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

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#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.

Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

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

Solving the Age-old Dilemma!

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

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World has to come to terms with the fact that the panacea to collective misery of missed car pool, missed bus, missed train, missed flight, missed attendance, missed opportunity, missed deadlines and lingering sense of alienation on a remote ground is to always stay connected (on demand) to your collective personal, professional and support ecosystem made of family, friends, peers, financial/medical/ legal/ spiritual advisor, mentor, payment gateway, connected home and so on, through plethora of choices and virtual communication modes like text, audio, video, augmented reality, holographic twin and soon through immersive metaverse.

While there is no substitute to being somewhere in person, still its quite an archaic mindset and primitive notion in this unparalleled technological age, realm and time of history, that if someone is unable be at a designated place in any part of world at a scheduled time for any reason all their opportunities should be systematically ceased and declare them offenders. Instead if world moves to an always connected mode in times to come it opens up a world of unimaginable possibilities!

Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#iot #tech #technology #urbanplanning #city #town #smartcity #connectedhomes #ar #vr #metaverse #transport #transportplanning #mobility #history #future #alterego #hologram

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