made of thermocol, plastic sheet, tin sheet, gathered from here and there by poor urban sections. No efforts of technology, innovation and knowledge transfer yet to such populous, just because policy makers across world have a utopian dream of slum free world after some odd decades later, meanwhile intentionally forcing millions to live in squatters and unorganized colonies by not making simple and easy to understand guidelines and relaxed bylaws, utilizing whatever minimal resources and materials are at hand.  Caught in the centuries of dilemma of idealism Vs realism! Since these limited human interventions with limited skilled manpower supply haven’t been able to solve this world habitation scarcity and architectural indiscipline, may be its time we should look out somewhere else to fulfill world habitat needs - may be towards machines may be computers!   

You might also like to read another post: 
What planners of urban environment can learn from online environment? 

Decoding secrets of good visuals - What makes some images and photographs stand out from the crowd

Some tips, tricks and subjects of images, graphics and photographs which is bound to cast a spell

1)     B&W background subject with semi-transparent bright techno/pop color in      foreground

2)     Picture with range of depth and focus

3)     Green appeal in innovative way

4)     Lush rainy/moist green landscape in terra incognita

5)     Realistic corporate affair capturing the mood of subject and vibes of business  minus ( - ) plastic smiles

6)     Simple things in perspective view

7)     Pattern or geometry unseen before

8)     A well framed shot of pets or wildlife with serious engaging looks

9)     Capturing Interactive and playful pets

10)  Green appeal in innovative way

11)  Bird’s eye view of Rooftop innovation

12)  Well framed commercial subject

13)  Black & Yellow Composition

14)  A well framed worm’s eye view of skyscraper or anything towering

15)  Caves or any undulating interior, lit with bright morning sun displaying    excellent interplay of light and shadow

16)  Translucent colored containers

17)  Hand drawn-water color effect in this era of 3D Simulation

18)  Morning sun rays filtered through simply anything

19)  Innumerable colorful interplay of sunlight and cloud at dawn, dusk further  accentuated if captured in hills

20)  Laughing giggling girls

21)  Asymmetrically captured frame of symmetrical building or symmetrical  something

22)  Translucent building glowing from inside - filtered hint of colors further acts  as charm

23)  White doodle on black background, call it old school blackboard nostalgia or  whatever!

24)  Futuristic ambiance and setting seemingly within reach in near future, not  just another fancy unreachable idiosyncrasy

25)  Anything overwhelmingly luxurious and classic specially interiors

More to come….

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15 things I learned in 10 minutes about photography - Flipping through a reputed travel guide book

15 things I learned in 10 minutes about photography - Flipping through a reputed travel guide book

Amazing revelations about Photography-

1)   It’s not just about Iconic structures or monuments it’s about capturing their interaction with the people

2)   If you are capturing a lively street, capturing an element of motion is a must (people, car etc.)

3)   When capturing sculptures or carved details in the open sun, wait for the right time of the day for the perfect shadow which accentuates the dimension and details of subject

4)   Capture the clouds in the background (particularly at dusk ) and half the job is done

5)   Capture  water fountain in the foreground and half the job is done

6)   Capture someone capturing others (seems a cheap trick though)

7)   If you capture street dining you must capture some element of service - something being served or by someone who is serving the thing

8)   If capturing museum or exhibition you must capture the chemistry between the exhibit and spectator, capture someone quite still and who is trying to understand and appreciate the meaning of exhibit

9)  Capturing the public spaces, capture the people and their behavior at the very intersection  of daylight and shadows (it naturally captures the human dilemma of judgment whether to go out in open sun on stay in the shadow) 

10)       When capturing motion you must have something static for reference, but for best results “that static one” has to be the one of the vary things which are moving (people, car etc.)

11)        Capture a glass building at dusk at the very moment when it gets illuminated in the evening while it is partially illuminated from outside as well from setting sun

12)       There is at least one definite location from where the famous sculpture or display (or structure) looks perfect (and usually it’s the most abused one as well, since whole world seems to capture the shot from the same point)

13)       When taking a shot of any high end restaurant  dining scene, don’t just capture the food and luxury, and candlelight, you need to capture the people having supper, with their interactions and their exaggerated animated  expressions

14)        When in vegetable market capturing a vendor interacting with customer, a price list smudged with chalk or otherwise in the backdrop is must.

15)       Shop display window + scripted shop name typo + passer by = classic shot without fail

Another series of interesting observations will be part of upcoming posts, Join me on twitter @urbanoregional for updates.  Your view and experiences are most welcome.

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Top 50 books of Urban Photography,Art and Aesthetics

A to Z Satellitexted : Urban Planning Text

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!

There used to be character and stories associated with every city street in good old time!

Contemporary Déjà vu streets - the price of mechanization, optimization and efficiency. 

