Conserving inherited heritage - an urgent challenge!

Need of a micro conservation policy. 

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

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

Some kids don't play Soccer and possibly will never play Golf, why so?

Sometimes one feels that sports is more about opportunities and affordability! 

Usually Kids from humble socioeconomic background seems to be happy and content with their primitive sports, which does not need any sports gear or tool or gadget or training or coach and so on. 
   
 Has it anything to do with the limited opportunities they get and their    sparse economic condition?

If "Law of Physics" is working in your piece of Art or Architecture...

..then you know you are going in the right direction!

From Wonderful Classical Art to Good Design to Amazing Architecture, one thing is common that is "Law of Physics" which is and should be ever-present there to make it a success. If Gravity is acting on you, it can and should act on your Piece of Art or Architecture as well. Though Gravity is just a simple example here to explain the impact of Physics on Art or Architecture.

A page from the old Notebook

Art without true reflection of natural physical laws is like making a portrait of someone sitting in front of you and assuming that there is no force of gravity acting on your subject of art or may be your subject is floating in the air or something. Remember the good old classical art works from master artists, with beautiful bulky art subjects of individual or group portraits?

There is another way to look at it as well, that is; you can also make a successful art or architecture by beating the gravity or natural laws itself, like an architectural work having an appearance of floating in the air. No matter what, a good design revolves around the law of physics whether going with it or challenging the Natural Laws, Laws of Physics!

A Public Art you will appreciate!

Making Vibrant Public Spaces and Amenities 






 

At an Art and Craft Festival Near Delhi, India

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!

Making places - That street corner…

Traditional planning approach and values - being lost in transition?

Any random street corner of any random city, corner at the junction of streets, streets busy or calm, chaotic at times, still having its own order, order in transition, transition of daily commuters, transition of shifting daylight, transition of shadows, glitter of street and neon signage light, LED shop window and synchronized traffic light, that flux of casual traffic light, that changing activity landscape across the day across the seasons with occasional pause. But peculiar are the streets of old and heritage cities, cities with history, those streets and corners evolved from the centuries of planning and urban design experience, tailor-made to the local needs of community and neighborhood, with varying characteristics across the region across the city and across the world. Wisely adapted for local climate, some designed for extreme harsh summer, some for tons of snow, an ancestral legacy of planning and design up-to the last fine details of drain cover and cast iron light-pillars and articulated bollards.

Though respected, preserved and encouraged in some cities, that example and inherited legacy of urban design and planning is fast deteriorating and disappearing, sometimes out of ignorance sometimes purposefully ignored, in several parts of the world and almost in any upcoming new city in any corner of world, that local wisdom of traditional planning is increasingly being lost and being mechanized, being templatified. Traditionally those streets and corners were designed to protects commuters from harsh sun, from icy wind, and from pouring rain and sudden snow, those meandering streets used to have a texture of character with those spaces to pause and relax and in the comfortable safe niches, a place to chat and socialize and a place to engage oneself in that active buzz of street, corners reinforced to give it a distinct recognizable character. That legacy of traditional localized planning is calling for justice and revival.

Thinking about fabric ofcity especially within city boundaries, a natural question comes to mind, why a vast country with extremely diversified heritage and climatic regions and special needs should have only few standard templates of streets sections and junctions and street corners with little bit possibility of urban design integration mostly for sake of localization formalities? Templates though give advantage of planning execution, better control and cost efficiency; it tends to encourage deterioration of heritage characters and inherited values and learning mostly in the name of infrastructure and technical feasibility, commercial viability, changing lifestyle requirements, uniformity, standardization, international acceptance etc. Of-course needs are different today, speedy transport, higher population density, quantum shift in lifestyle and technology, higher latent demand, etc., hence the different planning approach visible and practiced today, but we should ask ourselves, can we incorporate those learning experience from our past generations into today’s planning process and can we infuse them in today’s “easy way out templates”? With all the technological advancement and possibilities and centuries of learning experience, one thinks that it’s somewhat possible to strike the balance between traditional learning and present planning approach preserving the character and dignity of that specific city that specific core and that neighborhood, starting right from the careful planning of that street and that street corner. All it needs is a tender heart, logical brain and collective will of planners, urban designers and policy makers and may be few extra bucks!    

