Life at Edge

Satellite view of urban settlement trail along river edge


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When “Traffic Merging Ahead” on every alternate road, clashes are bound to happen

Bad transport infrastructure and poor road designs leading to conflicts on road.

No one wants to get into argument or fight on the fine morning office hour or while on the way back home, really!! Everyone has some plan for the day ahead, and they really can’t afford to waste time here on road arguing for nothing. But what to do with these urban roads that make these people susceptible to conflict and road rage due to design which lack consistency and continuity. It’s ironical that in the same alignment of road where mile long vehicle queue is witnessed also has a part of stretch like super smooth expressway, either right in the middle of metropolis or connecting neighboring cities, districts and states leading to gridlock. It’s like speedy route to gridlock. So 70-90 % of the whole journey stretch you can cover in 20-30% of journey time, spending rest of the journey in gridlocked section travelling in snail’s speed. Journey on that reaming 10-30% stretch becomes more frustrating because you have just witnessed a test of speed on the expressway like road stretch back on the journey.

Things become worse when variety of vehicles start competing for the lanes with suddenly reduced carriageway near bottlenecks at every few hundred meter due to variety of reasons like poor road design, bad road geometry, old narrow bridge, recent construction and maintenance works, frequent vehicle breakdown, faulty or unrealistic traffic signals (it’s unbelievable that there are also around less than 10 seconds of green signal assigned for some stretches at some busy road junctions) etc. at least similar is the case in many developing countries.

This induced conflict is result of lack of cohesiveness and isolated accountability among different agencies and consultations hired at different point of time, for revamping urban transit stretches and systems. In Urban scenarios, Road stretches cannot planned and designed in isolation, hence no question of isolated accountability, like trunk routes cannot be designed in isolation without  considering feeder traffic flow. What is happening here in bottleneck situations is that vehicles are allowed to reach the bottleneck at high speed which encourages quickly accumulated high volume traffic at bottleneck, and then the real struggle begins, people ruthlessly competing for limited lanes!! It’s a painful experience of struggle for daily commuters, not because of slow speed but due to immense psychological pressure and tiresome drive to negotiate that rude, ruthless competing traffic while trying to protect their asset and peace of mind. No wonder it also leads to frequent road rage incidents. Even if bottleneck situation is unavoidable there has to be smooth transition from high speed stretch to the bottleneck point, which can only be done through proper road design, sensible signage and its highly visible locations, commuter education, manual or automatic traffic assistance and guidance, strengthening alternate route, staggered office timing, land use restructuring, etc.

So that you never run out of development ideas again!

Wonderful list of vision script for urban development,

Have created a list of possible vision statements in snippet form for your quick reference, just to keep your creative thinking wheel running. 

Reshaping city, Re-harmonizing urban clusters, Recasting city silhouette, Re-energizing spirit of city, Re-establishing magnificence of old city, Revisiting the glorious past, Re-engaging population, Re-engineering city infrastructure,  Reconnect to past, Rethinking city, Repositioning city, Recreating       history, Reinventing urban mobility, Reorganizing urban growth, Rebuilding city aspirations, Reintroducing urban techniques, Redeveloping business hubs of city, Rerouting transit veins of city, Re-knitting city fabric,  Reuniting city fragments for better functioning, Urban rezoning for optimization, Reintegrating smart urban technology, Redesigning mobility grid, Re-envisioning historic city, Re-proposing mobility, Reimagining urban future, Redefining boundaries of urban innovation, Repurpose  city finance, Reorienting city growth direction,  Rebuilding city governance structure, Re-linking destinations, Rearranging development priorities, Realigning development objectives, Reprioritizing urban development avenues, Restructuring functional hierarchy of city, Re-exciting life in urban public spaces

Disposal on the go - For a cleaner city you deserve.

Disposal at the source of generation- Case of Travel generated waste!!

Environmentally responsible
waste management 

Some of us occasionally of habitually buy and carry a plastic pack of chips, a paper wrapped snack, a can of coke, a bottle of juice, a paper mug of coffee, fruits and so on in our car or other vehicles while traveling in city, and disposing those paper, plastic, metal or organic residues in a responsible ways becomes an issue. Depending on the Education level, economic exposure, existence of local transport and environment laws, pro activeness of implementation measures, people’s behavior vary in a cityscape across the region, across the cities of world. Even within a particular city people show different level of responsible behavior depending on economic profile of zone, surveillance and enforcement level.

