Future of aviation and space navigation - Schematic

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A photo posted by Urbanoregional (@urbanoregional) on Jun 5, 2016 at 5:12am PDT

Scaling of opportunities, a bigger challenge than scaling up urban infrastructure!

Tackling immediate soft urban challenges through resource prioritization!

Infrastructure expansion is where the money and interest is and is a never ending process as well, so it will keep scaling up in background anyway and will be taken care of diligently, with or without much intervention. Public sector has more of a catalytic and mentoring role to play in that direction. Skill is what we need to focus on today.

Like they say “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him how to catch a fish and he will eat for his lifetime”.  Scaled opportunity is what an urban dweller needs irrespective of which Socio-economic strata they belong. More opportunity to masses means more involvement in the urban dynamics, and hence being more engaged in the process of building the very city which provided the new scale and dimensions of opportunities. Scaling of opportunity are less resource intensive and has higher ROR than scaling or urban infrastructure and might be more sustainable an approach!

Further scientific modelling and analysis will be required to validate and assert the idea.  

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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!

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!

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. 

Key strengths and potential sectors of Indian states

ANDHRA PRADESH

ITES destination

Industrial estates

Abundant energy

World-class academic institutions

Storehouse of minerals

ASSAM

Comprehensive central investment policy for NER

Liberalised state industrial policies,

Skilled and cheap manpower

Pleasant climate and scenic landscape

Locational advantage for foreign trade

CHHATTISGARH

Power surplus

Availability of low grade coal-power plants

Ample amount of land

HARYANA

High per capita income

Proximity to trade and consumption centers in country- NCR

Automobiles and automotive components

IT/ITES facilities /software,

Textiles and readymade garments

Property development and retailing

Agro export

HIMACHAL PRADESH

High incentives index

Consumer market index

Most urbanised state

Low power tariff and cost of power generation

Policy proactiveness

Availability of natural resources for agro-based industries

High literacy rates and good quality workforce

High quality limestone

JAMMU & KASHMIR

Concessional land rates for industries on lease

Large tourism potential

Horticulture industry

Skills of weaving and designing of textile products,

Traditional skills of fine craftsmanship can be used in the field of electronic and precision engineering.

KARNATAKA

Proactive government

Sector-friendly policies

Large pool of skilled manpower

Best infrastructure

Larger focus on industrial growth

KERALA

High literacy rate

Largest producer of coconut, pepper, coir, cocoa, rubber and areca nut

MADHYA PRADESH

Law and order

High growth in infrastructure development..

High growth in agriculture

Good governance.

Centrally located, / accessible

Low cost of skilled labor

Low cost of land

Cement, textiles and edible oils.

Track record of attracting private investment in transport infrastructure

Initiated greenfield special economic zone.

Automobile and pharmaceutical industries

Improving social development indices

RAJASTHAN

Cement

Mineral production

Producers of cotton and wool

Tourist destination

Progressive states in electricity sector reforms

Oil and gas reserves

Emerging destination for it and ITES industries

UTTARAKHAND

Hydro-potential

Promoting industrial estates, industrial parks and growth centre

Vast pool of a natural resource

Tourism development

Quality human resource base at competitive rates

Number of fiscal benefits like concessional industrial package

By Anoop Jha

Source: pppindia.com

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?  

Where have we reached in evolution of Interior Design?

Analogy of Sculpture and Interior Design

Evolutionary comparison of sculpture and interior design can throw some light on the state of interior design in which it is at present and may pave the future direction for it. If you analyze the evolution of Sculpture, it has evolved from a “symbolic gesture of kingdom and state authority” historically to the “liberalized expression of rebellious creative individuals” in past century to an “interactive public art” at present. When it comes to interior design it has evolved from “utilitarian design driven by necessity” to “lifestyle symbol with expression of wealth” to “uniqueness with technological integration”. The crucial missing point in the evolution of interior design is that it has still to reach a point where a user can interact and relate to it rather than simply appreciating its beauty and ambiance while waiting on a comfortable couch in a lobby or from a workstation of an office.

While the focus of sculpture, individually or as part of landscape architecture or in public domain has shifted from a decorative element to an interactive and engaging public element, the efforts of interior design has remained focused mostly in the aesthetic domain with attention to space efficiency, economic execution and operation even at present. Since all the efforts are concentrated on the aesthetics, ambiance and efficiency part of interior design, majority of architects and designers are caught in to the vicious cycle of making it more and more efficient. It’s high time that architects and designers should break this cycle and create an indoor environment which is not only appreciated by the users but where division of user and space gets blurred, a space where occupant is constantly interacting with its ambient indoor environment in tangible manner, where user have been kept engaged not only by its aesthetics but in terms of physical and mental activities, an informative, interactive indoor ambiance like the case of modern public sculptures.

By Anoop Jha

Deprived of design aesthetics?

Politics of Design and need of Design democracy

Apart from invention of wheel and some other similar historical or contemporary breakthroughs or design innovation which have served humanity to achieve better life and lifestyle, design has evolved in a very controlled manner at least in recent history and apparently it’s not by coincidence, it’s by choice, the choice of few able hands and minds who have manipulated the evolution of design for their personal monetary benefit. Design has lost its freedom and meaning since the commercialization of design has taken place. Contemporary design process has become less of necessity and more of luxury, apart from those which are for advancement of mankind like computers, rocket science and all.