Urban Underprivileged segment-what can we do for them?

While you are driving down the busy city lanes sometime of the year someday, from there to somewhere, busy negotiating ruthless traffic, busy minding the gap, minding your own business, busy processing next to-do-list on your mental map, driving with occasional subconscious glimpse of buzzing city with all that glam and beauty and buzz and noise and colors; glimpse of the city with constant familiar flux; suddenly on the footpath, on the next turn, on the traffic junction or on the dim corner of street you spot a poor deprived child, a beggar in patchwork cloth, an old discarded person or a doped fainted soul, often pretentiously indifferent but sometime being concerned it comes to your mind, what can you do for them? Why they are in that state? What opportunities they lacked? What is their future? What is the way out for them?  Is there someone listening to them? Apparently it’s not their first choices to be there in that unpleasant state!

No matter how rich, how well off, how busy you are in your own life you must have come across such instance and have thought at least for once that what can you do for them? There might be policies, might be schemes for their revival but they might not be aware of such things, there might be some poster of welfare scheme to rescue them from that situation posted right at the display board of that bus stop but may be they don’t know how to read, no one told them either, may be they are educated but they lack a caring hand to push them towards a better life, may be the sheer number of them making it difficult for city administrations to deal with them, may the same sheer number of them calls for restructuring of public welfare policies and re-engineering the implementation strategies.

Something somewhere lacking, some lessons to be learned, some immediate rescue actions need to be taken, with a sincere note of hope we need to initiate a discussion on variety of such issues on variety of platforms to come up with some concrete and realistic alternative livelihood solutions. Something which will give them a respectful livelihood and a dignified life! One still feels that it’s more of policy level issue than the monetary one. Policies like customized education, mandatory skill development, upfront plans for aging city population, teaching survival tricks and strategies right from the elementary education up to the higher education ladder and even to the uneducated population, survival from financial breakdown, survival from natural calamity, surviving from personal, professional, physical and medical emergencies, surviving poverty and old age in a dignified manner of course with institutional support, citizen participation and motivation!

We need to make every citizen skilled and able enough to earn their own livelihood even if they already have livelihood resources at disposal, even if they have family and people to take care of at present, at least as a backup livelihood plan so that they don’t end up being abandoned and begging in streets in case of major setbacks, so that at least there offspring don’t spend whole of their life on street relying on other’s mercy. Simply educating 100% of population is not the ultimate solution for urban poverty for that matter poverty of any kind, even formal education will have to be skill oriented from the very beginning; we can keep narrating encyclopedia to them later! Just an argument though, an 8 to 12 year child who has some livelihood skill up his sleeves can survive even flourish in his life picking up right opportunities, if hypothetically he has no other options left, but it might be very difficult for many of children of same age group to deal with such situations with generalized Not-so-skill-oriented mass education which is being transferred to them at school at present. Education system need to include more and more of technical and creative skill and hobby oriented course structure from the very beginning, one can even think of tailor-made customized education for every single student identifying there talent and inclination early in life. Even if they don’t have to use those skills they can peruse them as their hobby or alternative income source in course of time, and we’ll have a pool of incredibly talented, confident, morally and financially elevated citizens. 

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

Glimpse of cultivation worldwide

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What with urban farming? Can we make it happen?

