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What does growth cycle of design industry looks like?

Design industry follows a repetitive elliptical growth path.

If you look back down the development lane of design industry especially visible in product design and fashion industry, you will witness some familiar recurring pattern of growth, repetitive, though every time in a new avatar.

More than say 90 percent of designers still use direct or derivatives of primitive or rather eternal   geometrical building blocks as raw material- shapes and surfaces, like circle, triangle, square, prism, hyperbole  etc. and remaining 10 percent relentlessly trying to unearth some divine pattern or previously unseen building blocks or magic design elements, anxiously looking here and there for some clue, looking into microscope, looking up to nature, science, nano technology, microbiology, history or mythology or whatever or simply resorting to hallucinated inspiration, so that some divine "never before design element" descends upon them out of luck, while still acknowledging that those basic geometric building blocks like triangle and circles are not going to go away anywhere soon, probably never.

So, when majority of fundamental design elements have remained exactly the same throughout the evolution of design industry, this industry is bound to follow a recurring path starting from basics, evolving on the way through innovation, reaching to maturity, taking an inspirational U-Turn and finally going back to its roots, from where it all started. Apparently a perfect circle of growth; but it goes further, we haven’t talked about technology yet, this ever evolving technology provides designers even bigger opportunities, with new materials, new textures, enhance durability and elasticity, new colors, new opacity newer viscosity and so on, which helps prolong this period of growth cycle pushing this circular trajectory to follow an even larger elliptical path, finally going back to its roots just to be born again.

You might also like this post - Artificial Sonic Urban Environment to break the monotony of City!

Data mining of local print Media for contextual urban planning

By - Anoop Jha

Analyzing vast database of local and regional newspapers

Media is called the mirror of society and it tells the stories of any region and its people as seen and gathered with continuous efforts.  Imagine the amount of data and information media might have gathered collectively in course of decades of exploration, about any particular region, its people, community and their behavior, their needs and aspirations, their strengths and their opportunities, their social and economic dynamics and potentials. 


[Handpicked Books] 




This huge amount of data can be of tremendous importance for planners and policy makers, if filtered and analysed properly. Let’s take print media for the purpose of data mining since it would be easier to dig from the decades of archive, of national, regional and local newspapers.

Collage of print media

What’s the standard way of research for different planning projects? Planners are generally dependent on secondary data in elementary stage and primary data at later stage to arrive at a conclusion in term of what could be the best suitable plan for a city or region. 


When it comes to secondary data collection, most of the time it’s either published reports or online database which is user uploaded content on which they rely. This relevant information may be authentic, may be half baked, may be partially relevant, may be totally wrong or may not be available even.

Local & regional newspapers

What about local print media? Have we forgot to explore the rich and authentic information which the local newspares have generated across a large time span. Though its little tiresome to filter all those relevant information about the particular region or issue from the thousands of chronological issues of dozens of national and regional newspapers and magazines. But no information can be as authentic, precise and relevant as the collective database of this vast landscape of print media not even primary data. Need is to encourage and formalize a methodology to utilize this untapped knowledge of print media for the planning process.

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.

Is Debate a right model for development process or is it a drain on resources?

By Anoop Jha

Understanding the structure and psychology of debate and its assumed relevance in planning process

They think that debate can solve the planning and development issues!! You must have seen some of the so called “eminent intellectuals” fighting with each other on air, on some news channel, defending their stubborn, idiosyncratic ideologies and opinions towards some development issues or other. Debate has become such an obvious routine event across the span of media that nobody cares for anybody’s opinion anymore. You already know what its likes. It appears that these intellectual guys on air have started taking “on screen debate” as a freelance job option or a tool to be in limelight rather than taking these development issues seriously and really getting involved in it with an intention to bring forth a plan which can solve the given development and planning issue and will help fuel the growth of region and nation.  

