Ever-changing Technology Landscape that is making planning, design and life decisions increasingly tough!

While you are thinking of purchasing an advanced EV that goes 396 miles per charge, another startup (Michigan) promises to launch an EV battery With a range of 750miles.

The moment you install a city wide Fast charging infrastructure that charges EV in 30 minutes, the new ultra-fast charging technology or startup (Israel) surfaces that promises to full charge EV in just 5 minutes.

The moment city municipality in one corner of world purchases a fleet of 200 modern buses an autonomous Driving Bus Line Officially Commences Operations in another part of world (Guangzhou).

By the time you sanction a mega hydrogen generation plant that uses fossil fuel based electricity, a new technology or company (California) emerges that uses sunlight to generate green hydrogen using "Sunlight Refinery" that stores solar heat to be used even in night making technology commercially viable.

As soon you clad building glass facade with very distinct conventional checkered blue Building Integrated PV glass, a new higher efficiency transparent PV Glass (California) makes way to renewable market.

By the time you inaugurate new building facility equipped with state of art fixed fire sprinkler system at the same time an auto-targeting fire sprinkler system emerges and provides a better alternative.

Unfortunately you can't change expensive city infrastructure at the pace and frequency that you change mobile devices!

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

************************************************

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#technology #EV #VR #IOT #AR #IIOT #Autonomousvehicle #Urbanplanning #PV #Energy #ClimateChange #SmartCity #smartinfrastructure #BIPV #power #IBMS #Startup #Future #tech

Why disaster means different things to different economic segments

When fire strikes a premium residential apartment there are embedded fire fighting system in place, disaster management plan in place, near real time fire fighting response, insurance in place for compensation, legal framework to identify concerned accountable, Committee established to improvise future statutory regulations, life-savings to help get back households to second lease of life at the earliest.

When fire engulfs a squatter settlement or slum there is no insurance company to pay compensation, no architect to hold accountable, no firefighting bylaws to look for discrepancy, first fire fighting response is rarely able to navigate to fire incident spot, no post incident assessment wrt to fire regulations as who cares for statutory needs of squatter settlements, there is no handy financial reserve with households to get back on their feet sooner.

Though loss of any kind due to any disaster is unfortunate irrespective of economic strata, and there are layers of institutional, financial and community support available in such situations for both of them, still those at the lowest economic strata of society are clearly in much disadvantageous situation.

Citing illegality of squatter settlements and slums across the world the statutory and life saving needs of such habitats are completely ignored since decades; how ironical it is that while in one part of city the building plans are not approved by competent agency if they are not compliant to fire code and building bylaws and in other part of same city i.e. in squatter settlements and slums there is no policy in place or regulatory thinking neither any mechanism or physical measures to safeguard lives from fire for instance. Will they let inhabitants of squatter settlements and slums stay vulnerable to threats and disasters of all kind just as it seems overwhelming to deal with or whether something can be done, until everyone is rehabilitated, until there are no more squatters and slums in a city.

Author: Anoop Jha

 Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

************************************************

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urbanplanning #city #townplanning #squattersettlement #poor #propoor #fire #disaster #disastermanagement #firefighting #policy #governance #economy #slum #architecture #bylaws

Life-cycle gap in architectural services being offered!

A typical house requires to go through not just periodic renovation but also series of remodeling across it's life cycle as a function of household's life events, lifestyle changes and life adjustment requirements. Home remodeling prompted by changes including but not limited to arrival of kids in life, children going to school, children getting married, parents getting old, realisation of yourself getting old and so on. These changes though obvious and imperative but neither being acknowledged nor getting addressed by architects and one time architectural services being offered, while home owners are left on their own to do the required readjustments to house, think of space planning and redefining space usage.

It's worthwhile that architecture fraternity give a serious thought to this challenge and gap that exists in rendering architectural services. Whether one time architectural service being offered can factor in all above requirements or whether architects can handhold their clients for lifetime or something else.

Author: Anoop Jha

 Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

************************************************

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#Architect #architecture #design #building #realestate #urbandesign #urbanplanning #townplanning #city #smartcity #future #profession #corporate #business

 

Skewed and limited perception of project essentials, budget, timeline and professional fees in developing countries!

The notion of urban development and architecture in a developing country is more or less, civic amenities, public facilities, parks, road, paving, brick and mortar etc. and 3D simulation to either publicise welfare achievements or to lure investors. We see in both public and private domain one such project after another lined up, debated, recognised, argued, praised, awarded or dropped and trashed.

While most of such projects get executed anyways even in developing countries and cities, but most of these projects certainly, sometimes purposefully miss one or several or most of following fundamental elements of urban planning and architectural practice which are part and parcel to developed country's usual planning and design practice, including Heat island effect analysis, Shadow analysis, Wind tunnel test, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation, shading analysis, traffic noise simulation, sustainable city/ neighborhood development practice, Low Impact Development (LID) planning, waste heat recovery, building heat load simulation, green building design, solar passive design, and many more.

It's difficult to understand the root cause of same, whether it is lack of knowledge and awareness at city administration and client level or lack of capital or unavailability of technology or lack of technology know how or inertia of decades of mediocre planning or simply ignorance or reluctance to growth. Whatever be the reason it's high time that city administrations, planning professionals and architects increasingly adopt to good essential planning and design practices, advise clients to consider these and projects must allocate additional budget to integrate these while consultants, consulting firms and advisory firms must be paid judiciously to integrate and adopt to above mentioned necessary measures. Accordingly project timelines should also be increased to make room for adopting such good practices.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

************************************************

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urbanplanning #architecture #sustainability #simulation #smartcity #design #townplanning #development #projects #technology #consulting #municipal

Historic shift in city planning approach!

When cities first started getting planned, it was more of a mechanical, analog and hardware approach, i.e. provision of basic minimum urban palpable elements driven by understanding of functional, social and cultural requirements of specific time period in history, configured in either abstract to subtle to articulate manner. City planning outward appeal, urban fabric and urban growth pattern kept getting readjusted as per need of changing time including industrialization, high speed mobility, migration, environmental awareness etc. but the approach of urban planning more or less remained same as always in spite of all the buzz, talk and interpretation by intelligentsia labeling same as new age of urban planning.

Historically only two major, distinct and realistic but mostly invisible shift in planning approach were felt in true sense; one when country administration changed from monarchy to democracy in multiple parts of world and the other when city planning approach shifted from analog to digital - where former shift in approach prompted a whole new set of governance redefining context, perception and necessity of urban planning while impact of later approach is yet to realise it's full potential.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

************************************************

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urbanplanning #townplanning #smartcity #urbandesign #iot #ict #digitaltwin #digital #urban #cityplanning #publictransport