Though green, well groomed, with cool informative signage and everything in place, contemporary city streets lack something, possibly lack of identity, lack of character may be! Every street looks the same more or less, you see from streets of your housing society to the neighborhood to city arteries, apart from little exceptions of some filth some beautification. What has gone wrong with the planners, landscape architects and urban designers today. You should first visualize the impactful streets of historic cities and meandering streets of untouched villages and then have a look at today's super functional streets, speed corridors rather, these are impressive indeed with all its robustness, but these are not impactful, at all, not something leaving lasting impression on our mind, not something to be remembered, not something to be praised by our future generations. Functional but industrial. Templates of supposedly best practices. But we forget that best practices lose their significance the moment we start, duplicating, imposing and transposing them. some of the mass public housing are the best example of how best practices can go wrong. 

Is it that there is no incentive left today at all to plan or design a street with character, is it that cities, public administrations and private clients lack fund (a myth) or we are robbed of imagination, is it that there are some big loopholes and ambiguity in the planning and design guidelines giving planners and designers an excuse not to be creative, is it that we have become so much efficiency oriented that we forgot we are not machines, is it that land is so scarce (a myth again) that we cant afford to have luxury of building streets with a memorable character, is it that after reading all those wonderful street characteristics in school we finally resort to the super efficient mechanized street templates, has it something to do with our optimized geometric city grid and complex infrastructure requirements, is it our drafting software to blame which has almost replaced our dear drawing boards, is it that scope of creativity is increasing being confined to the pedestrian and bicycle streets only, is it that urban designers role has been limited to the extent mentioned in their design guide book which either don't exist or is too vague for the cities of developing countries or too standardized for developed country? You see those bizarre public sculptures and momentous in the streets at places, those are nothing but helpless reactions of creative urban souls who are not being able to create a place called street in the way it should be, due to much propagated and regularized contemporary templates of streets. 

Can we dare to show some creativity amidst this long list of incentives and loopholes for "not to be creative". Can we as a planner, urban designers and landscape experts show them our humane side keeping cities monetary limitations (A myth) aside for a while. Can we design a street with an innate quality of "place" where you would often want to spend your time or something which you would like to appreciate while you driving back home?

Conserving inherited heritage - an urgent challenge!

Need of a micro conservation policy. 

We let our inherited ancestral heritage decay, gathering dust and slowly fading away in the oblivion, inheritance sometimes tangible like that beautiful gramophone, that antique classic chair, that vintage album of family photograph or that intricately carved wooden window of ancestral home somewhere in suburb, inheritance at times even intangible like values, culture, stories and learning, family heritage dilapidated usually due to ambiguous responsibility among siblings, lack of time, lack of alacrity and most importantly in absence of micro conservation mechanism, because we feel disoriented and helpless in absence of such mechanism, a guideline, a supportive hand saying "let me help you conserve your family heritage because we know how important it is for you, and equally important for our nation, because these little inherited objects, antiques, collectibles, vintage photographs, values, stories, prose, poetry, proverbs, lessons, and so on make the larger heritage pool of historical cultural and social importance. You can call it “crowd sourcing of heritage” which subsequently contributing to nation's image building, while maintaining a stock of inheritance. 

This micro conservation mechanism should be prepared by government because heritage even individually possessed is something of national value and something to be proud of and something which should be preserved and documented immediately for the future generation. These family heritage need not necessarily be kept in museum just because it’s of national significance, we can rather let them be with those families and individuals who inherited them, but we must make an effort to help them conserve it, governments role can be as a facilitator, trainer, protector, documenter, providing manpower and finance to restore protect and document every piece of family heritage without getting into affairs of taxation and legality, with sole focus of preservation and documentation of objects of historical importance whether for individuals or for nation, documenting design, motifs, techniques, skill set, learning, stories etc. which are going to corrode and disappear in thin air otherwise!

Thriving market of cheap design aesthetics.

Have you ever wondered why you still find those similar crude designs around even after decades?

Design demands Freedom 

 Image by  karen horton 

So, will they keep producing those sub-standard design and inexpensive aesthetics just because they have found a comfortable niche market for that? a compromising non demanding market segment which is either unaware of their right to aesthetics, right to own good design or they have accepted this false imposed notion of design dictatorship that a good design and aesthetics is only for well-off segment. The restrictive and monopolistic approach towards design only leaves majority of people frustrated witnessing bad designs and cheap aesthetics scattered all around which is usually propagated due to lack of serious talent and affordable skills in design industry or sometimes carefully established to make you feel inexpensive!  