In many cities of developing countries people tend to pollute the city roads and transit routes by dumping such food waste and byproducts from their vehicle irrespective of occupants education and economic level even in presence of such laws to prevent them, due to lack of willingness to keep their cities clean or lack of enforcement measures or absence of sensible waste disposal infrastructure. Garbage bins if provided are either so scarce in numbers, so inaccessibly located, are in utter unhygienic conditions, surrounded by mounds of open dumped waste, either overflowing of underutilized, that people even if they make up their mind to act in environmentally responsible ways they immediately lose their interest to do so.

In this particular kind of waste generation scenario which emerges on the go should have a “disposal mechanism on the go” itself. Garbage generated within vehicle should be disposed off from vehicle only at pre-identified locations, why to carry it everywhere you go, why to keep garbage in your car just because you couldn’t get the time for weeks to dispose it off on foot to some disposal bin located somewhere. Why not to stop them throwing garbage on road by providing them hygienic garbage bins approachable from within the car along the transit routes, at places where traffic is bound to be slow, somewhere near toll plaza ticket counter, somewhere near the parking entrance, in some of dedicated service lanes of the city etc. 

Compulsory flexi hour provision for a smooth and sober city transit

City transit infrastructure without institutional control and public policy in not going to work!

Traffic Calming
Strategies 

In a buzzing city of developing countries where people are rushing everyday to reach their regular destinations like offices, institutions etc., desperately trying to reach before cut-off times assigned by the administration of these respective organizations, traffic chaos is bound to happen leading to traffic law violation, travel anxiety, road rage, minor or major accidents etc. By applying a cut off time for reaching work place, institutions etc. people are forced to become ignorant to each other’s convenient and safety while on road, because each one of them has something at stake, their job, their carrier, their salary, marks, etc. People are in hurry because if they won’t reach office or institutions before time they will be considered undisciplined employee, students and so on, they will be bullied and can be subjected to monetary penalty and disciplinary actions. No one wants to go through that pain.

Organizational independence in a city environment is apparently a productive model, but at times leads to chaos. In lack of public stake in private organizations in those policy levels which are likely to affect city functionality, many private institutions tend to have monopolistic and dictatorship approach at their internal policy level, like assigning cutoff time to reach work place leading to city transport problems. City governing institutions have to have some control or say over those functional elements of city wide organizations, primarily for offices and other work places, which directly affect the transit health of a city. Excluding the critical and lifeline works, there has to be a city wide blanket flexible timing system for work places, which provision should be made compulsory for a sober and responsible transit behavior of any city.

Flexible timing strategies might include a reasonable buffer time to reach work place, possibility to occasionally work from home, different office timing for different zones of city, etc. based on rigorous analysis of transit data pattern and land use analysis. Public institutions will have to work hand in hand with private organization, stakeholders and communities for this purpose. Cities and organization also need to increasingly focus their policies towards target oriented work rather than judging work done by the time spent at work place. More the flexibility provided at anchor destinations within city, smoother will be the traffic and this is not possible without the timely and sensible planning intervention at functional level of city wide organizations and transport system.  

By : Anoop Jha

Educated nuisance on road

A common sight on the urban roads of developing countries

Traffic, poor transit infrastructure and bad transport management is always there to blame, an easy excuse even for mistakes made by many on road purposefully of unknowingly.  Mistakes apparently minor but putting life and assets at risk. Mistakes apparently they don’t even get panelised for. Mistakes driven by petty motives and justified by Silly excuses, creating a chain of indiscipline on road. These are not the unprivileged and uneducated masses but supposedly rich and well educated strata of the society, those who can afford car in the first place. Even if they are not driving themselves they allow certain obvious driving blunders to happen day and night by not pointing out mistakes committed by their drivers. Unfortunately these educated offenders have spend half of their life getting best of the education polishing their intellect but hardly few dedicated hours given in driving schools. Our education system focuses so much on building intellect that it doesn’t even care about something which is so vital for life, i.e. driving safe on road, not to speak of morality lessons for roads. Driving lessons should be compulsory part of education curriculum. And if parents themselves are transport illiterate how will they teach skills, logic and ethic of road to their children.  No wonder there are so many so frequent road rage incidents across the world.

A very frequent, obvious but unnoticed driving mistake that they commit here on road mostly purposefully is driving with side mirror in closed position or even without rear view / side mirrors in cars at times and it becomes more dangerous a phenomenon when clubbed with changing lanes without indicators. And apparently they don’t get panelized for such acts most of the time. Indicator example is equally true for bikers. How can they afford doing such things putting others and their own life in danger? Reasons can be many but most obvious explanation seem to be that they love their car very much especially the side mirrors and they are afraid that some passing by car will touch, hit or break the side mirror and that’s why they prefer to keep the side mirror closed and there is always an excuse for that act i.e. traffic, reduced carriageway due to encroachment, other people driving unsensibly on road and so on.

