While working in a fuzzy space of smart city development public institutions may like to think of innovative approaches in different parts of the world!

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

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[01] For instance, #PublicInstitutions may (a) address the apprehensions of the community at large, upfront, by acknowledging the legit concerns over #privacy, #datasecurity and may like to widely publish how they intend to tackle such issues including what safeguard mechanisms are in place, before actually launching the project.

[02] While role of community involvement in smart city development process is increasingly being considered important, the approach should consider exploring innovative ways to go beyond conventional notion of #CommunityParticipation and #CommunityEngagement; i.e. going beyond community workshop venues, road shows and smart city webpage to seek stream of timely inputs from community and expert members and think of devising mechanism (b) to seek early input (e.g. through #LinkedIn, series of short #VideoConference etc.) from wider professional segment who are anyways going to write much of their critical insights on professional media sooner or later about the subject, post-implementation, suggesting what could have been done better (c) Likewise, need of a mechanism to find ways to offer a chance of involvement for wider latent community members to contribute in the process (eg. through #Facebook, #Twitter, #Instagram etc.), those who are going to post, share and possibly vent much on social media (direct #stakeholder), about what interventions couldn’t work well in their city or challenges they are still facing post implementation.

[03] While the critical role of #academia in developing smart cities can’t be denied (d) it may be a good idea to form a mechanism for the active representation of students as well, as they can leverage more creative freedom and contribute through out of box thinking, adding to much-needed innovation.

[04] While the #industry is invited or offers innovative and disruptive tech and solutions, (e) there can also be room for engaging those in the smart city development process who may be having sound innovative ideas but lack the entrepreneurial spirit or resources to launch a #startup or to make it to VC round. Like shopkeepers pitching ideas for the redevelopment of the street next to their shop, or kids floating ideas about retrofitting streets around their school for instance.

When there is no clear pathway to #innovation or maybe multiple pathways, then it makes sense to also innovate on approaches we take towards making better cities, sometimes under the title of the smart city.

Author: Anoop Jha

#smartcity #urbanmanagement #urbandevelopment #governance #egovernance #publicpolicy #ml #machinelearning #iot #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #DenHaag #Delft #Alkmaar #DenBosch #Eindhoven #Utretch #Hague #Netherlands

Why planning and development efforts should increasingly shift focus from confined city boundaries to city-region scale.

City regions, made of multiple cities and towns are characterised by mutual influences, unavoidable impacts and necessary interdependencies.

For instance, when the housing demand in one city exceeds supply of residential stock, nearby cities and towns start to feel the pressure and real estate activities start to accelerate. When real estate prices start to escalate in one city then businesses start to flee to other nearby cities and neighbourhoods. When one large city feels infrastructure capacity constraints, the nearby towns start to witness increasing investments in infrastructure upgradation and augmentation to leverage and embrace growth they are about to witness. When one city starts to experience frequent congestion, it may also be a result of simultaneous development several miles away in nearby satellite towns and neighbourhoods.

With city boundaries increasingly getting blurred on functional parameters like mobility and housing; environmental parameters like microclimate and pollution; economic parameter like commerce and trade; it makes sense to have a renewed focus on concerted efforts at regional or cluster level, in terms of shared vision formulation, spatial planning and development framework preparation. In a regional, setting nearby satellite cities and smaller towns are seen to have dyadic and complimentary relationship with larger city and stimulus effect on neighbouring towns and neighbourhoods.

Acknowledging that the problems and opportunities of any town is a resultant of regional dynamics, it is imperative that cities should look beyond its physical administrative boundaries for resilient, timely and appropriate answers i.e., at a city-region scale. City-regions shall benefit from coordination and cooperation to achieve a critical magnitude to attract national and international attention, actors, skillsets, investments and public funding.

Based on the regional strengths, shared history, resource characteristics such city-regions can formulate shared growth vision, thematic identity (smart city region, specialized regional hub, heritage tourism circuit, ecological zone etc.), prioritise investments, forge new partnerships and devise new joint governance mechanism.

