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

A to Z Satellitexted : Urban Planning Text

Satellite view or architecture and planning resembling English alphabet 

Its took one bright idea, couple of days, several dozen cities, hundreds of Google Earth rotation and thousands of zoom-in-out to compile this piece of work for you. Enjoy Satellitexted* urbanism!    

*Satellitexted : Building plan in satellite view resembling Alphabet!

Architecture Satellitexted

Satellite view of architectural alphabet 

A place called Street!

Route De Sospel, Menton, Monaco

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Absolut city...

Life at Edge

Satellite view of urban settlement trail along river edge


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Sometimes you appreciate unintentional grunge architectural experience!

Even architects refrain to talk about the darker intuitive side of architectural experience.  

Looking through a dirt clad window glass pan on a rainy day at  your half a century old sparingly used ancestral house, mysteriously thrilling fog and  street light setting as viewed from the window of a motel room in no man’s land where you stayed last weekend on your way back home from a road trip,  flickering interplay of light and shadows projected on the walls and roof  of your bedroom by the light of traffic passing by on the adjacent street,  bizarre abstract patterns on the under maintained damp bathroom or subway walls,  grunge white noise of much awaited rain pouring on the garage tin shed,  looking at the engulfing silence of valley from the balcony of a remote hill resort experiencing the shear lack of artificial urban sound of which you are used to or an experience of strange inquisitive damp smell while you are getting down the basement stairs in a dimly lit surrounding, you at times experience unspoken, unperceived, un-designed and unintentional side of architecture further accentuated by the time of year and day, your mood and company or absence of other people at that particular time.   

At times you feel so tiered of popular architecture, popular formula of architecture, formula of what should be and what not and all the glorification and stubbornness around what is popular, those are kind of beautiful, but they are every were, architectural orders, theories so much overvalued so abundantly repeated, interiors so much commercialized so much in order, so much restricted, so much formalized, you are left with no choice but to live in an environment which appeal to neighbors, your housing society and society at large, even You don’t know what you really want to experience. Spoon-fed architectural experience of what is good and what is bad being taught to architects as well as future prospective clients in the school. They are taught to create wonderful architecture but no one encourages them to create wonderful personalized architectural experience no matter even if its eccentric on conventional benchmark, experience of space which you can’t really create with the popular architectural tools, styles, mass education, thumb-rules available and being used widespread today. For example if you have already decided that a particular room, should have a particular lux level of lighting, particular illumination level,  uniformly distributed across the room with slight variation here and there as prescribed in the architectural bible or bylaws or general practice or as limited by the market availability and client’s choice of fixture, you can’t create an architectural experience which is thrilling, mysterious, inquisitive and even hauntingly sticky at times even for a moment, which are human psychological needs and part of their personality to experience such environment, at least just for sake of fun. No wonder at times you cherish that moment of darkness in the rainy damp evening or moonlit night when suddenly there is power cut for a brief period, because you have just experienced the dimly lit darker side of architecture which was never intended for you to experience in its original form, but only you know that how much it means to you to experience that very silence of spatial darkness, that mysterious view of dusk from the dark corner of your room, that stillness of ambiance and lack of bright LED light, that passionate experience in the beautiful and diluting sphere of space and light created by that single candle lit on the dining table, that momentarily grey sheds of otherwise bright and warm colors of interior walls. We are talking about darker side of architectural experience which induces a momentarily feeling of introspection to the occupant through its very silence, stillness darkness and grunginess, many writers, directors, photographers, architects, and artists will be able to relate to such experience. Grunge architectural experience which in thought provoking and inspires you at times and which is innate human psychological need somewhere buried in the subconscious under the monumental load of popular architectural experience!  

By: Anoop Jha

Real Estate price at user’s end: Transparency is the way to win-win situation!

When demand is so high there is no point keeping hidden costs and policies. 

Planning to buy a home? For some, it's joy of their life, for some it’s a mission, for some their livelihood but for many, it’s a pain. Pain of market research, confusion of what to choose, whom to trust, struggle of monetary arrangement, fear of being cheated, horror of future encounter with inevitable unpleasant surprises associated with real estate deals in constantly changing landscape of real estate market, volatile banking and public policies, unstable political and people’s affair and so on.  