What they forget while busy negotiating the traffic jams through gridlocked roads and narrow streets while trying to protect rear view mirror of their cars that this same mirror in open position increases the virtual envelop of car and hence increases safety envelop of their car as well.  Side mirrors not only help you assess the traffic situation behind you and hence help you plan your next maneuver on road more logical and safe but it also helps increase the distance between your car and other cars passing by, hence reducing the probability of other cars coming in contact with your car body. Not to speak of ease in parking which rear view/ side mirrors provide. Was little puzzled to see that some car manufacturers even launch their lower segment models without having rear view mirror on one side posing it’s a luxury car accessory not a necessity. They need to understand the difference between luxury and necessity!! Mirrors for car have been invented for some purposes and have evolved in course of time just for your own safety, so better start using them now.

You might also like to explore some thoughts on new strategic intervention to reduce transport accident and casualties in other post here.

Data Visualization as a planning tool

When Statistics marry Graphics, it creates immense possibilities.

Data is lifeblood of planning and holds massive information potential, need is to decode the pattern it holds, pattern of importance, patterns which are vital and patterns which help understand the previously unexplored recesses of statistics. Now we have datamining tools to extract and visualize data, sources which were previously nonexistent, data from social media, data from online resources etc..

These charts have been created from number series (Fibonacci number), just to represent clear, informative and convincing patterns which can be derived from numbers. Numbers tell stories!!   

Municipal Finance in India : Municipal Tax Revenue sources

Municipal Revenue generation through Taxation in India

“Local Self Government becomes meaningless in the absence of financial autonomy. It enjoys the power of imposition of local taxes. The municipal bodies must have a wider scope of collection of revenues”

(Source: UIDSSMT)


ULBs have invented many channels and instruments of revenue generation in course of time due to urgency of handling growth, some of the tax sources both conventional and non-conventional, are mentioned below.

TAXES/FEES

CONVENTIONAL MUNICIPAL REVENUE SOURCES

Composite Property Tax

Water Charges

Sewerage Charges

Conservancy Charges

Building Permit Fee

Development Charges

Trade Licensing Fee

Advertisement Tax

Shop Room Rent

OTHER GENERAL MUNICIPAL REVENUE SOURCES

House Tax 

Show Tax  

Building Plan Fee

Tax on the consumption of Electricity    

Sale of liquor     

Cess on the transfer of immovable property   

License for Dangerous and Offensive trades

Rates are varied in respective ULBs

Rehari License Fee

Tehbazari Tax

Slaughter House Fee

Cattle Pound Fees

Birth & Death Certificate Fee

Copying Fee

Tree Cutting Fee

Library Membership

Ground Tax

Vehicle License Fee

Death & Birth Reg./ Late Fee

Forest /Garden Income

Dog License Fee 

Animal Tax (Cattle Pound)

Trade License Fee

Tax on advertisement other than advertisement published in the newspaper.

NON-CONVENTIONAL MUNICIPAL REVENUE SOURCES

Vacant Land Tax

Service Taxes

Surcharge on Land Registration Duty

Water Supply Donations

Water Supply Connection Charges

Water Benefit Tax

Water Betterment Charges

Sewerage Donations

Sewerage Connection Charges

Sewerage Benefit Tax

Sewerage Betterment Charges

Bulk Garbage Collection Charges

Betterment Charges

External Betterment Charges

Open Space Contribution

Impact fee

Transferable Development Right

Premium FSI

Sub-division charges

Planning Permission Betterment

Road Cutting Charges

Street Tax

Frontage Tax

Cess on Infrastructure

Motor Vehicle Tax/Surcharge

Tax on Petrol and Diesel

Business License Fee

Hoarding Charges,

Advertisement Placement Fees,

Cable TV Fee,

TV Advertisement Charges

Royalty on Auctions

INNOVATIVE /UNIQUE MUNICIPAL REVENUE SOURCES

General Obligation Bond/ Municipal Bond

Awarding of development rights,

Town planning schemes (TPS)

Plot/layout readjustment

Additional FSI/FAR

Goodwill auctions

Bank linkages (for Urban Poor)

Capital-based property tax system

Land banking

Transferable development rights (TDR)

