Democratizing the process of urban planning - crowdsourcing of ideas!

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

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"Too many Cooks spoil the Soup" May not be the right connotation when it comes to urban planning, we require as many minds and diversified experiences as possible to do the justice to a city which is either yet to be planned or being redeveloped. Community participation and early brainstorming is the key to a successful city planning, like secret ingredient of an exceptional recipe!

In terms of community participation the focus should be scale, hetroginity and intensity of citizen engagement in planning process. In terms of early brainstorming, all concerned citizens - "considering every citizens is a stakeholder and a client" - can be given opportunity to participate in urban planning process, that too very early when the plan is still in nebulous state, not only after draft masterplan is ready. Also, urban planning process should either come out of planning studio amidst community or planning studio should open it's door to welcome community and individual user level ideas.

For example, thinking of people who could not contribute or has limited say in urban planning process till date except some advanced countries, but they do have specific expectations from their city like all the workforce who are involved in navigation (drivers), delivery (courier and food delivery guys) they can contribute in re-strategising ease of navigation and legibility of city; those in healthcare (doctors, first responders) they can help define/ redefine emergency response routes and ease of healthcare access in terms of landuse structuring and PSP facility locations; those in safety and security (police, traffic police) can help in vulnerability and black spot mapping of city and forming corresponding spatial security and surveillance requirements; those in F&B industry (mall owners, retail, restaurant owner, cook, food vendors) can help redefine new age of intensive urban cultivation, shortening farm-to-plate food supply chain, and propose innovative ways of urban organic agriculture for self-reliance and food security; those in science (mathematicians) can help streamline city traffic by running complex mathematical models and deep algorithms; those in creative fields ( artists, designers) can help reboot, reactivate and conserve cultural and artistic heritage of a brownfield city or can lay the foundation of a new vibrant culture for a greenfield city, and so on; all above inputs to be curtated by urban planning professionals.

Additionally, there is need to make use of unfathomable descrete or curated data that already historically exists around specific city and embodiment of empirical data that exists around the world wrt city planning affair in general.

Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urban #urbanplanning #city #townplanning #syatemthinking #utopia #smartcity #governance #idea #crowdsourcing #architecture #streets #publictransport #bicycle #transportplanning #sustainability #foodsecurity

 

A-B-C of Design Project Management!

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

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[Keywords - Urban Planning, Architecture, Engineering Design, Infrastructure Planning]

[A] - Aspiration gives the purpose to a project, do not let it diminish over time.
[B] - Budget is the governing factor, do not consider it as limitation; you have to innovate to incorporate many things, still fitting it into budget
[C] - Clients speak volumes, but they can be good listener as well. Clients show flexibility if advised for betterment of project.
[D] - Design is the core success factor. Spend more time to design it right in first go, allocate substantial brainstorming time into workplan of design project.
[E] - Estimation of all kinds helps avoid surprises
[F] - Follow up on crucial matters
[G] - Gather the best team who are animated with same spirit
[H] - Highlight exclusions and dependencies early
[ I ] - Identify project risk and mitigation measures
[J] - Judgement has a key role to play. Analysis gives you insight but tough and final decisions are based on judgement.
[K] - knowledge has no substitute, but no amount of knowledge is enough, every design project is a learning experience
[L] - Leverage organisational experience, possibly your firm was hired for the job due to it's experience only
[M] - Monitoring is essential for project, monitor and record every aspect
[N] - Negotiations are the integral part of process
[O] - Organised effort is required to run a design project with multidisciplinary team, budget and time constraints
[P] - Performance of work and resources must be measured throughout project life cycle
[Q] - Quality is paramount in terms of design, communication and output
[R] - Resources has to be optimised and is often the most crucial, challenging and thrilling part of the project management
[S] - Stakeholder's need to be met and know that there can be more stakeholders than the obvious
[T] - Technology contributes to success; best is class tech, software and tools are empowering
[U] - Uncertainties has to be factored in, know that you can't foresee everything on day one, exceptional circumstances arises and need to be dealt with
[V] - Vision and credo is the guiding force, stick to same
[W] - Work Plan is to be honoured, it's not as easy as it sounds but there are ways to adhere to same like creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), innovation, resourcefulness, project tracking etc.
[X] - X-REF all design work, adopt a system of
cross-referencing, benchmarking and standardization
[Y] - Yearning for excellence is what differentiates you from others
[Z] - Zero Waste Design to be encouraged. It's no more a luxury but necessity in today's world.

Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#projectmanagement #workplan #Consultancy #designprojectmanagement #design #infrastructure #engineering #consultingengineering #construction #qualitymap #p6 #budget #urbanplanning #projectmanager #multidisciplinary #teamwork

  

Predicting future Art Style based on analysis of historic shift and trend in art world!.

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

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[World and India]

WORLD FINE ART -
Dominant Theme:-[Expression]
Driving Force:-(Urge to create and capture, inner fulfilment, fame)
Dimension:-(All thing visual and perceptual, any workable media, any expressive mode, any style)
Influenced:-(Reflected contemporary thoughts, mimicking social situation, inner battle, contagious)
Past:-{Revolutionary in a specific sphere, predictable, glorified, threatened twice firstly by photography and secondly by digital media, Plagiarized}
Future:-<Digital, NFT, immersive>

WORLD ART STYLE SHIFT -
Dominant Theme:-[Communicate Message]
Driving Force:-(Drawing Inspiration from contemporary subjects, Banality of existing styles, thrill of presenting something new, search of unknown, advancement in art media tech)
Dimension:-(Cross continental, achieving Immortalisation through digitization)
Influenced:-(Messages continued to be of relevance in spite of changing times, giving historic insight of time)
Past:-{Expression became more important that medium, art style boundaries merged}
Future:-<New tech mediums and dimensions will provide unparalleled way of expressions and radical shift in style>

INDIAN FINE ART-
Dominant Theme:-[Building unified art expression considering rich history and in spite of cultural diversity]
Driving Force:-(Projecting Image of India)
Dimention:-(Digging deeper into traditional roots, ruling kingdoms, mythology, ritual, spirituality and looking inward to explore new creative freedom still in oriental conservatism)
Influenced:-(Inseparable from history, shaped culture, represented range of contradiction from glorious history to oppression to taste of freedom to hopeful future)
Past:-{Essentially oriental and in continued search of identity while absorbing parallel world art influences}
Future:-<Found its niche, selected individuals tasted commercial success, new world of opportunity on horizon, yet to find stable ground in world art and require correct valuation>

INDIAN ART STYLE SHIFT -
Dominant Theme:-[Characterized by constant battle of tradition and freedom]
Driving Force:-(confidence of tradition, Taste of commercial success, tribe of youth with new age values)
Dimension:-(Permeated to all possible spatial dimensions, virtual world)
Influenced:-(Rebooted art and craft tradition, brought art into mainstream)
Past:-{Taste of commercial success validated contemporary take on oriental, tribe of experimentative youth artists reinforced rich vernacular expression, ease and real time access to world art, literature and events constantly shaped the art style to match with world's stylistic expectations}
Future:-<Poised to achieve a unified and mature signature expression representative of Indian cultural tradition, values, and motifs, future technology is bound to reshape yet to mature Indian art style, expression & Market>

Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha   

#art #Architecture #Urbanplanning

Missing piece of energy puzzle!

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

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Declaring a city or region as power surplus without meeting the actual thermal comfort needs of inhabitants may not be a correct estimate especially if the city or territory is experiencing distinct cycle of seasonal variations from severe cold to extreme heat and specially if per capita income in the region is low and especially if any country spans over multiple temperature zones from tropical to temperate. May be part of country's subregion needs ventilated homes and other part needs completely insulated homes, or may be the case that for part of the season residential homes require natural ventilation while in summer and winter central heating or cooling is required with completely insulated homes.

Just because through decades 24X7 residential thermal comfort was never considered a necessity in specific region, just because residents can't afford the luxury of centralised heating/ cooling infrastructure system of their home and associated energy bills, just because part of population do not have access to hot water for bath and kitchen in chilling winter and many not having access to cold drinking water in summer, just because majority of architects are not used to or trained for designing completely insulated residential housing or individual homes as required for central heating/ cooling it may be unfair to assume that they deserve to continue to live like this, shivering and sweating in uncomfort of their home.

