Terrace Garden on Every Roof !!

Did they say their city is green? Don’t believe them unless you see that green yourself. Seeing is believing! Common man does not understand the intricacy of complex statistics that is produced to position a city as a “Green City”. 

Lay men do not understand the matrix, criteria and assumptions that goes into judging a city on environmental benchmark. They don’t know and even don’t care how much eco friendly materials has been used in construction of their skyscraper office building, they also don’t care whether hot water supply in their luxurious bathroom of a high star grade hotel is from solar water heater or conventional power heater, star rating of their home appliances have only become a thing to be shown off. Green criteria of common urban dwellers are very simple in nature, if they been able to breathe fresh air, if they see lush green surrounding their home and their streets, from the window of their workplace, if their children can run and play in sprawling green fields, if their children know what it is called an ecosystem from their own living experience in city not learned from the text books, if they look above in the sky and see glittering bright stars on a clear night and if they look down below into a satellite imagery and see City as Green patch of land then they should definitely approve that city is green.

Series of Terrace Garden in a City

Let’s start with our own home or apartments, wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to enjoy a garden of your own which you can’t afford in your front lawn because you have to park 2 to 3 cars  there, larger the lawn larger the car and larger the paved area.  Community park of your housing society you anyway don’t want to use after long working and  travel hours, you lake time and energy, also you don’t feel motivated enough to use community or public park unless a doctor has gives you a good dose of advice recently.


How about climbing few steps in your own villa or taking a lift from your own apartment floor which leads to terrace where you would have found a lush green terrace garden where you would have done your daily meditation or Yoga and exercise while breathing in fresh air, spending quality time with family, only if they would have planned it properly as an approachable and inviting terrace garden, which is currently either not used at all or used as storage of discarded household stuffs in the midst of complexity of installed utilities and storage. So why not make terrace garden on every roof of the city. If governments across the cities shall make it either mandatory to have a terrace garden in every building with certain assistance or if incentivize this feature for being integrated in the architecture of building, that would be a great leap forward towards sustainable and greener urban future.   

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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??

Rural market urban goods – Why rural commodities haven’t succeeded to make niche position in urban market

By – Anoop Jha

Breaking the inertia of urban business dominance over rural communities

In the developing countries like India, when it comes to consumer needs the urban rural gap seems to be disappearing, which was not the case a decade ago.  The rural reliance on urban goods have been an increasing phenomenon in recent past due to higher standard of living, increased affordability, choosy customers etc. Take for example a very essential commodity of daily needs i.e. “Milk”, which is supposedly product of villages due to usual abundance of cattle, buffalos and cows, but imaging the growing dependence of rural population on “packaged milk” which is produced in some remote dairy farm and travels thousands of kilometers before being consumed in this particular village, which is quite ironical. 

Urban  dominance over rural  business 

There might me many reasons behind this particular scenario of using packaged milk in spite the availability of local fresh milk like - readily available - on demand goods, local small storage facilities for perishable goods, direct linkages to urban market, awareness to quality of goods, similar hierarchical product packaged for different affordability group, either manipulated by monopoly of big dairy owner or trying to break the monopoly of local milkman who at times manipulates with the quality of milk, availability of goods to cater to seasonal bulk demand etc. etc.

 
Question is, why the urban commodities have been able to penetrate the rural market but rural products except agro products have only been limited to the small urban cultural markets, like, Pragati maidan, Delhi Haat, seasonal artesian mela etc. Are there any utilitarian perception attached to the rural goods in urban context or has it become a showpiece item to be decorated in the drawing room or to be worn on occasional events or is it that urban merchants are way smarter than the rural counterparts? Is it that rural community has been deprived of knowledge of cunning and manipulating business skills of urban nature, which seem to be a common survival practice expansion strategy of urban businesses?  Is it that rural business lack the skill set to sell their product in quantum. Is it that intermediate agencies involved in the urban rural dynamics are taking the advantage without rural community being aware of such possibilities?  Whatever it is, this issue can be dealt with little business motivation, rural community participation, capacity building and involvement of public agencies.  

Policy makers and administrators need to strengthen and expedite urban rural forward-backward linkages along with providing business education, training related to workmanship, strengthening local art and craft, teaching ethical value of quality control, asking for community participation to benefit rural market. 