Urban farming, a real good concept, something which might save the humanity from starvation. How far we are from autonomous urban system, system which generates enough food for itself, food affordable enough to reach the lowest economic strata of urban system, food pallet diverse enough to suite the heterogeneous  appetite of cosmopolitan city.  Why it is that we started doing agriculture thousands of years ago, but basic principal of agricultural has remained same apart from high-tech agricultural  machines,  tools, pesticides, genetically modified crops etc., why it seems stagnated, while in the course of evolution world population is shifting more and more towards urban centers but the source of food which was in the rural areas have remained there itself, of course it triggers economic growth, employment etc. through to and fro movement of processed and unprocessed food between urban and rural areas, which perfectly makes sense, but have we done it purposefully, or is it that we couldn’t devise a full blown method to get our food produced in the city itself,  apart from small experimental efforts of terrace farming etc. dotted here and there on the city map. Of course, city chooses its own priority activities in its core while pushing and spreading less important activities towards periphery and surrounding rural  regions. Is it that we are  treating urban farming as a luxury lifestyle item like terrace farming which can be shown to our guests with pride, is it that urban farming has just become a formula to get noticed in the race of green architecture, or a green USP to convince the client and sell the project to a wealthy end user, is it just a tool to prove that you are environmentally enlightened or has it really a potential to feed the city.

Can we make urban farming a concept easy enough  to be grasped by an average city dweller since gardening and farming involves skills and knowledge which is not taught in school,  a process easy enough to be implemented in the every balcony and every terrace of the city, can government provide training and  motivation to its citizen with supportive policies to make widespread urban farming a reality.



Can we expect array of fruit trees along the city streets in the near future, can we expect orchard and vegetable farming in the public parks and abandoned land parcels as a sustainable urban landscape effort. Can we expect urban farming in majority of houses,  apartment and premises of any city, implemented through training, stringent bylaws, tax saving policies,  subsidies and persistent efforts.  Can we give our child an opportunity to witness agricultural life cycle in their own private premises to better understand the process of life.     

Have we ever thought that urban farming might not be a luxury to showcase but an inevitable necessity for every city, which we are delaying and prolonging somehow?  

Blue Infrastructure strategies for Green Infrastructure

Water and related infrastructure collectively plays a vital role in wellbeing of city. Urban quality of a city can be accessed on the attention given to its water resources by the city planners and authority which includes conservation measures, utilization strategies and quality of water resources.  Quality of Water is the scale on which urban health can be measured. Water has its whole spectrum of influence from drinking water to sanitation to micro climate to green cover and varies in scale and operation from pond to river to sea and flood. Conserving and creating and managing blue infrastructure of city is the way towards greener infrastructure  and sustainable future

Why we can't & shouldn't get rid of open spaces of city.

Holistic environmental economic view 

Open and Green Spaces have been integral part of the fabric of city historically and served as a democratic interaction place for citizens in the sea of individual private territories of a city. Though green landscape philosophy and clean ambient environment techniques have evolved and spread widely in course of time from open public realm to building interior, to terrace garden, to artificial air purifiers etc. but the material or psychological need of public open spaces in the city can not be replaced by any other present technology or method. So its not only the need of green spaces but the need of pubic space which validates the existence of such open and green spaces throughout the city and this need cannot always be evaluated on monetary terms. Government and municipal bodies  need to find out new innovative fiscal strategies to raise funds to operate and maintain such spaces rather than getting rid of green space for immediate economical benefit. 

Thin line between development works, social service and exploitation

By - Anoop Jha

A case of tribal communities and regions

We need to question our own intention of doing right and doing good thing to others. May be what we think is right for someone or some community might not be that good for them as we assume.

Who is to decide what is good for whom? Is it the job of government? or maybe the Highbrow society? Or socially, politically and intellectually established individuals with their idiosyncratic ideology and philosophy having their own idea of utopian society? Is it the job of little advanced segment of society to decide what is good for not so advanced segment of society?


[Handpicked Books]

What could be the hidden intention behind doing good to others or some community or some region, which we call development work or at times social service?  Let’s take the example of tribal community and tribal region. Is it the shear innocent intention of sharing existing wealth and knowledge to unprivileged or unexplored segment of society or is it to exploit the untapped potential of the previously unexplored tribal region for our own advantage, is it a sincere effort to understand and document the needs and social pattern of these tribal communities or is it just to get commercial advantage by exposing these hidden communities to mainstream society, is it to help them learn utilize their own resources more efficiently or the hidden intention to exploit rich tangible and intangible tribal resources.  Is it to provide them better health, better opportunities and better lifestyle or is it  just shear gratification of doing social service.  Has that road been built to connect those hidden tribal communities to the mainstream society and to provide them new age opportunities and facilities or the intention is to extract the tribal wealth of region and exploit the heritage and culture value in form of tourism and all. 