Apparently designs are manipulated across the length and breadth of product industry to skew and control the market demand and trick the customers, whether its car or washing machine or laptop or handbag or any household product. You see, every item has a line of product to cater to every economical strata of society, that makes perfect sense – something for everyone! Story doesn't end here, it’s just the beginning, beginning of whole gimmick of manipulative product development and market control philosophy. Have you ever questioned why the product “X1” that you bought at cheaper price is average in looks, in its aesthetic appeal and in design than the similar high end product “X2” with its classy elegant look? Ever wondered why the products of same company has different aesthetic appearance across its product range, though its same materials, same product DNA, same manufacturer, same factory, almost same production time, same technology? Is it coincident that if you pay less you will get an inferior looking product no matter what is the product and higher you pay better aesthetical products you will get, no matter what is the product or is it that they have purposefully handed over average design to you and deprived you of the great design of the higher range product so that you will come back to buy the better looking product next time? We are not talking about imbedded technology, of course technology comes at a price.

Is it that we have accepted this hierarchy of design aesthetics as an integral part of business and our daily life? This is true for any product; let’s take car, for example.  Is it a coincidence that the same designer or company who produces that strikingly beautiful design of highest segment car with those passionate and careful curvatures of car body also produces average looking box like cars with primitive decades old design sense in its lower price segment? Is it a natural process of design or this vast aesthetic gap between cheap and expensive product has been created purposefully so that people will appreciate and crave for higher segment product? Otherwise what is holding back companies or designers to give a wonderful design and aesthetics to each of its customer irrespective of their economic profiles, with products prices varying primarily due to its embedded technology or robustness and uniqueness of inbuilt content or additional functional features?

But after all how does it matter, since there is no sense of design ownership and appreciation left in all of us after centuries of design exploitation and manipulation, since we seem to have accepted the fact that design and aesthetes are for rich and ultra rich and average person has no right to ask for a better designed product on an affordable price. Design democracy is only possible when people will feel the need for "right of design aesthetics". It’s high time that design community and product development companies should come forward and liberalise the covert design process and shed the design monopoly, which will only help them accelerate product growth process and a common man will get a better designed product in their budget. 

By- Anoop Jha

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

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.

Role of Managers as Decision Maker

By - Anoop Jha

Planning and Architectural decisions which can save valuable time and resources

The future course of any planning or architectural project is shaped by decisions made at different stages of project by able managers. A manager should have strong organizational capabilities to manage the limited resources in most effective ways, excellent interpersonal skill sets like oratory command, active listening, backed by groomed personality, delegational capabilities, strong sense of intuition, superb management and leadership capacity which reflects in swiftness, smartness and precision of decisions made in the crucial moments. Managers should be capable of perceiving macro level issues which might emerge in course of project as well as should be capable of understanding and analysing minute details of project and process if required.

In planning and architecture every now and then macro level issues demands attention as well as swift and smart decision from managers. A wrong decision can be a toll on already limited and pressing time and resources while a sensible decision which emerges from the wisdom and experience of managers can save a lot of time and hassle.

Now, what is sensible decision and how can one arrive at a sensible strategic decision?  A team leader or manager is like a captain of any dynamic sport, who has to constantly change, modify and revive his or her strategy, negotiating twists and turns of this dynamics and unpredictability of the game, accommodating and absorbing changing situations, while keeping his or her focus on the end result i.e. winning the game.  In the similar way a manager or team leader has to constantly reinvent its strategies meeting the project needs, accommodating dynamism of project with the focus on timely completion of projects with effective utilisation of resources at hand.

Local Ecosystem : Model for adaptive growth

By - Anoop Jha

An autonomous and sustainable model for planning

Understanding the intricate pattern of  local ecosystem of any region which is adjustable and adaptive to its constantly changing environmental parameters like micro-climate, inhabitants, pace of activities, external tangible influences etc. could prove to be the key to future sustainable model for Urban and regional development. 

There are ample of example of such ecosystem throughout the world with  its peculiar challenges and solutions. ecosystems can be as small as an small island or a patch of land on a river bank, or it can be as big as a regional watershed catchment area of forest of Amazon, but each of these autonomous ecosystems have some kind of  similarity  which is absorptive capacity of these ecosystems, they seem to have inevitable capacity to nurture and absorb the growth within its somewhat flexible envelop. 

Natural ecosystems try to maintain a unique environmental conditions necessary for its existence from its constant physical and chemical activities. For example, river bank of an urban settlement which acts as the only grazing land for  buffaloes and cows of the small villages trapped within the city fabric in the process of urban expansion, can be an interesting area of study related to ecosystem.It is more or less similar cycle of activity flux everyday in the somewhat flexible envelop of this river bank grazing land, though constantly being influenced and invaded by the development activities of city and natural cyclic activities like annual flood. another example can be the Large forest of Savanna, which apparently seem calm from a distance but  buzzing with life cycle activities of flora and fauna inside its dense green envelop, constantly nurturing, changing, adapting  and absorbing the growth, while maintaining its ecosystem. Urban and Regional Planner need to study, document, analyse, extract, and implement the similar autonomous model of growth and planning for a sustainable future of cities.