Growth dynamics of Urban Rural Fringe: Role of Cities as Facilitator

By – Anoop Jha

Knowledge, technology transfer and capacity building

Urban Rural interface at fringe

Any city small or large seems to affect the dynamics of neighboring region through its constant growth externalities and internal dynamics, larger the city more visible the effects. These effects can be positive in terms of growing economic activities, enhanced affordability and quality of life, access to health infrastructure; enhanced social infrastructure etc. at the same time the effect of urban development can also have downbeat effect on communities of urban rural fringe in terms of deteriorated environmental conditions, shifting livelihood option from agriculture to business, imposed urban lifestyle and pace of living on rural fringe communities who are tuned for some other kind of lifestyle and pace since centuries.


City has moral and technical responsibility to facilitate inevitable growth of urban rural fringe in a controlled manner. It’s not only necessary for city’s own growth but also significant because cities have capability, finance, resources, knowledge, technology, technical skills, authority and experience to deal with such issues. Its city’s part responsibility to help built and nurture communities at the edge of cities through its wisdom, knowledge and technology transfer and capacity building and they should be encouraged to do that.

Untapped potential of Public Infrastructure

By- Anoop Jha

Public Infrastructure – from Liability to Asset

In the majority of cities and towns of developing countries like India, developing and maintaining public infrastructure are perceived responsibility of governing authorities and it is usually a major source of expenditure in municipal finance. Though to make any infrastructure sustainable in the long run, whether public or private it has to be a source of constant or recurring revenue generation to at least partially meet its operation and maintenance expenditure or to reach the breakeven point. Collective public infrastructure in any city should ideally pay for its own operation and maintenance requirement to make it sustainable. There might be varying dynamics of income expenditure for individual public infrastructure but collectively they should take care of themselves in not immediately may be in long term.

Public asset for alternative revenue stream 

It’s high time that public infrastructure should acquire the status of asset rather than liability or a financial burden to state, that does not necessarily mean it has to become private venture or property. Governing authorities like states, municipal corporations and municipalities have to be little aware towards what precious assets they own and have to find out the innovative mechanisms to exploit the previously untapped revenue potential of these assets, for example they own the most precious chunks of properties in the strategic locations which are spatially scattered throughout the city and beyond, with no or negligible income from them.

There are enough resources within any given region, need of the time is to recognize the potential, identify the resources and formulise a mechanism for revenue generation. If governing authorities or anyone else thinks that this is a difficult task or vague assumption, they should approach any random businessman- small or large, any developer, any architectural, planning or consultancy firm, any resource management firm, any thinker or business guru or even any common citizen with that asset and they will find innumerous ideas, proposals, business plans and even willing investors. 

Creating Ecological Infrastructure for a city

By – Anoop Jha

Urban green with radiating river canal as a sustainable urban planning model

River provides ample opportunities of growth but it appears that majority of cities have not taken advantage of this dormant potential, most of the cities throughout the world have not even been able to handle the issues related to river like recurring floods, water pollution etc. forget about the utilization of river potential for the benefit of city. Thriving lush green riverfront has become a luxury which very few cities have been able to afford till now while rest of the world seems either totally engrossed in solving other urban problems and internal issues or they are content doing beautification of Neighborhood Parks. Greener Neighborhood Park is a good idea in short term but not a sustainable environmental solution for city in long term.

Cities can trade in carbon credit but unfortunately cannot trade in quality of environment of a city. What they need to do is to create a tangible ecological infrastructure for a sustainable urban environment. For a river city it is very crucial to understand the need of exploiting the possible opportunities as well as tackling the grave problems of recurring flood and river water pollution.  River system with all its tributaries is like arteries of a leaf which carries all the minerals and nutritious content mixed in water from root to leaf tip. Cities with its built mass present an obstruction in the natural direction of flow of river. Cities can be built to facilitate the natural flow of river and should be planned to dissipate the extra water from the city fabric causing flood, as quickly as possible.

A model of sustainable ecological plan for a city can be like a leaf with its arteries’ alignment opposite the river flow, Green streak emerging from river bank, nurtured by river water itself which is carried through the narrow canals in the middle of radiating greens from the lush river bank. Radiating canals into the city fabric will not only help reduce the impact of flood by providing extra water holding capacity in times of flood hence giving extra time and cushion to tackle flood problem, but it will also provide space to create lust green natural and recreational zones all along the urban canal, giving breathing space up to the unreached recesses of cities where it is most required. Aligning radiating canals in somewhat differing direction of river flow will help reduce the possibility of city flooding due to these canals to reinforce the protection mechanism, control gates can also the added at the junction of canal and river. It is like having multiple canal bank development inside the city fabric radiating from river rather than having one riverbank development or rather ignored and polluted river cutting through the city.