On air debate vs dissertation panel 

What is wrong with debate? Let’s try to understand the structure and psychology of debate. The moment we go for a debate our available resources gets split in two visible contradictory parts one “for” and other “against” the issue at discussion, while both groups start investing their time, energy, efforts in collecting evidence to justify their stand, meanwhile issue for which they are fighting starts losing its significance only being replaced by individual’s monumental idiosyncrasies and group’s ego. Ego manifesting at its best and expertise either being channelized in an unconstructive direction or being exhausted, this is what the structure of “debate” has been from time immemorial. They don’t mind debating at all because they have been taught and brought up like this in school. What they teach in school is to take a stand, right or wrong and defend it, in this much celebrated phenomenon called “debate” where more cunning and smarter guy would be awarded, isn’t it? The smarter orator will always win, no matter what side of debate he or she is on, it’s like that most of the time.

Now let’s take another example with a similar discussion platform with similar expert panel, but having a totally different approach towards any given issue. Let’s see ideally what happens in a design, architectural or planning dissertation jury. This jury process involves an identified design, development, planning project or issue which they want to structure and resolve as a final outcome, within a given time frame with a panel of diverse expertise having focused intention to arrive at some solution with consensus. These jury members of dissertation or thesis panel might also have their own idiosyncratic view toward any particular issue or design project which might be totally different from other co panel members like in the case of “those experts, debating on air”, but their approach and efforts towards any particular issue is totally and fundamentally different from those of “on screen debating intellectuals”.  Unlike the experts and politicians in on air group discussion and talk shows, these panel members are here with an intention to make that project work, these experts are here to give feedback, they are here to give a positive direction to the project, they are here to invest their expertise in the success of project and resolving the issues in a constructive way keeping their ego aside, they are here functioning together cohesively in spite of their ideological differences because their intention is to “resolve the issue” and “make this work” .

Of course every development project or planning issue has some externalities associated with it both positive as well as negative; every economic activity has some kind of social and environmental cost to pay. We often tend to forget that there are grey shades as well; it’s not always completely black or white. We don’t always have to take a stand for either black or white. Let’s think collectively without being prejudiced toward a new or old idea, listening to each other, paying attention to every voice, where no one feels excluded, trying to reach at consensus where everyone is a winner.

It takes a group effort, involvement of experts as well as community and stakeholders on same platform to take development work forward and to resolve planning issues; they have to work and think cohesively to arrive at some unanimous decision in spite of varied individual’s opinions. Then only we can create a society were majority of population is satisfied, not like debate which divides society, were even after the resolution of issue half of the segment still feel that there has been injustice because other segment of society has won in debate. It takes constructive criticism not the aggressive debate to build a vibrant society and strengthened nation. 

Artificial Sonic Urban Environment to break the monotony of City!

By - Anoop Jha

Talking city - With endless possibilities

Even in the big vibrant city you live, you go through the same old repeated pattern of daily activities in an outdoor urban environment, same street, same mode, same people, same noise, and same monotony of everyday that a city presents in spite of all its somewhat varying activities. To break the monotony of city some dynamic and catalytic surprise element need to be introduced into the functional and ambient system of city. Let’s take “artificial sonic environment” as that surprise element; it has some inherent characteristics which makes it one of the best possible and commercially viable solutions to be an experimental tool to create rich user experience in the city.

Imagine you are waiting at a bus stop to catch the bus to your office like any other working day and suddenly you are greeted by a pleasant light sound of the flute blended with some hilly region tune, emerging from the background which enveloping the ambient environment of that particular bus stop and subsequently every passenger leaving that bus stop with pleasant memory and a bright smile. What a pleasant start of the day.

Imagine a situation where you reached a busy local fruit and vegetable market to buy stuffs. While you are busy negotiating the price with vendor you suddenly pay attention to the light sound of morning chorus of birds and munching buffalos or roaming heard of cows blended with sweet ethnic rural song which is again emerging from background speakers concealed at strategic public urban spaces which encloses the local market. This particular buying experience would be so different and pleasant than any other day that next time you would be inevitably encouraged to walk down the street from your home to re-live that similar experience, only to find out more sonic surprises in terms of changing songs and tunes, listening to morning news right into the middle of vegetable market, you can even listen to your favorite songs and tunes or can dedicate it to whole market or to the entire population of public plaza or square or even to entire city from right there and then through city level network of speakers and stereos installed by governing authorities by paying a token amount which goes into the expansion and maintenance of the sonic infrastructure of city itself and collectively becomes an additional source of income to municipal authorities. Sounds Good, isn’t it??