Shy and conservative tribal communities throughout the world need very little for their living; they are an autonomous society in themselves.  They have been adapted to their environment in course of evolution and their local environment usually provides them all they need- food, shelter, social interaction, entertainment, spiritual satisfaction. Now there are few choices to make. One is to let this situation of apparent equilibrium of autonomous tribal community go ahead as usual and second to interfere and change the equilibrium either for their good or for own advantage which seems to be the case most of the time. This is a sensitive and tender issue has to be dealt with much thought and compassion. Social behaviors, norms and needs of tribal communities are mostly way different then the mainstream, so simply imposing the rules of mainstream society on the said communities might not do justice to them. For example the concept of formal education might be something totally alien to many tribal communities, so simply introducing the primary and secondary education system to those communities might not be a good idea just because we want everyone in the country to be literate, may be they simply don’t need a formal education, may be they need a different kind of skill orientated education, may be they need an education system totally different from mainstream society.  There are many such issues to address and subject of discussion.

Until they all arrive at a consensus, role of government in the mean time can be to protect the tribal communities and regions from external commercial invaders,  and provide them the health infrastructure with emergency facilities.   

Elevating financial profile of a community is much easier than perceived.

By – Anoop Jha

Creating community potential inventory and building capacity

When it comes to economic development of a region or community, there are always two choices available for the governing authorities. First, to let the business go on as usual that is apparent in majority of cases, second, to take deliberate catalytic measures to enhance the economic profile of a community as a whole and hence elevating financial profile of the individuals and households. In the first case, all the efforts of government remains targeted to somehow sustain the past economic growth rate of the region, general governing psychology is to please the community with showing little increment in overall growth rate, hence securing the vote bank and if that is not possible there are so many tricks to present even weak economic profile and data in number of glorified ways. If you want to taste a flavor of statistical manipulation, a widely recommended book is “How to Lie with Statistics -by Darrell Huff”. Anyway, coming to the second case, it takes a vision, intelligence and determination of government and policy makers to elevate the financial profile of a community and individuals in a real sense, which is after all not that difficult as historically projected by government itself by blaming lack of resources or by policy makers, relying too much on age old economic theories, failing to understand and tap emerging possibilities, or by mainstream media which is more concerned about blaming administration and debating on trivial statistics rather than educating and helping community to find out other additional possible economic resources and options.

There is one fundamental flaw in the way government approaches the community economics. Their current method and thrust is to gather information form community, derive inferences from its analysis, propose measures to tackle it and allocate the fund to achieve the same for the given time period and done for a while. But this model is not sustainable because in this model community is totally dependent on external aid and support while their potential remains untapped. Community needs an economic model which puts community economic growth on autopilot mode; of course they need some kind of assistance from government also in terms of strategic structure, creating infrastructure and some monitory help in the beginning. A better model of economic growth for a region would be to extract the previously untapped potential of a community, every household, and every individual for their own development. A community holds key of its own success, they have huge unrecognised potential in totality, which if tapped and nourished can help them create a much better economic profile.

Census or community data are mostly related to demography and they are quantitative in nature. Here is a list of data items collected during survey by Census of India. http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/data_item_collected_in_census.aspx  

What is lacking here is the qualitative data.  Qualitative data is essential to understand the potential of individual and community as a whole, and to formulize a holistic economic strategy for the region and community which is beyond time or resources.  Government should also include qualitative items in census survey while asking questions to individuals and household like what is their strength, what economic activity they would like to peruse given a choice or if made mandatory? What are their economic aspirations? What are their hobbies or talent in which they would like to get training and government support to take it further as an additional household economic activity? What are the three immediate measures and assistance they are expecting from government as an individual or household to peruse their dream leading to economic development? What are they good at? What are the excess resources which they would like to share or transfer to society or community if needed, whether its material, time or knowledge?

