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Showing posts with label Vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vacation. Show all posts
Apr 9, 2017
Jun 10, 2016
Oct 27, 2013
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….
You might
also like-
Dec 21, 2012
What are the urban planning challenges today?
Inferences
from review of JNNURM CDP & Appraisal Reports!
Following
sectoral list of “Urban Planning Challenges” have been compiled based on data
extracted and analyzed from JNNURM Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) for selected
cities of India and its appraisal reports. Though these aspects are generalized
and somewhat overlapping across most of the urban nodes of Indian sub-continent,
lessons and inferences can be equally valuable and applicable for other cities across
the world to considerable extent. It’s just an effort to have a consolidated
perspective and understanding of future urban challenges, you can further suggest
additional planning constraints and challenges to the list!
Comprehensive list of Urban Planning Challenges-
INSTITUTIONAL
Functional
overlap
Jurisdictional
overlap
Issues of
convergence and coordination
POLICY
Lack of
stakeholder consultations or under-participation
Disaster
management issues
Governance
issues
Delegation
of functions to the new ULB
Prioritizationof action and projects alienated from problems and vision
Matters
of resource sharing with neighboring states
ECONOMIC
Lack of
value-add sectors
Expansion
of informal sector
Continued
influx of low skill manpower from neighboring states in some cases
Expanding
un-organized sector
Lower
work participation rates of women at some places
SOCIAL
Issues of
urban sociology in a multi-ethnic city
Social
unrest,
Civil
disobedience,
Public
safety,
Unemployment,
MUNICIPAL
FINANCE
Unstructured
financial profile of urban local bodies
Capital
investment requirement
High
level of dependency on state government grants
Un-assessed
properties for property tax base
Tax rates
not being revised regularly
Irregular
flow of specific grants
Irregular
servicing of debt
PROPERTY
Low
coverage of properties by taxation
Low
collection efficiency,
Inefficient
user charge
SLUMS
& URBAN POOR
Security
of tenure
Quality
of housing
Access to
infrastructure
Rehabilitation
and resettlement
Problem
of sanitation
Community
toilets
Inadequate
night shelters and security
High
density with poor infrastructure
Issue of
‘unapproved slums’
PLANNING
Infrastructure
deficits
Unplanned
growth
Constraint
on growth in city areas due to natural or environmental constraints
Increasing
gap between demand and supply
Inadequacies
in the basic services in unauthorized clusters
Encroachment,
Non-confirming
land use
Missing
link between physical and fiscal planning
Protecting,
conserving and managing heritage resources
Skewed
spatial density distribution
TRANSPORT
Limited
road space
Shortage
of public transport system
Regional
traffic through the city
Inadequate
management of streetlights
Problems
of roads and transport during festival season
Congestion
in the old city areas
Lack of
facilities for NMV
Rapid
increase in vehicles
Lack of
land use transport integration
Inadequate
facilities for physically challenged, pedestrians
Inadequate
parking
Multiplicity
of agencies
WATER
Nonrevenue
water
Leakages
Losses in
distribution network and transmission main
Inequitable
Distribution
Obsolete
distribution system
High
energy cost in water production and Distribution
Ground
water pollution
Water
supply Vs storage capacity gap
Ground
water depletion
Problems
of water supply on specific festival days
Unequal
intra-city distribution
Inefficient
network hydraulics,
Old and
dilapidated networks
High
pollution in distribution network
River/
Sea odor
Lack or
failure of river action plans
SEWAGE
Limited
sewerage treatment facility,
Release
of untreated municipal waste into rivers
Release
of untreated waste into natural drains and open grounds
Disposal
of industrial effluent into the city rivers,
Soft soil
condition
Storm
water management
DRAINAGE
Frequent
floods
Lack of
proper drainage system
Silting
Uncontrolled
solid waste dumping causing blockage,
Stagnation
of water & waste water runoff
Backflow
of water from the river system
Flooding
during monsoon season
SOLID
WASTE MANAGEMENT (SWM)
Absence
of effective primary collection mechanism
Inadequacy
of waste dumping sites
Lack of
scientific waste disposal
Continued
use of open dustbins
Un-segregated
waste disposal
Land
availability for sanitary dump sites
Issue of
industrial slag
HEALTH
CARE
Inadequate
bed strength
Ill-equipped
and inadequate operation theatre in some government hospitals
Ill-equipped
corporation dispensaries and health posts
Unsafe
hospital waste disposal practice
ENVIRONMENTAL
Depletion
and pollution of water resources,
Degradation
of forest cover
Deteriorating
air quality
High
incidence of environmental health problems
NATURAL
Earthquake
Fire
Possibility
of epidemic events
Dec 3, 2012
Historic City of Varanasi and tourism heat map along the edge of river Ganges.
Image Source: Google Earth & Sightsmap
Nov 30, 2012
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!
May 2, 2012
Existing and Proposed Tourist Circuits of India
Expanding tourism infrastructure in India
HIMACHAL PRADESH:
HARYANA & HIMACHAL PRADESH:
MADHYA PRADESH:
The Ministry of Tourism of India has identified 45 Mega Tourist Destinations/ Circuits in consultation with the concerned State Governments/ Union Territories (U.T.) Administrations on the basis of footfalls and their future tourism potential. Out of the 45 identified projects, 30 have already been sanctioned. Some of the Tourist circuits along with indicative maps are given below.
ASSAM:
National Park Mega Circuit covering Manas,Orang, Nameri,Kaziranga, Jorhat,Sibsagar & Majouli
BIHAR:
Bodhgaya-Rajgir-Nalanda- Circuit
CHATTISGARH:
Jagdalpur-Tirathgarh-Chitrakoot-Barsur-Dantewada-Tirathgarh Circuit
GUJARAT:
1) Dwarka-Nageshwar-BetDwarka Circuit
2) Shuklatirth-Kabirvad-Mangleshwar-AngareshwarCircuit
HARYANA:
Panipat-Kurukshetra-Pinjore Circuit
HIMACHAL PRADESH:
Eco and Adventure Circuit (Kullu-Katrain-Manali)
HARYANA & HIMACHAL PRADESH:
Panchkula –Yamunanagar(Haryana) – PontaSahib
JAMMU & KASHMIR:
Naagar Nagar Circuit (Watlab viaHazratbal,Tulmullah, Mansbaland Wullar Lake), Srinagar
MADHYA PRADESH:
Bundelkhand comprising of Tikamgarh, Damoh, Sagar, Chhatarpurand Panna
MAHARASHTRA:
Mahaur-Nanded -Vishnupuri Back Water- Kandhar Fort
ORISSA:
Bhubaneshwar-Puri-Chilka- Circuit
RAJASTHAN:
1) Ajmer- Pushkar
2) Jodhpur-Bikaner-Jaisalmer
TAMILNADU:
Pilgrimage Heritage Circuit (Madurai-Rameshwaram-Kanyakumari)
UTTARAKHAND:
Haridwar-Rishikesh-Munikireti- Circuit
UTTAR-PRADESH:
1) Varanasi-Sarnath-Ramnagar Circuit
2) Mathura-Vrindavan
Data Source: http://pib.nic.in/,
Images prepared with help of Google Map
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