Special Education tax

Pilgrim

Octroi

Special and General Sanitation

Shows

Toll on Vehicles,

Timber

Terminal

Menial Domestic Servants

Artisans

Entertainment Tax

SOME OF THE UNIQUE REVENUE STREAMS (THROUGH FEES/ CHARGES) OF MUNICIPALITIES ACROSS MAJOR STATES IN INDIA

Registration Fee

Mutation Fee

Market Fee 

Trade License Fee

Compounding Fee

Slaughter House Fee

License Fee

Betterment / Development Fee

Fire Brigade

Public Health

Swimming Bath Fee,

Stock Registration

Cattle Pound Fee

Teh Bazari Fee

Pilgrim

Scavenging

Prevention of Food Adulteration Fee

Dangerous and Offensive Trade License Fee

Animal Registration Fee

Compounding Fee

Warrant Fee

Bus Stand Fee

Copying Fee

Cart Stand Fee,

Encroachment Fee

Fees from burning ghats

Birth and Death Registration Fee

Sources:

cgg.gov.in/  (http://bit.ly/Jb35C5),

UIDSSMT / http://bit.ly/IkNKk0,

RBI / http://bit.ly/J8i70d

“Smell Architecture”!! We have to accept non-tangible design elements as part of architecture and Urban Design!!

Walking down the buzzing food streets of the world is a thrilling experience for most of us, it’s a play field of light and shadow, sound and noise, colors, textures and smell. Smell of street, smell of variety of foods being baked, grilled, processed, and served with love from generations, aroma of spices in the air, that raw fragrances of freshly chopped vegetables, occasional breeze with hint of what is being cooked inside, looking at the faces of crowd apparently engulfed and hypnotized by the tempting aroma of food, all this combined together with the built architecture of street gives an experience which is complete and memorable.



Now take a few steps back and rewind the tour without “Smell” part of the whole experience, and you will realize how important these intangible elements like smell, sound etc. play in making architecture and urban design a complete experience.  Though Light is also an intangible element but it has been given an undue advantage in architecture since centuries, contrary  to its counterparts like smell,sound etc. Unfortunately they don’t teach this in architecture and planning school as well, probably they themselves have unable to understand the significance of such non-tangible elements of architecture. Unfortunately there focus has remained on mass-producing architects, designers and technical hands through proven formulas and they have confined themselves in the predefined boundaries of architecture like, form,  function, space, texture, colors, at most interplay of light and shadow. What about smell, noise, feelings and state of mind of users, experiencing and validating the existence of the architecture and urban design in the first place?

It’s not a hypothetical assumption but a fact that you can’t create a good architecture without a great user experience which involves variety of non-tangible elements, those elements which can’t be quantified in form of project specification items into a spreadsheet.  It’s high time that architects and urban designers should shift focus towards the ambient environment and users experience since they have already mastered the art of form and space through accumulative knowledge of centuries. It’s time to move on.

By - Anoop Jha

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

Defying purpose of sidewalks: its story of many developing cities

They sleep, they socialize, they play, they construct, they're born, they die, they live, they beg, they sell and they do everything on that thin and broken strip of exposed sidewalks, but walking. They defy the very purpose of sidewalk.













Apparently It’s not their choice; for some its fate, for some its livelihood, for some its entertainment for some its greed. Sometimes it’s the only piece of land available in a big crowded city for those poorest of urban poor, sometimes it’s the most accessible everyday market place for those returning home from work, sometime its paradise for street food lovers, sometimes its playground for street kids, sometimes its breeding ground of crime, sometimes abandoned sometimes encroached sometimes its provider and sometimes victim of business greed, used for everything, but walking. It’s the story of almost every city of developing countries. In the absence of regular, appropriate, continuous and user friendly sidewalks and footpaths across the city and without better livelihood opportunities and ample urban housing, this phenomenon is going to inevitably present itself in different forms.

Walking down the memory lane of city

Walking down the memory lane, may be way different an experience now than actually walking down the old neighborhood lane you used to live decades back, while you were studying in that town, while you were on a social visit to your aunts place or on a vacation to that place, or the narrow street you use to travel to and fro from the school in childhood days.



City changes its form, experience; attitude like a person changes his appearance, philosophy and approach In course of time. Impression and impact of time can be seen on the city as we see in the human life. City reinvents itself and reflects contemporary life. Comparing present and past impression and memories of city is an emotional affair. Hence extra care needs to be taken in revitalizing and redeveloping cities because millions of memories and hopes are attached to these. 

Top 50 books of Urban Photography, Art and Aesthetics

Note: These Books are randomly chosen from an online digital database and has been arranged / composed randomly as well. These ranking are solely as per general judgment of blog author based on visual graphic appeal of book and title catchwords and these ranking does not represent any ranking in literary,  technical or any other sense.  This is only an effort to provide interested users and book lovers, a collection of relevant books and literature at one consolidated place for their ready reference. Further details of individual books are linked to the images. This note is in addition to the disclaimer section of this blog.