This case is especially relevant for the #Netherlands as there are more than 40 such poised city municipality regions which may benefit if they adopt a shared growth vision, create or revisit common unified development framework for city-region.

Author: Anoop Jha

#smartcity #smartcityregion #smartregion #urbanplanning #regionalplanning #networkgovernance #transportplanning #urbanmanagement #urbandevelopement #technology #urbanplanning #exhibition #globalnorth #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #alkmaar #noordholland #northholland #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands

Typical contemporary city planning evolution, transition and future trajectory in short.

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

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INFRASTRUCTURE: Public obligation for basic provisions, to private participation for sustenance and risk distribution (commercial and political), to eventually being seen by private entities as investment opportunity, to cities that increasingly being seen as test ground for different infrastructure technology products (mobility, energy etc.), to circular infrastructure asset and services (optimisation, end of life-cycle usage, heat recovery etc.), to captive (solar) to off-shore (wind) to off-grid (P2P), to connected infrastructure/ home/ everything, to “all sorts of” infrastructure-as-a-service (mobility, hardware, software etc.), to customised infrastructure service/ experience (through blockchain)

ECOLOGY: Taming and reclaiming wilderness, to green as buffer, control and protection, to green as leisure, to green and open as statement of equality and inclusiveness, to green and open as barometer of liveability, to green, blue and open as resilient system (e.g., allow to flood), to autonomy (e.g., urban farming, urban food islands, seed bank) to rewilding (e.g., wild meadows, bee-hives and pollination)

HOUSING [& COMMERCIAL]: Community efforts, to class divide, to institutions getting overwhelmed accommodating workforce and matching infrastructure and amenities, to reliance on private actors filling gap, to private actors seeing opportunity for investment (real estate), to specialised actors and instruments (financial, mortgage, brokerage), to socio-economic stratification, to suburbanisation, to architectural innovation and experimentation (going high, prefab, modular, parametric), to entity level sustainability promotion (e.g., green rating, subsidies), to individual environmental awareness (carbon footprint, energy visualisation), to co-working to co-living spaces

PUBLIC FACILITIES AND SERVICES: From community interaction (town hall), to law and order (court of justice, prison), to maintaining peace (law enforcement) to administer (e.g., taxation) to managing day-to-day operation (e.g., modes of transportation) to meeting community needs (public parks, market places), to focus on inclusivity and equity, to involving private actors to fill gaps and increase quality of services, to private actors offering services beyond basic requirements, to private actors offering niche premium/ paid services to privileged, to emergence of service integrators, to services on demand, to virtualisation of services, to services in a parallel universe (metaverse)

Author: Anoop Jha

#urbanmanagement #urbanplanning #urbandevelopment #smartcity #smartcities #livinglab #infrastructure #PSP #communityplanning #Ecology #micromobility #publictransport #Rotterdam #Hague #Delft #Denhaag #Alkmaar #Utrecht #Eindhoven #Amsterdam #Netherlands

What is to be considered basic essential scope for an urban development projects?

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In a typical city wide urban planning proposal, greenfield city development plan and brownfield redevelopment scheme, one or several of following important elements/ steps still tend to get missed, overlooked or ignored. Missing some of these planning elements/ tools may come at a huge latent price which cities and communities might have to pay later on. These elements include but not limited to consideration for circular (economy) practices, pedestrian flow modelling, microclimate simulations [like heat island effect analysis, shadow analysis, flood modelling and flood management, wind flow analysis (computer based) or wind tunnel test (using scale model of build environment)], GIS based site suitability, underground utility survey (GPR), structural safety profile analysis of built structure/ assets in old and vulnerable (unorganised/ unplanned) neighbourhoods, disaster management plan (new CBDs, vulnerable pockets), fire risk profile analysis and evacuation plan (old CBDs/ congested neighbourhoods/ squatter settlements), blue green infrastructure plan, urban agriculture and so on.

