Advertisement graphics for imaginary client.
Graphics by: Anoop Jha (Blog Author)
Mar 23, 2013
Thriving market of cheap design aesthetics.
Have you ever wondered why you still find those similar crude designs around even after decades?
So, will they keep producing those sub-standard design and inexpensive
aesthetics just because they have found a comfortable niche market for
that? a compromising non demanding market segment which is either
unaware of their right to aesthetics, right to own good design or they
have accepted this false imposed notion of design dictatorship that a
good design and aesthetics is only for well-off segment. The restrictive
and monopolistic approach towards design only leaves majority of people frustrated witnessing bad designs and cheap aesthetics scattered all
around which is usually propagated due to lack of serious talent and
affordable skills in design industry or sometimes carefully established
to make you feel inexpensive!
Next time you are travelling in a
public transport or while casually strolling through the busy market
street, take a serious look around, you might be overwhelmed by the
shear abundance of product designs borrowed from your childhood
memories, for example look at couple of shoes of those people standing
next to you in a subway, chances are, out of ten pairs of shoes you will
find one out of this world customized designer pair "a must have it in
your wardrobe style", you will see two highly expensive ergonomically
designed branded pair, another two pairs from the trending fashion, and
another five pairs of shoes with design and aesthetics borrowed from the
memories of your distant past, designs borrowed from different time spans of
previous couple of decades. It cant just be a coincidence that 40-60% of
designed products are still trapped in the evolutionary stage of
design, while we already have the best of benchmarks available and
established. and it is applicable to almost every type and scale of product available in the market,
shoes are just a crude example!
It's the urgent need and responsibility of a designer and a progressive society at large to unlock
and libralise the design and aesthetics in a production environment or
otherwise, and educate masses towards the same, letting this dissipated knowledge and awareness permeate through the consciousness of otherwise
design ignorant and aesthetically suppressed consumers and society, a wind of change which will help make a better ambiance and
surrounding whichever part of the world or whichever corner of the city
you are in at the moment.
you might like this post on Design Democracy as well called "Deprived of design aesthetics?"
you might like this post on Design Democracy as well called "Deprived of design aesthetics?"
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 3, 2013
Dec 24, 2012
Post-calamity socio-physical reconstruction: Untapped potential of urban planning!
It’s
high time they should care for heritage values of shattered settlements.
 |
| Contemporary planning response : A wake-up call!! |
Any Natural calamity, An Earthquake, A Tsunami, A
Flood or A Hurricane strangles the life of community and leaves a physical and
emotional mark behind! Damage which is irreversible, but still people gather
their spirit and strength and try to reconstruct that which has been shattered,
their home, their neighborhood, their community, their village, their city, sometimes
on their own sometimes hand in hand with community, with the support of
government and with the aid and good wishes from around the world. It’s a
collective effort of those who care to rebuild, those who feel responsibility
to reconstruct, everyone contributes their bit!
A relevant question to ask here is that what an urban planner, an architect, an urban designer, a conservationist or a policy
maker can do to restore the faith, hope and dignity of that community, How they
can better contribute in the socio-physical reconstruction after an unforeseen natural
calamity which physically shatters the settlement, a settlement which might
have evolved in course of centuries whether it’s a village or a small town or a
metropolitan city. Of course such situations demand a quick immediate response,
a fast solution, a resettlement plan, a re-construction effort, a physical
master plan to absorb and protect the affected population as quickly as possible;
an infrastructure fast and techno-economically optimized enough to be viable. But
in this race of providing the immediate comfort and amenities to the affected
population we usually tend to forget or sometimes purposefully ignore the very
basic need of community, the settlement itself, the fabric of settlement with
which community has intimately remained attached throughout its life, probably
they have grown together help shaping each other and hence the highly emotional
bonding of community and settlement cannot be ignored neither its legacy of
heritage value and learning.
In a neighborhood or community affected or
devastated by natural calamity, an individual is not just bothered about his or
her own loss, their own damaged house, but they are subconsciously also moved
by the loss of others in the community and their very own settlement and
neighborhood which has been shattered heavily. Their memories of growing in
that neighborhood, those winding streets, their facades and architecture, their
community spaces, those lingering familiarities and so on. We can try to reconstruct
the original face of settlement if the damage is low and concealable, but
sometimes they feel it’s better to reconstruct the settlement in adjacent open
lands if the physical damage is much, this phenomenon is more noticeable and
even more a point of concern in the rural or small urban communities. Usually physical
planning response form the government and planners after a natural calamity in
most of the cases is generally a super-optimized techno-economic solution, an efficient
physical infrastructure, fast paced architecture, but surprisingly lacking in
emotional response and nativeness in terms of architecture, lacking in regional
impression and heritage values of planning, alienated from urban/ rural design principles
and practices of the region, a shear absence of conservationist inputs and
above all lack of human touch. Outcome seems an efficient but emotionless physical
planning response which can and are being radially justified in the name of
constrained resources and urgency of demanded action. Image above speaks for
itself!
