Some embedded economic bias in road and transportation planning and policy to ponder.

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

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Speed Breaker experienced differently by different price range cars; flat monetary penalty imposed on breaking any particular traffic rule experienced differently by different income group, one segment better protected while on road due to advanced safety feature of their car compared to not so privileged vehicle owner, VIP and reserved parking spaces in public domain and within public institutions, those opting public transport not out of choice or sense of responsibility but out of economic constraints, those opting private transport not out of ignorance but by choice since they can afford, similar workplace cutoff arrival time or same flexi-hour for those who are insulated from weather while on road (car) and those whose journey is tough and gets Interrupted due to changing weather conditions (bike/ bicycle), those who can afford to take shortcut toll route vs those who cannot, road tax which is not linked to intensity of vehicle usage but type and number of vehicle ownership and some more.

One or many or all may be applicable to any given city and needs a serious thought and deliberation on subject by planners and policy makers.

#transportplanning #urbanplanning #publictransport #tranport #road #design #architecture #economics #carbonfootprint #publicpolicy

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

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

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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 corn
er 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 façade 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

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

Life-cycle gap in architectural services being offered!

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

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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

#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!

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

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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

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

Historic shift in city planning approach!

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

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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.

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