For example, when we see cities increasingly getting flooded due to aggravated climatic conditions, without discrimination, affecting poor and rich countries/ cities alike; in this context we see cities in global north increasingly working towards watershed assessment, flood management and harnessing strategies, conducting urban flood simulation, taking a watershed approach in urban built environment; but many countries in global south are still lacking awareness on this front, in spite of facing such periodic flooding challenges. In this example whether urban flood is caused by climate change or encroachment of flood plain upstream or due to poor storm water management, urban flood modelling for instance must be integral part of any urban planning and development project scope; but flood modelling still seem to be missing from the consultant's scope/ project scope in many large urban development project RFPs. Likewise missing wind and shadow analysis, disaster management, pedestrian flow modelling and so on.

May be its time that apex planning authorities and academic institutions work together to formulate binding policy, defining essential elements of urban development projects. May be its time when we realise that things which were considered luxury or USP earlier, has now become essential for resilient urban planning, management and development. Like sustainability was once used to be project USP, but now we realise that being sustainable in urban environment is inescapable agent of planning and development, and has not remained just an USP, choice or luxury.

Author: Anoop Jha

#smartcity #climatechange #rfp #scope #policy #urbanplanning #urbanmanagement #alkmaar #sustainability #resilience #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #Utrecht #Hauge #Delft #Eindoven #Netherlands

How to measure dynamic social phenomenon, in what measurement unit and what is the way forward?

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

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When it comes to people, household and community; a varying level of granularity, and a range and gradation can be witnessed from micro, to macro, to global scale.

Looking at smallest groups to global community scale - for instance there are special family traditions, unique folklore of natives, healing traditions of remote communities, unique festivities of distant settlements, peculiar rituals within ethnic subgroups; unique cultural expression, attire and language within different ethnicity; peculiar climatic affiliation, characteristic cultural tradition and signature culinary flavour of region; unique habits, preferences and identity of nations; shared transnational image and layers of collective subconsciousness of world.

Above is a glimpse of spectrum of diverse socio-spatial phenomenon that exists at different scales, sometimes characterised by subtle non tangible traits, mutually exclusive elements, binding ethos, spatio-temporal mutation and often are amorphous and shapeshifting; hence many a times difficult to capture, classify and analyse, at city, regional, national and sub-regional scale.

How profound is this social dynamics, and how difficult it is to capture the essence, still essentially a measure of individual, household and community. Possibly the vastness and complexity of social dynamics is the reason that different specialisation and segmented approach emerged over time for measuring social phenomenon across scale from ethnographic to anthropological to scientific to political.

Also how limited and fragmented are the tools and measurement units available today to capture the dynamic social phenomenon in its completeness, as obvious from the fact that even after centuries there has been lack of comprehensive composite indices which measure, reflect and encapsulate the above social dynamics manifested at different scale, yet made up of same elements people, household and community.

While census, unique statistical identity of individuals and households, and socio-economic research in this area serves their own niche purpose, there is also a need for multidisciplinary empirical approach to come up with composite indices for measurement of social dynamics as a whole, within inescapable diversity of society, for better understanding of social phenomenon, sympathetic acknowledgement of community needs in its interaction and interconnectedness; which may in turn help urban, rural and community planners, as well as administrators to plan, prepare and deliver solutions in a better way.

Author: Anoop Jha

#Urbanplanning #communityplanning #ruralplanning #smartcit #urbanplanning #regionalplanning #urbanmanagement #urbandevelopement #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Alkmaar #noordholland #northholland #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands #resilience

Analysing regional spatial dynamics of metropolis - Smart Region approach

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

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Why we end up having one thriving satellite town and another ghost town next to same metropolis? Whether interrelationship of two adjoining cities can be redefined?

We have seen some greenfield satellite towns/ large residential townships around a metropolitan city thriving and some not doing so well and one or two of them may just qualify for a ghost town. The ghost town that initially came up with promising development vision bullish on being in vicinity of metropolis. Though these new towns saw a sudden growth in real estate activities but plummet soon as they eventually had no takers of property. Whether few kms away or close, we realise that success of a satellite town/ large development is not simply a function of distance from metropolis.

