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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”! 

How representative are “Top something or other City” tags?

Why average outcome doesn’t work for average urban population?

Why city ranking may not necessarily be a reflection of the state and policies of a city and might not be of much direct or immediate relevance for average stable urban population other than attracting business and outside population and tourists? A city provides and should provide a very unique opportunity to each individual through its unique micro environmental influences which most often supersedes the average ambient environment of a city which is showcased by positioning of a city on varied ranking scale ranging from livability to competitiveness and so on. An average ambient environment of any city (economically or otherwise) might not be a reflection of actual environment for an individual or unique sets of individuals with similar needs, like - people falling under different hierarchical economic profiles from extremely poor to ultra-rich, working and voluntarily non-working population, skilled and unskilled section, jobless people, children, aging population, differently abled segment, entrepreneurs, educationalist, illiterate population, people with health and lifestyle issues,  government representatives, corporate lobbies and countless urban social hierarchies and so on and on, each segment with differing needs and aspiration seeking and demanding distinct opportunities and support structure! That “n”th global or national rank of a city which is representation of average situation of city life doesn’t make much immediate sense to each of the above segments since most of the population is either one side or other of average with their very distinct situations and needs from the projected average. It’s not much of relevance unless it gets translated into their customized needs, enhanced economic condition, lifestyle and peace of mind and doesn’t directly relate to their livelihood opportunities and their specific needs. 

Apparently, there is a fundamental issue with the methodology and process of determining rank of a city. An issue with “Samplifying” the population, though samples apparently being inclusive and heterogeneous! Simply being inclusive won’t work, choosing a heterogeneous sample groups also won’t, because both of these approach will only lead to an average outcome, a clumsy generalized outcome which is bound to be alienated from the highly specific needs of individual components and groups which makes the society, which makes that supposedly heterogeneous and inclusive sample as well. Needs of a highly diversified society or a city with further diversified economic profile, age group, ethnicity, regional needs, conditioning and so on can’t be met by a single average solution, no matter how inclusive that solution sounds, no matter how heterogeneous was the sample. For example, you can’t simply average out the needs of a beggar and a millionaire, both part and parcel of a city, and come up with an average solution which should work for both of them. They need totally different solutions to grow and sustain. Hence the ranking of city based on accumulative impression of its different components, both tangible and perceived, which is an “Average” might give a deceptive impression of opportunities which any city provides for its inhabitants, does that sweeping statement like the best city to live in or so means that this particular city provides equal or ample growth opportunities for millionaires as well as the poorest section of the city or to the diversified segments as discussed earlier, or does it anyway gives an account or impression of having diversified livelihood instruments and strategies in form of public policies for different strata of city society. Public strategies and instruments are very distinct and regional in nature which can’t be quantified in a manner to be compared globally or nationally on a same appraisal scape with other cities! We need a very tender approach to deal with specifics of urban livelihood opportunities and state of its people, ranking seems over simplification at times, we need to do a reality check!

All said and done we still agree that city ranking is must, whether on the scale of livability or competitiveness or so on! Because it gives a scale of competitiveness on which city heath is monitored and compared with the benchmarked cities. A scale, on which the growth performance of a city can be monitored! Hence it helps shape the aspirations of a city and helps pave the way for its sustainable future. City ranking has a larger purpose to serve than just to conclude the state of infrastructure and ambient environment, city ranking creates an image of a city which further draws attention of world and hence attracts investment and generate revenues which further gets channelized in the making of a city through increased economic activities, strengthened infrastructure, enhanced regional accessibility, increased livelihood opportunities and so on. But apparently still city ranking is more of the external representation through its image building aspect than the state of actual internal health and opportunities in a city! Also a catch here, while creating a positive image of a city through ranking tools, originally envisaged to attract business and high spending population i.e. tourists, corporate activities etc., this enhanced image also accelerates the process of in-migration from the neighboring regions in search of better projected livelihood opportunities which further calls for urgent expansion of already constrained city infrastructure, delay of which can cause the damage to the same city image which they are deliberately trying to create, hence an image deficit vicious cycle. Focus has to be on autonomous networked decentralization in the region through regional ranking instead of / in addition to city ranking which otherwise encourages choking concentration of city. City doesn’t function in isolation; it’s a resultant of overlapping regional activities hence the focus should be on regional ranking, a periodic regional assessment, assessment beyond SWOT, call it ranking or whatever, which is much inclusive and more realistic in nature.

Why urban infrastructure O&M system needs increased autonomy?

An exemplary case of PPP project - surface transport !

Though there are already provisions which suggests autonomy in O&M contracts to certain extent at present, but apparently there is further need of functional, financial and decision making autonomy in operation and maintenance (O&M)plan including concerned O&M agency, regarding any given infrastructure project, specially were public safety is a concern, an autonomy to the extent beyond conventional scopes of O&M contracts.