Though a much needed temporary relief, imagine the
emotional and functional pain this new mechanical re-settlement master plan causes
to the inhabitants in longer course of time through its totally alienated new
physical planning environment, fabric and architecture, by continually
reminding them of the disaster which occurred in past, due to its ever-present imposed
unfamiliar environment. Imaging the continual struggle to adapt to this new
imposed “efficient but rigid” neighborhood plan which has no relation
whatsoever to the original form and architecture of the village or town which
was devastated in earthquake or else and the loaded feeling of never to return
to a spatial experience in their lifetime which even vaguely resembles to their
original neighborhood or to a locality with its regional character! Imaging the
loss to the future generation who is going to grow up in these reconstructed integrated prefab concrete township or villages with identical kind of off the shelf household
unit next to the fading ruins of their devastated ancestral village and who
will never know how it is like to live in the vibrant settlements were their
parents, their grandparents and their ancestors used to live!
It’s high time that the legacy of heritage planning
values, unique and integral to specific regions need to be acknowledged and
incorporated in the post disaster reconstruction efforts specially in physical
planning of the settlement which will have a long term beneficial effect. Even
the communities in crying need of immediate physical reconstruction support, in
a post-natural-disaster environment, need a physical planning solution with a “human touch”!
Dec 21, 2012
What are the urban planning challenges today?
Inferences
from review of JNNURM CDP & Appraisal Reports!
Following
sectoral list of “Urban Planning Challenges” have been compiled based on data
extracted and analyzed from JNNURM Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) for selected
cities of India and its appraisal reports. Though these aspects are generalized
and somewhat overlapping across most of the urban nodes of Indian sub-continent,
lessons and inferences can be equally valuable and applicable for other cities across
the world to considerable extent. It’s just an effort to have a consolidated
perspective and understanding of future urban challenges, you can further suggest
additional planning constraints and challenges to the list!
Comprehensive list of Urban Planning Challenges-
INSTITUTIONAL
Functional
overlap
Jurisdictional
overlap
Issues of
convergence and coordination
POLICY
Lack of
stakeholder consultations or under-participation
Disaster
management issues
Governance
issues
Delegation
of functions to the new ULB
Prioritizationof action and projects alienated from problems and vision
Matters
of resource sharing with neighboring states
ECONOMIC
Lack of
value-add sectors
Expansion
of informal sector
Continued
influx of low skill manpower from neighboring states in some cases
Expanding
un-organized sector
Lower
work participation rates of women at some places
SOCIAL
Issues of
urban sociology in a multi-ethnic city
Social
unrest,
Civil
disobedience,
Public
safety,
Unemployment,
MUNICIPAL
FINANCE
Unstructured
financial profile of urban local bodies
Capital
investment requirement
High
level of dependency on state government grants
Un-assessed
properties for property tax base
Tax rates
not being revised regularly
Irregular
flow of specific grants
Irregular
servicing of debt
PROPERTY
Low
coverage of properties by taxation
Low
collection efficiency,
Inefficient
user charge
SLUMS
& URBAN POOR
Security
of tenure
Quality
of housing
Access to
infrastructure
Rehabilitation
and resettlement
Problem
of sanitation
Community
toilets
Inadequate
night shelters and security
High
density with poor infrastructure
Issue of
‘unapproved slums’
PLANNING
Infrastructure
deficits
Unplanned
growth
Constraint
on growth in city areas due to natural or environmental constraints
Increasing
gap between demand and supply
Inadequacies
in the basic services in unauthorized clusters
Encroachment,
Non-confirming
land use
Missing
link between physical and fiscal planning
Protecting,
conserving and managing heritage resources
Skewed
spatial density distribution
TRANSPORT
Limited
road space
Shortage
of public transport system
Regional
traffic through the city
Inadequate
management of streetlights
Problems
of roads and transport during festival season
Congestion
in the old city areas
Lack of
facilities for NMV
Rapid
increase in vehicles
Lack of
land use transport integration
Inadequate
facilities for physically challenged, pedestrians
Inadequate
parking
Multiplicity
of agencies
WATER
Nonrevenue
water
Leakages
Losses in
distribution network and transmission main
Inequitable
Distribution
Obsolete
distribution system
High
energy cost in water production and Distribution
Ground
water pollution
Water
supply Vs storage capacity gap
Ground
water depletion
Problems
of water supply on specific festival days
Unequal
intra-city distribution
Inefficient
network hydraulics,
Old and
dilapidated networks
High
pollution in distribution network
River/
Sea odor
Lack or
failure of river action plans
SEWAGE
Limited
sewerage treatment facility,
Release
of untreated municipal waste into rivers
Release
of untreated waste into natural drains and open grounds
Disposal
of industrial effluent into the city rivers,
Soft soil
condition
Storm
water management
DRAINAGE
Frequent
floods
Lack of
proper drainage system
Silting
Uncontrolled
solid waste dumping causing blockage,
Stagnation
of water & waste water runoff
Backflow
of water from the river system
Flooding
during monsoon season
SOLID
WASTE MANAGEMENT (SWM)
Absence
of effective primary collection mechanism
Inadequacy
of waste dumping sites
Lack of
scientific waste disposal
Continued
use of open dustbins
Un-segregated
waste disposal
Land
availability for sanitary dump sites
Issue of
industrial slag
HEALTH
CARE
Inadequate
bed strength
Ill-equipped
and inadequate operation theatre in some government hospitals
Ill-equipped
corporation dispensaries and health posts
Unsafe
hospital waste disposal practice
ENVIRONMENTAL
Depletion
and pollution of water resources,
Degradation
of forest cover
Deteriorating
air quality
High
incidence of environmental health problems
NATURAL
Earthquake
Fire
Possibility
of epidemic events
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