Strengthening Design  

  Image by  Nerds For Nature 

Next time you are travelling in a public transport or while casually strolling through the busy market street, take a serious look around, you might be overwhelmed by the shear abundance of product designs borrowed from your childhood memories, for example look at couple of shoes of those people standing next to you in a subway, chances are, out of ten pairs of shoes you will find one out of this world customized designer pair "a must have it in your wardrobe style", you will see two highly expensive ergonomically designed branded pair, another two pairs from the trending fashion, and another five pairs of shoes with design and aesthetics borrowed from the memories of your distant past, designs borrowed from different time spans of previous couple of decades. It cant just be a coincidence that 40-60% of designed products are still trapped in the evolutionary stage of design, while we already have the best of benchmarks available and established. and it is applicable to almost every type and scale of product available in the market, shoes are just a crude example!

It's the urgent need and responsibility of a designer and a progressive society at large to unlock and libralise the design and aesthetics in a production environment or otherwise, and educate masses towards the same, letting this dissipated knowledge and awareness permeate through the consciousness of otherwise design ignorant and aesthetically suppressed consumers and society, a wind of change which will help make a better ambiance and surrounding whichever part of the world or whichever corner of the city you are in at the moment.

you might like this post on Design Democracy as well called "Deprived of design aesthetics?" 

Post-calamity socio-physical reconstruction: Untapped potential of urban planning!

It’s high time they should care for heritage values of shattered settlements.

Contemporary planning response : A wake-up call!! 

Any Natural calamity, An Earthquake, A Tsunami, A Flood or A Hurricane strangles the life of community and leaves a physical and emotional mark behind! Damage which is irreversible, but still people gather their spirit and strength and try to reconstruct that which has been shattered, their home, their neighborhood, their community, their village, their city, sometimes on their own sometimes hand in hand with community, with the support of government and with the aid and good wishes from around the world. It’s a collective effort of those who care to rebuild, those who feel responsibility to reconstruct, everyone contributes their bit!

A relevant question to ask here is that what an urban planner, an architect, an urban designer, a conservationist or a policy maker can do to restore the faith, hope and dignity of that community, How they can better contribute in the socio-physical reconstruction after an unforeseen natural calamity which physically shatters the settlement, a settlement which might have evolved in course of centuries whether it’s a village or a small town or a metropolitan city. Of course such situations demand a quick immediate response, a fast solution, a resettlement plan, a re-construction effort, a physical master plan to absorb and protect the affected population as quickly as possible; an infrastructure fast and techno-economically optimized enough to be viable. But in this race of providing the immediate comfort and amenities to the affected population we usually tend to forget or sometimes purposefully ignore the very basic need of community, the settlement itself, the fabric of settlement with which community has intimately remained attached throughout its life, probably they have grown together help shaping each other and hence the highly emotional bonding of community and settlement cannot be ignored neither its legacy of heritage value and learning.

In a neighborhood or community affected or devastated by natural calamity, an individual is not just bothered about his or her own loss, their own damaged house, but they are subconsciously also moved by the loss of others in the community and their very own settlement and neighborhood which has been shattered heavily. Their memories of growing in that neighborhood, those winding streets, their facades and architecture, their community spaces, those lingering familiarities and so on. We can try to reconstruct the original face of settlement if the damage is low and concealable, but sometimes they feel it’s better to reconstruct the settlement in adjacent open lands if the physical damage is much, this phenomenon is more noticeable and even more a point of concern in the rural or small urban communities. Usually physical planning response form the government and planners after a natural calamity in most of the cases is generally a super-optimized techno-economic solution, an efficient physical infrastructure, fast paced architecture, but surprisingly lacking in emotional response and nativeness in terms of architecture, lacking in regional impression and heritage values of planning, alienated from urban/ rural design principles and practices of the region, a shear absence of conservationist inputs and above all lack of human touch. Outcome seems an efficient but emotionless physical planning response which can and are being radially justified in the name of constrained resources and urgency of demanded action. Image above speaks for itself!

Though a much needed temporary relief, imagine the emotional and functional pain this new mechanical re-settlement master plan causes to the inhabitants in longer course of time through its totally alienated new physical planning environment, fabric and architecture, by continually reminding them of the disaster which occurred in past, due to its ever-present imposed unfamiliar environment. Imaging the continual struggle to adapt to this new imposed “efficient but rigid” neighborhood plan which has no relation whatsoever to the original form and architecture of the village or town which was devastated in earthquake or else and the loaded feeling of never to return to a spatial experience in their lifetime which even vaguely resembles to their original neighborhood or to a locality with its regional character! Imaging the loss to the future generation who is going to grow up in these reconstructed integrated prefab concrete township or villages with identical kind of off the shelf household unit next to the fading ruins of their devastated ancestral village and who will never know how it is like to live in the vibrant settlements were their parents, their grandparents and their ancestors used to live!

It’s high time that the legacy of heritage planning values, unique and integral to specific regions need to be acknowledged and incorporated in the post disaster reconstruction efforts specially in physical planning of the settlement which will have a long term beneficial effect. Even the communities in crying need of immediate physical reconstruction support, in a post-natural-disaster environment, need a physical planning solution with a “human touch”!