There are so many places where your real estate judgment might go wrong no matter how smart, how educated and how networked you are. Forget about the traits and circumstances which are beyond your control. So volatile this whole affair is that at times it feels like it's a game of luck to finally secure a place without any conflict of guesswork and reality, which you can call your home sweet home.  

Long completion cycle of real estate development especially in case of housing and apartments, makes it more vulnerable and susceptible to volatile market and changing policy environment, susceptible to changes in policies and contracts leading to additional fiscal burden, majority on customer’s side and some on developers as well and to monetary losses occurred mostly to buyers who failed to understand the fine intricacies of initial contracts and hidden policies.

In midst of all this confusion you either hire or get channelized through someone or a firm apparently specialized in real estate dealings to make your life easy, only to realize that they have their own hidden policies and excuses to add to your frustrations.

Acknowledging and understanding the inevitability of market dynamism and inevitable growth in housing demand with little bit of fluctuation here and there time to time, a whole new approach is needed in the functioning of real estate affair.

You are a customer; you want to buy a house rather home, you know your financial condition, you know your aspirations and limitations. You see a home advertisement at fabulously low price in local newspaper or on internet with an assumed star (*) or applied conditions, you are already comfortable with that, you match your budget, you find out more just to realize that there are considerable hidden charges, you think for a while, going ahead seeing the same prevalent story everywhere, you go to bank for monetary help, they have their own complex structure of policy documentation difficult to fathom right away, leave it aside for a while because you urgently need loan for your sweet home, you do the deal formality with developer  while realizing that there are secondary and even tertiary level of hidden charges. Finally your deal is completed, but someone just comes to you and tells you that there are additional visitor parking charges subjected to availability, really high annual club charges you can’t escape, Monthly fixed or accelerating maintenance charges for several amenities you won’t be using ever, not to speak of the security and other welfare charges which issues would occurs later in future if you want to live there. And unfortunately you can’t hold developer liable for many of these things because they will say these monetary activities are beyond their scope of contract and deal. Oh, and don’t forget recently revised property related tax policies which is going to go increasingly taxing on your already demanding fiscal health.

Now, you are a developer, you are in this business for long, you know the intricacies very well, you adjust your position as market and policies change, you see that your business in not going to go down ever in future due to insanely high housing and real estate demand apart from occasional dip, you are in a position to dictate the terms so you don’t have to worry. Of course changes in real estate laws and public policy as well as volatility of politics and people’s affair are going to affect your business, but you are sure you will be able to recover what you want from those existing or prospective customers.

For every single customer who can’t afford the price you are offering for a piece of real estate work you are creating, there would be dozens of willing customers to buy the same piece of project. Acknowledging the strong and more or less stable future real estate growth, as well as abundance of customers, it’s your responsibility as a developer to be as transparent in your offers, deals and policies as possible. It will benefit both customers as well as developer. Customer will know early what is within their reach based on their financial position and assessment of realistic real estate offers and their search for house would be less painful and more fruitful, speedy and less frustrating. Developers should declare every possible instance where an additional cost burden can occur to a customer along with its tentative quantum, should declare every possible project constraint and policy in big bold font, emphasizing every liable policy changes and unexpected future charges based on their industry and regional experience. What worst can happen by this approach? You might lose a customer or two, but with such a huge customer base, who cares! It will sure have advantage both ways. Developers will get real customers rather than ghost customers, their transaction turnaround time would reduce considerably, their dealing process would be smoother, more transparent and honest and they can reinvest that saved time and money back into customer service, building repeat customers and word-of-mouth publicity as well as providing better customer service. Not to speak of huge value addition to company’s brand image. Customers will have in tern fair choice of selection, without any hidden fiscal or psychological burden, after all one can only buy a house with a price tag which he or she can afford.   

Public agencies would always be there to help, assist and control the exceedingly high real estate prices to keep the ball rolling and to keep it within reach of a city dweller, common or exclusive. Considering the positive effect it’s an option worth exploration.