It's logical point to ponder, that if a person requires & feels comfortable year-round in the centrally air-conditioned mall, office, public transport and private car while in same city in same season rather throughout the year, why he or she should not deserve similar thermal comfort in their home as well, in same city, in same season, rather throughout the year. Why some countries and cities falling in same temperature zone across the world have access to thermal comfort of central heating and cooling and continuous hot water tap but majority of population in other cities in same temperature zone are destined to live in thermal discomfort in the name of architectural tradition and sometimes inconsiderate and outdated bylaws. Certainly one or more or all of the above resons discussed above are accountable.

Urban planners, architects, environmentalists, economist & administrators need to take cognizance of this fact & situation for future habitation planning, design & during policy revisions.

Random exemplary questions are there like, who is accountable & what is the solution for mounting energy losses in cities & regions where window AC or split AC is being widely used for residential units, where ~100% residences having ~0% consideration for thermal insulation requirements. Is it that energy demand estimation and projection for cities and countries and world is rather wrong if we factor in justified need of thermal comfort of all citizens.

Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha   

#climatechange #urbanplanning #architecture

How to pinpoint prospective business!

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

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[ #consultancy #city #state #projects ]

If an individual or organization cares to habitually screen and analyse following data in public domain they can easily foresee prospective projects which are yet to surface, they can either float suo moto proposal or in other case they are already half way through with proposal before project surfaces.

List of Data to be screened for prospective business in urban domain-

-Press release of ULBs, state, center and various departments

-Articles of local, regional and national newspapers (including local language and multilingual) and online news

-State vision plans and perspective plans

-Blogs and discussion forums, 

-Public speech and interview transcripts of PM, CM, Ministers, MLAs, Mayors, and Municipal Commissioners, councillors 

-Newsletters

-District Development Plans

-Vision document extracts related to phase 2, 3, n

-Strength and gaps of any state and city (state dashboard, city observatory) 

-Proposed basket of PPP projects under various fesibility reports

-Research papers of academicians and field experts

-Autopsy of failed project proposals and tenders which didn't kick off

-MoUs and EOIs of Business summits 

-Reports of chamber of commerce, thinktanks, financial and banking institution,

-Expansion plans of large national level companies and MNCs

-Manifesto etc.

BD efforts are to be properly backed by R&D and forecast. 

Key words:
#business #businessdevelopment #tender #tendering #bid #bidding #bidprocessmanagement #company #organisation #sales 

Prediction model for future events

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

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When one says next step can easily be predicted in a series of events one easy empirical demonstration is that you can safely predict with 99% accuracy that a man will look for drinking water after walking a mile in blazing sun, further next step can be predicted based on context whether he will walk to fridge or dig a well for water. A temporal behavioral data can further add layers of accuracy. Similarly if you add the dimension of pervasive surveillance and targeted machine learling chances are that someone else knows better than an individual about  what exactly he is going to do, behave and react across a day or month. And wait if you will add another dimention of genome and astrology then possily you can even predict about their lifetime. So goes the old saying your life is an open book, it actually is and its not on your shear will, but on other's observation and mercy.

Thoughts on Complete Street Design

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

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A lush green street, a canopy street, aesthetic avenue, rich boulevard and a street equipped to handle and harvest storm water in every part of city has been a distant dream here. Is it too difficult a dream to achieve. There are few reasons for same. A preconceived RoW template mindset which leaves very little earth or scope within RoW for landscape Architects to play with, transport modeling software only being limited to carriageway design and not the complete RoW, lack of synergy between approach of transport planning, storm water management, landscape architecture and street lighting leading to complete absence of collective vision. It cannot be solved professionally as by that time each one is rigid and wise enough to exclude most of above tasks from their respective scope of work.  Unless a transport planner will care for trees or a landscape architect will care to understand what goes into engineering of road or a water expert will have affinity and knowledge of ecology until then we won't get to experience a complete street. It has to start with education not from the desk of multi disciplinary team sitting in office. Above mentioned subjects to be made compulsory in each others curriculum for few semesters not just to teach them the technicalities but to help them sensitize about each others domain, to gain/give respect to each other and garner natural affinity about others subject so that end user could experience a complete street.