Need for Dining Masterplan of city: most of us will agree!

By - Anoop Jha

From Hmmm to Ymmm 

When you feel hungry, when you don’t want to have homemade food, when you are tiered of cooking, when you are looking forward to a wonderful weekend break or planning for a New Year party or simply want to hangout out with your friends and family, you immediately do either one or more of the following things –

·  You turn to your location based smart phone to find nearest restaurant

·    You google a happening restaurant in your city, resulting lots of confusing results with too much of hassle to filter information

·   You open an online map with innumerous popped up restaurant locations

·    You go to food critic site and find too much about taste and too little about route, location, public transport connection and parking facilities.  

·     You turn to visitors reviews only to find out there are two distinct groups one “for” and other “against” the restaurant sharing their biased opinions, leaving you without any clue what to do.

And in the course of exploring the dining possibilities you are really getting late and getting frustrated while your wife or girlfriend is getting disappointed. What’s the solution?

Structured & Informative dining masterplan

Leaving taste and ambiance reviews to food critics and users, someone has to take the responsibility to create a comprehensive dining map of the city to avoid all this confusion providing relevant details for resident of the city and tourists as well, since intracity leisure trips comprises of a major chunk or travel numbers. Responsibility of providing timely and accurate information related to city amenities whether dining, leisure or other should technically lie with city for providing a hassle free transport and living experience for city population and urban planners can definitely contribute in consolidating and presenting a comprehensive “Dining Masterplan of city”.

60th National Town and Country Planners Congress

THEME

Planning and Development 2025: Challenges and Reforms

LOCATION

6^th -  8^th January, 2012

Senate Bhavan, University of Mysore,

Manasgangotri, Mysore -570006

ORGANIZERS

Institute of Town Planners, India

4A, ring Road, I.P. Estate, New Delhi – 110002

PROGRAMME SCHEDULE

FURTHER DETAILS: http://www.itpi.org.in/pdfs/Brochure.pdf

SOURCE - ITPI

Social media and its ignored role in planning process

By- Anoop Jha

Utilising Background noise of social media for better planning

There is always a resistance and hesitance to change, resistance to adapt to new technology, new methods, new thoughts. Same is the case of age old planning procedure. Take for example surveys and participatory planning. Surveys both primary and secondary play a very important role in any Urban and regional planning endeavor and project of any scale and nature, implemented through any agency whether private or Govt. or PPP. Also due to rigidity and shortsightedness of planning process we forgot to include the recently emerged but powerful segment of social structure called Social Media whose feedback and opinion matters a lot. Tech savvy active segment of population who emerged in recent past feel responsible as a citizen to express their feeling towards variety of issues including any particular development and planning issues and projects, some of these collective thoughts out of the massive online “junk opinions” can prove to be a very valuable asset if filtered, tracked, interpreted and incorporated in the project being discussed or for any planning issue in general.  

Social Media feedbacks for planning process and projects are either underestimated due to pre-determined age old procedural guidelines for planning process including, surveys, community participation and feedback, or are untapped due to shear abundance of it. Current situation is that a substantial number of people give their opinion and feedback and willing to share more on some ongoing project as well as project under pipeline, but planners and responsible authorities do not feel responsible even to listen to these valuable inputs coming from background noise of the social media. All these efforts of individuals and groups go into the vain in most of the cases.    

Enabling and channelizing the online focused planning communities like dedicated discussion forums, blogs, social networking sites and online professional communities in the positive direction to get a feedback on a particular project can radically alter the way projects being planned and implemented.