By: Anoop Jha

Changing landscape of rural architecture

While scrolling, zooming in to google earth or something you find satellite image of villages across the world very fascinating very different from the urban settlement, it’s almost enchanting to look at their wonderful spatial patterns, their distributed uniformity, their hierarchical cohesiveness in terms of architecture, spatial arrangement and surprisingly it all evolved without any development blueprint, without an preconceived vision, without any kind of architectural bylaws at least in the case of India, but with long sustainable past, at least it was the case decades back and beyond.

Now today when you look at the same villages of India you will find usually two sets of clusters in most of the cases, one organically evolved village settlement with impression of time, with wonderful lively streets, with hierarchy of spaces, driven by family needs, scalable with demand, a symbol of community effort and cohesion, built by local materials, crafted by passionate local hands, using indigenous skills, planned by intuition, nourished by centuries of experience, in the guidance of wise old people, architecture by personal choice and collective regional aesthetics.

Though many of them are financially weak, but they usually have a place they can call home unlike urban poor.

The other distinct set of cluster you will see in the adjacent part of village, which is either a result of recently accumulated wealth by the young generation of villagers who live in metropolitan cities of India for better livelihood opportunities and who bring wealth to their village along with new architectural exposure and experiences, new construction techniques and remote aesthetics of cities when back home. It is architecture in transition from traditional to contemporary from thatch-&-mud to brick-&-mortar and may be its need of time as well, but little confusing at the same time. This new strikingly different grid iron pattern of recently developed cluster of village can also be a result of some development efforts by government, not so surprisingly way different an architecture and planning from the traditional settlement and sentiments. An imagination of planners and architects sitting thousand miles away with their own perception and impression of what an ideal village should be, while being most cost effective replicable, scalable and with speedy construction possibilities, neat and clean imported village with all the amenities. Hundreds of thousands of house arrays being constructed throughout the countries, apparently job done! Similar is the case of several villages and outskirts of cities across the world. 

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It’s good idea to provide shelter to poor rural inhabitants, but their traditional architecture and planning needs and sentiments cannot and should not be ignored. It doesn’t cost much to incorporate century old traditional planning and aesthetic of the rural settlement of different regions in the contemporary rural architecture and planning solutions which need to be tailored for specific regions, it’s just demands a little more  communication and careful investigation as well as understanding of spoken and unspoken lifestyle and perceptual needs of rural communities. 

A wonderful destination: Gulf of Aqaba

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The Gulf of Aqaba is a large gulf located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian mainland. Its coastline is divided between four countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

The Gulf of Aqaba is one of the most popular diving destinations in the world.

(Wikipedia)

 

Planner’s Dilemma – A case of developing nation.

Choked Public Drain, Whose fault? 

Repeatedly choked public drains, is it due to under capacity drainage Infrastructure, an unplanned network, inadequately planned disposal system, underestimated growth, unexpected demand, immigration externalities, over exploitation of resources, lack of vision, out dated technology, inefficient management, uneducated population, citizens with low or no sense of public responsibility, lack of willingness, lack of database for timely assessment, no early warning system, underreported occurrence, over hyped issues,  diverted attention, prevalence of corruption, discrete tax structure for usage of public infrastructure, lack of maintenance, insufficient funds, absence of relevant law, loophole in policies, or may be implementation failure?

Drainage/ sewage disposal issue is just an example to illustrate; there are innumerable examples and issues like this in an urban setting whether its inadequate water supply, transport chaos, interrupted and poor power supply etc, and innumerable reason for the each of these issues.  It’s a very common phenomenon in towns and metropolitan cities of developing nations, but what’s the solution.

After some time of tolerance people start losing their patience due to public infrastructure system failure like this, then some hue and cry, some demonstration, followed by media coverage, then suddenly public agencies wake up, some blame game, then some investigation committee, followed by months long survey, then few months of compilation, then some kind of outcome and recommendations, by that time people already start losing their interest in the subject, by that time there are  other hyped issues to deal with, and this show goes on. Somewhere in this cycle of events planner or some planning consultancy firm gets introduced to assess the situation and resolve the issue. Do you wonder how much or how little a planner can help to resolve the situation at least bringing down the scale of chaos.