We see in this case that proximity in a metropolitan or city region may not just be a function of measure of distance unit (km/ mile). For instance in case of connectivity between two cities, lets think of "20km of 2 lane road with no public transport" vs "20km of 6 lane expressway" vs "20km of metro/ rail/ bus connectivity" vs "20km of electric bike infrastructure" vs "20km of smart corridor with connected infrastructure conducive for autonomous vehicles". Distance of 20 to 30km treated differently, may mean different things in a different conditions and prove to be a deciding criteria for success/survival of greenfield project outside metropolis.

 

It also implies that the success of any new development especially away from metropolis, (new township or satellite town) highly depends on external factors like good connectivity, but these external factors like connectivity often remains outside of means/budget, purview and scope of consortia of real estate agencies or local public administration; reinforcing the fact that a new satellite town or large development away from metropolitan city can only succeed -

1) if they have high speed multi-modal connectivity, range of mobility options, supportive corridor landuse, or

2) if it has either critical mass of mixed complimentary land usage within itself (work-home-commerce) for autonomy, or

3) if it is specialised enough to sustain on its own (university, science park, R&D ecosystem etc).

Silver lining? Yes, distance can always be manipulated with right interventions to make distances feel like within reach by making journey easy/ engaging/ meaningful. Which means that relationship and transactions (labour-housing-entertainment) of two settlements/ town/ cities (both existing and greenfield) in proximity can always be improved based on restructuring/ reconceptualising its transport linkages and restructuring landuse around transit backbone. This may be one of the key aspects of smart region.

Author: Anoop Jha

#urbanplanning #smartregion #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #alkmaar #noordholland #northholland #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands #mobility

What with (typical) agenda of bicycle, why it captures popular imagination and what is the missing piece of puzzle!

Why people support and promote bicycle agenda? Some support considering it is environmentally sustainable, promotes healthy life and community; some, reconsidering their values, choices and transportation means due to new enlightenment on subject, emerging from social, professional and commercial media. Social media in a sense that captures bicycle in all its action and glory all the time; professional media in a sense every alternate post talking about subject of new mobility beyond fossil fuel; and commercial media in a sense those promoted by scores of new businesses emerging almost everyday around idea of bicycle, bicycle infrastructure, MaaS etc.

A lot is happening in this space of bicycle, micromobility and at its periphery, as its still easier for an individual or a group of people to think of building a business around the subject of bicycle, e-bicycle, e-scooters etc. So we see lot of buzz and momentum around the bicycle agenda.

Why even some of those people support bicycle agenda even if they don’t own a bicycle. Possibly they relate more bicycles with safer streets, so good for them irrespective.

There are those who own car but still support bicycle agenda, either they use less car and more bicycle and public transport OR simply to go with the popular opinion OR to distinguish themselves from other (bad?) car owners, considering themselves good car owners. This including cars of all shape, size and fuel types.

Then from a panoramic world view-

There are those who support and want to use bicycle but they don’t have access to bicycle tracks and bicycle infrastructure in their city. (They are many)

There are those individuals and dual income household who / at least one of them cannot bicycle to work due to long distance of work place. (They are many too)

Lets just not talk about role of weather here, as there are always both examples to quote.

There are those individuals and those households who can't even afford the bicycle, whether for individual or for whole family. (There are way to many)

Lets also not forget those, who cannot manage without car, or cannot manage only with bicycle, considering the kind of personal, household or professional situation they are in. (Health, ability, old dependent members, household members with special needs etc.) (There are still many)

So, contrary to the popular notion, bicycle agenda is a complex subject, its not always about either “for” or “against” if you assess subject at global level, going beyond city and neighbourhood. Typical bicycle agenda has certainly lot to do with reducing dependency on fossil fuel, health and safer streets, but researchers, planners and policy makers must consider that individual, household and community choices are not always obvious or easy.

[Views and observations are personal]