Why this thought even worth consideration and review? Because lack of autonomy can restrict O&M agencies to take prompt critical decisions or can encourage them to unnecessarily prolong, manipulate or ignore some of the important decisions and actions demanding urgency and which are vital for health of project and safety of users and which might otherwise get delayed caught in the complexity of paperwork. For instance, an expressway O&M agency can escape from taking responsibility of mishaps and causalities blaming it to faulty road design by the original infrastructure design agency involved, while design agency can shy away from responsibility saying safe operation of system is in scope of O&M agency or may be it is due to bad maintenance, meanwhile life of commuters would be constantly at stake. But with higher level of autonomy O&M agency can take vital decisions and actions on their own like- post functional design modification in case of expressway, infrastructure retrofit, conducting safety audit and associated changes, life safety installations and safety enforcement measures which can prevent those traffic accidents for example. Also autonomy comes with implied accountability, so now the O&M agency while enjoying the autonomy will also feel a sense of responsibility both morally and legally towards minimizing and preventing those expressway mishaps and can be held accountable in case  such events occur and their performance can also be linked to their monetary gain/ penalty provisions, credit rating ranking, pre-mature termination of contract etc. hence creating a scope of active, innovative and higher performance standards in this new O&M environment.  

There has to be increased level of autonomy for O&M agencies to innovate and to take certain fiscal decisions on their own, which might be vital for public safety and absorption of unperceived growth, autonomy of technology integration to leverage technological opportunities which might have been unavailable at the time of conception and design of project, autonomy to conduct required design changes and retrofit based on peculiar first hand regional experiences gained in course of operation. Of course this strengthened decisive power of should come with certain administrative supervision and stakeholder’s say.

This allocation of autonomy seems justifiable because no one else knows the actual functional and fiscal health of said project, regional and local constraints and infrastructure gaps etc. better than those who are operating and maintaining the said project and assets 24X7 and are in constant contact of end users, knowing it better than even those who originally conceived and built the project. Autonomy if constrained or hampered or for namesake, specially at policy and post functional level, scope of O&M assumes a mechanical and procedural significance and restrict itself only to the often under-perceived operational efficiency and safety level just to the rigid, predefined performance standard with little scope for innovation in terms of physical infrastructure modification, procedural and strategic retrofit and scope of maintenance remains only limited to restoring the degraded infrastructure to its somewhat originally perceived state. O&M will have to be much more than the established notion of routine work as prescribed in the O&M manual or as described in present scope of contract. A wholesome O&M process specially in urban and regional infrastructure projects has to be a dynamic process, a learning experience, continually reinventing itself as per dynamic regional growth, absorbing economic changes and technological advancement, streamlined to the long term vision of regional growth. 

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

Image Source: Google Earth & Sightsmap

What planners of urban environment can learn from online environment?

Radical possibilities if they get it right!

The single largest advantage of online environment over urban environment is that online environment is spontaneously morphing and mutating. It’s a spontaneous collaborative environment with user generated content, individually conceived collective community efforts, within a larger set of easy to understand rules with basic governance and minimal intervention. Best part is that it all comes unasked. All you need to do is to create an online platform intuitive and sticky enough to appeal to masses, leaving rest up to user’s creativity. Users are motivated and willing enough to spend their own time and money and whatever it takes to contribute to this global phenomenon, mostly unasked mostly free, they are even willing to pay for it in some cases, be it social or professional networking platform (Sharing/ Facebook/ Twitter/ Linkedin) or cloud environment (Storage/ Backup) or virtual collaborative tools (Building/ Sharing/ Docs), open source programming environment (Building Blocks/ Learning/ Sharing) or just a platform to share their own piece of mind or simply converse (blogs/Forums). Amazingly this ever-thriving virtual environment with apparently intangible inputs even gets translated into tangible outputs. A self-sustainable virtual community environment with little bit of nuisance andchaos which can be managed and currently being managed through series of governing and control instruments! Wonderful!

Let’s talk about urban environment a bit, parallel to online environment. Let’s identify the obvious constraints and major differences. Urban environment is tangible in nature, things like - raw material, physical infrastructure, resource intensive, capital and labor intensive and then there are governance and management issues since resources are limited and stakes are high. Let’s see some common somewhat overlapping traits; both urban and online environment needs basic physical infrastructure in place some of which are common as well (Power, Water, transport VS Telecom infrastructure/ Wi-max/ Wi-Fi etc. with common later part), both environment require serious manpower to build, sustain and grow, they both demand control and security, both need a heterogeneous mix of business models as well and so on. What comes to mind now? What you are thinking right now absolutely makes sense - with so much of similarities while having “people” and “community” at center stage in both cases, why haven’t we explored the mutual learning possibilities and why we haven’t been able to translate the online functional learning experience into building of physical community called “City”.

Can we do it? Think so; at least we can give it a try! By establishing a logical, statistical, mathematical and philosophical co-relation between the two, leaving possibility to weave the city fabric and its functionality further in future! This analogy of physical (urban) and virtual (online) environment presents a model of self-evolving self-sustainable community further translated into urban community where every member of community is contributing to build the “physical environment”, though they are already doing it “Socially” well at present. Can we give a community or region enough flexibility to shape its own environment, customizable up to their personal needs and choices without hampering the public interest, with basic infrastructure built in place to start with, a set of basic rules to play with, some basic building blocks to kick-start, with flexibility to select platform and tools of their choices to build, with a governing, supportive and helping hand, watchful eyes as well as security and rescue mechanism in place, with some kind of layered public, community and personal finance model and so on, all this flexibility within a controlled and transparent environment. Reinforced by supervisory control and incentive instruments! Building with a vision of “sustainable community” and “fairness ofopportunity” at center stage! Fortunately we have analytical tools, informative resources and accumulated experience of mankind today which can help extract and derive and establish useful correlation between the urban and online environment paving a way for better and sustainable future!

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!!