Government need to prepare the inventory of potential and talent lying within the community itself. They have to find and create and nourish entrepreneur in every household and should provide every possible support and training for the same, if they want to raise the economic profile of any community, society or region. These entrepreneurial activities can be in addition to their primary economic activities. They need to create entrepreneur out of every housewife, out of every teenage, out of senior citizens. Each one of them have latent talent which need to be unlocked for they own sake and for the sake of better and autonomous society. All they need to do is to identify the potential, building capacity on that direction and create linkage between talent and market, rest of economic activities and growth will follow on its own.

Emerging Strategic Trends in Urban and Regional Planning

By - Anoop Jha

Proposed strategic planning interventions

Strategic research in the field of urban and regional planning is an interesting area of study. Formulising sound and sustainable strategies require thorough brainstorming by the planners, scholars, experts, academicians, business representatives, people’s representatives, Welfare organizations, focused professional groups and individuals. It’s high time that a fresh set of strategies should be prepared to tackle the exponentially growing urban and regional problems, like population bubble, shrinking resources, growing confusion chaos in cities etc. Let’s take a look at strategies which has emerging in recent part or can be the possible fresh approach towards better planning.

PROPOSED STRATEGIC PLANS

Cross sectoral learning to increase industry knowledge base,

Multidisciplinary approach for innovative approach, cost effective solutions and swift process,

Decentralization of activities for localised autonomy and efficiency,

Single point contact from public agency for hassle free and faster processing,

Bilateral and Multilateral ties for regional consensus and holistic development,

Environmentally sustainable efforts to curtail the negative externalities of project and boost the downstream benefits

Active Resource mobilization to unlock the untapped potential of the region, population and resources

Participatory Planning: Interoperability of stakeholders for sustainable planning

By - Anoop Jha

Interoperability to fast forward urban and regional planning process

In a democratic setting, urban and regional planning projects are implemented through participatory process and evolves  many stakeholders including planners, individuals, agencies, NGOs, authorities, states and political fraternity and to hence presents a complex challenge to bring all these stakeholders at the same platform and consensus, in the set period of time. Success of project depends on the “Interoperability” of these stakeholders, lesser the friction faster would be the job done.    

Interoperability is a functional aspect of planning during project lifecycle and its operation and maintenance period. It can be defined as an index of interaction of different agencies working together for implementing and operating a planning project. There can be different issues in interoperability like, interstate resource dispute, disagreement on resource allocation, conflict of interest, environmental concerns over negative externalities of project. There is a growing need for strategic intervention at different levels of planning process for a consensus on interoperability for sustainable planning. It’s a tool for cohesive planning process and the need of time.    

Pro-poor Regional Planning: Strategic proposal

By- Anoop Jha

Mainstream Socio – economic Integration of poor and underprivileged

Impact of Regional Planning is slow but it is long-lasting. It is directly related to growth of region hence it has to be inclusive for downstream befits. It has evolved to cater to a much larger population base. It shapes the socio-economic future trends of the region and even the nation. There are different strategies which can and should be adopted as part of the Regional Development Plan and Regional Tourism and transportation Plan. Some of the pro-poor strategies for regional planning are as follows –

Social Integration of poor and underprivileged strata of society

Reviving and reinforcing local art, culture, history, of the region   

Promoting local Artisans, craftsman and artists,

Establishing Service and food processing industries

Creating zonal art, craft, food-grain, Wholesale and retail markets as active and vibrant nodes

Networking nodes through all weather road

Small scale industries

Training

Storage facilities

Hospitality

Natural eco tourism, Food and eateries 

Rural tourism

Culture trekking

Nurturing talent pool

Resource mobilisation,

Micro financing and community based program