Do you see how many vulnerable points can be there in the value chain of any system as we saw in the blocked drain example? More the number of elements more the chances of failure of system.  A system with a long operational or value chain can only work efficiently, if all the possible elements of interest work efficiently individually and cohesively together as well. When an urban planner or similar is approached by public/ private agency to resolve such development or redevelopment issues, they expect an out of box magical solution. Planners can of course suggest a wonderful infrastructure solution at some reasonable cost; they can propose some implementation and regulatory strategies as well, but one has to understand that a “multifaceted urban issue” needs an “inclusive solution”. Planners need to be empowered to have a say on any or rather every element which might affect the proper functioning of any urban or regional system, even if it’s an aspect which is tangential to the core system but which can impact the system in future. Planners have to address or at least talk about each and every tangential aspect of any core issue while suggesting a solution blueprint for development redevelopment projects. For example, one might argue how a drainage problem can be related to education of citizen, they can always say while problem like this demands infrastructure solution why to talk about education? Let’s consider this.  No matter how well you plan the infrastructure, if there are uneducated users, infrastructure is not going to work as the way it was perceived and planned. Even simply being educated is not enough, there has to be education with a sense of responsibility, a sense of citizenship.

What a planner can do in this situation for example. A planner has to talk about the relevance of educated citizens in proper functioning of the public infrastructure in its strategy report; he can go to the extent proposing restructuring of school curriculum, so that users become responsible enough toward public infrastructure while they are still in school. suppose If people are educated and responsible as well but still not using public infrastructure as intended there might be flaw in signage design or placement, planners need to talk about that in its development report, they might need to talk about the role of education through technological infusion to masses through different communication channels before they are about to introduce a new technology in public domain along with ways of infusion. Similarly they need to propose some short to long term strategic inputs for all the ancillary aspects revolving around the core public system or infrastructure issue no matter how distinct they appear.

Why such vast gap exists in statistical interpretation of a single fact?

Statistics considers raw data while people tend to value associated sentiments.

If you are going for a primary survey with a standard template of closed ended questionnaires or some kind of table to be filled with numbers you might not be doing real justice to the survey. You might have a reasonable amount of data at end of the day to conclude your assignment or research, but you won’t be able to do the realistic assessment of the situation. You might fulfill the acceptable standards of data gathering; you might even publish the result and can even bag an award or two, but if the very people who got surveyed are not being able to relate to the statistical conclusion, or if they do not validate it, all the efforts of data collection and analysis goes to vain.

You will be surprised to realize that still at many instances the situation shown of paper and the actual situation experienced by the population is drastically different, though data for situation analysis was gathered from the same population or community. Then why this vast gap of interpreted and locally experienced situation exists? Why this constant apparent difference of opinion between government’s point of view and what media and NGO’s showcase about the city, region or community etc. There are few possible reasons, first is that statistics is very flexible domain, though outcome seems very impactful there is enough scope to mould or influence the direction of outcome, still staying within legally of intellectually acceptable limit. The kind of data you select to gather, variety of assumptions you take into consideration, mode and tool of statistical analysis you choose to go with, time span considered for analysis, selection and heterogeneity of sample itself, there are so many such variables that one can interpret and influence the outcome in any possible direction depending on the purpose or intention. Larger the data set, greater the flexibility of interpretation.

Government being a powerful entity with ample manpower and resources has generally upper hand when it comes to data collection and interpretation and usually less probability of misrepresentation, but again it depends on what they want to prove or convey. Media and NGO who generally lack enough data due to manpower constraint to prove a fact applicable to a larger domain generally tend to rely on emotional values attached to the subject or region and sentiments of population or communities to prove their point. They generally choose small set of data though having high perceived or emotional value and exploit the associated sentiments. On one hand there is ample scope of playing with data and on the other hand equally or more or less scope to play with people’s emotions and sentiments but ultimately both leads to distortion of fact. And this show of constant blame and justification goes on and on. Actual fact seems to lose the significance while this argument is on, later no one really bothers to reach to the actual fact.

Unless statistics as a knowledge stream would device a method and make it a mandate to consider or quantify and incorporate the emotional and sentimental values attached to the subject of research and aspirations of communities to the extent possible along with some kind of post analytic appraisal and indigenous validation method, data representation would remain deceptive and at the mercy of decision making individuals or groups. Meanwhile we as a layman can mitigate this doubt of data misrepresentation by keeping a questioning, skeptical or neutral attitude towards impactful data being presented day to day from both government end as well as media and social welfare representative’s end, without being panicked, without arriving at immediate conclusion, cross verifying the fact from different sources, applying our own head and intuition, knowing and reminding them that their job is to inform us not to instigate or incite us. You are capable enough to judge yourself; all you need is a fair amount of fair data and statistics or simply a fair representation.

By : Anoop Jha

Urban underground art : perception and mainstream absorption!

A case of graffiti culture in a city environment.  

Some say its vandalism, some find it an art, some say its irrational some say it’s cool, some see it outdated, at places it’s in vogue, reasons can be many, from fun to revolution but result is one - Graffiti. In this varying landscape of purpose and perception, there is always an apparent struggle to conclude what is right and what is wrong in an urban environment. What with graffiti? Why this perpetual struggle between city administrations and those who create such art-pieces, some anonymous, some leaving their stamp.

Graffiti is an art form standing at the edge of law. Some do it for thrill; some to put across their message, for some it’s an outlet, some do it for recognition and some to revolt against established values and norms. Even after decades of existence there has not been any consensus on the subject. City administrations are either strictly against it or will shy away from the subject saying that they have larger issues of city infrastructure, education, poverty and all at hand to deal with. Go ask a planner, what with Graffiti, what to do with it, you will find them clueless, though some of them might tell you few ways to curb this phenomenon.

Why graffiti culture exists in first place? Unless we try to understand the psychology of underground art, we can’t find a reasonable answer and solution to it. May be it’s the very imposition of rule to curb this behavior, triggers and sustain this behavior. Thrill of breaking the law, mixed with artistic skill, daring move and motivation by some cause, results in graffiti.

Isn’t it good to have wonderful artists in your city? But an artist needs to express and if you won’t give them enough opportunities and enough canvas they will express themselves in any manner, anywhere,  even if it’s a wall, and in this case public properties become soft target. Art itself has no boundaries, but we divide it in good and bad, civilized and vandalism. Piece of art by those few artists who have enough opportunity and money to display their work of art in an upscale gallery becomes a civilized and socially accepted art while the similar piece of art or poor or better if expressed on the walls of city streets and subways and any abandoned structures in form of graffiti gets a tag of vandalism. Can we do something about it?

There are few cities which provide long public walls at sea shores and other specified places specially for making graffiti, for those underground graffiti artists, who do not have to remain underground any more. They are making wonderful graffiti, day and night on these public canvases provided by city administrations, they don’t have to paint the subways and public structures anymore. Temporary, though they have a place for their creative outlet. We can always have some control strategies in place to check the nature and subject of graffiti to respect the feelings and sentiments of citizens.   

They say Taki or someone invented it, I think it exists before the dawn of civilization, remember those wonderful paintings from prehistoric caves? Its basic instinct of human being to express, expression in tangible forms, expressing it for good, to document, to leave it for generations to come, tools doesn’t matter, modes of expression is irrelevant and changing constantly. From prehistoric caves to modern urban wall they have expressed it and they will find out ways and means to express in future. So, it might be a good idea to start thinking of some city level policy intervention measures to provide an appropriate and recognized platform for easy and legalized creative expression, rather than negating its existence and simply trying to get rid of it.   

Planners and city administrations need to come forward and suggest strategies to integrate underground art in their city development plans and urban landscape. Making this form of art publicly acceptable and giving it mainstream recognition by taking illegality, obscenity any kind of provocation out of it. They need to propose strategies to recognize urban talent which has remained underground till now, and propose plans to nourish them by channelizing their talent in right direction and at right place. Simply creating and imposing the anti-graffiti law and trying to maintain the same is not the answer to this ever growing phenomenon, we need to channelize that creative energy in the right direction and at right places by creating favorable environment and instruments in city landscape.

                                                         

By: Anoop Jha

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