CITY STORM WATER DRAINAGE SYSTEM -Revisiting fundamentals

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

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SITUATION

No matter how well you plan Storm Water Drainage System, it often fails as it has so many missed variables, scores of design and operational dependencies, aging infrastructure and multitude of agencies to put blame on, later on.

TREND

Storm water and Urban Flood used to be two different things, but their boundaries have started to get blurred, as rainfall events are getting more unpredictable and severe due to climate change and as normal rainfall events have frequently started causing sticky urban floods that is not easily dissipated.

POSSIBLE MEANS TO DEAL WITH SITUATION

There are only couple of ways you can deal with storm water inundation and urban flood events, i.e. either move the city elsewhere OR tame the nature through uphill dams and artificial mega wetlands at outskirts OR brace the city with flood barriers OR capture and store part of runoff water allowing as much water to percolate if water table permits OR make way for water and allow storm water and floods to pass through city while assuring minimum impact and damage.

CHALLENGES

Temporal rainfall data of whatever time period used in modeling is primarily historic data, there is no consideration for future rainfall event modeling considering climate change, increasingly aggressive weather events being witnessed every passing year.

Historic Flood data doesn't consider cause and effect of flood due to slow or sometimes radical temporal change in built form and landscape of city.

Expanding cities, increasing paved areas, shrinking greens and disappearing urban waterbodies are changing the overall runoff coefficient of city converting normal rainfall event into disastrous situations and unmanaged events.

OPTIMAL SOLUTION

Instead or in addition to regular storm water network if you plan or redevelop your city as well as design buildings to allow periodic Inundation and water retention and absorption, that will be less destructive and less overwhelming then flash floods due to heavy downpour and in case of actual flood events.

It's important to keep reiterating that Multicriteria based assessment, design and scenario modeling is of utmost importance for planning any urban core infrastructure, be it SWD, SWM, Water Supply or Power Distribution.

#urbanplanning #smartcity #stormwatermanagement #sustainability #future #water #flood #swale #LID #zerowaste #urban #cityplanning #townplnaning #municipality #municipalcorporation

Possibly solution to city's space and resource scarcity is within city limits itself!

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

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POPULATION AND DENSITY

How many people can peacefully and respectfully coexist within one Square Kilometer of a city without compromising on functionality and respectable individual social space. You have empirical examples and you can also make a simulation model of maximum density case scenario including residential, working and transitory population. Acknowledging that population density is never a correct indicator of quality of life. Acknowledging that 2 dimensional approach of population density should be revisited to include 3rd dimension as more and more people are being accommodated vertically, and as more and more utilities, mobility, asset, cargo can be accommodated underground in coming times.

CONSTRUCTION

How much Built Up Area (BUA) a City can technically hold within one Sqkm, given the limitation of existing construction technology, available sustainable material of choice and considering requirements of structural stability. You can build and test scenarios and models based on type of landuse including mixeduse case and you can also make digital twin/ BIM/vGIS model to check if model is workable as habitable. Acknowledging that Hong kong style housing was never an ideal architectural concept of creating more built-up area in a city and it was only a technological and financial constraint. Rather imagine constructing a Cubic Km of monolith Real Estate including private and public space like a perforated Swiss Cheese in form of space frame as a maximum BUA case scenarios.

BIODIVERSITY

How much Biotic Diversity in terms of native regional flora, fauna and wild meadows can be accommodated in a Cubic km of City along with humans without overwhelming, compromising or competing for space and other resources considering their growh rate. Acknowledging that way too much of biodiversity in a city was never a good idea, like some exotic species leading to biodiversity nuisance and like beehive on every corporate office and public buildings leading to severe pollination issues.

SUSTAINABILITY AND SELF-RELIANCE

How much self sustainability a Cubic km of city can achieve in terms of it's own

1) Food security,

2) Energy needs

3) Waste load management and

4) Water security, through range of means-

1.a) Urban agricultural, edible landscape, Food forest, community seed bank, school seed bank, vertical farm, rooftop greenhouse, bush food experience, kitchen garden, aquaponic, hydroponics, aeroponic, doomsday vault, extended shelf life solutions-

2.b) Energy education, energy aware lifestyle, energy conservation by design, interventions and appliances, energy load management, IoT and edge devices, building energy load management through solar passive architecture, building insulation/ ventilation, harvesting and storing energy from sun, wind, algae, river, stream, canal, organic waste; biofuels, heat recovery from process and thermal storage, Air Source Heat Pump/ ASHP, open window detection, micro turbine-

3.c) Waste reduction, circular waste economy, recycling, reuse, upcycle, repurpose, near zero construction waste,

4.d) Water conservation, treated sewage effluent, waste water treatment, IOT Sensors, water saving appliances, precision agriculture, mist irrigation, water from air condensation, extracting drinking water from air and others, flood water harvesting, storm water retention basin, cloud seeding,.

Author: Anoop Jha

#urbanplanning #cityplanning #townplanning #sustainability 

Burden and footprint of Packaging; a fair share of it can be avoided!

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

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Ready to consume edible products packed and collected or delivered to doorstep (burger for instance) still leaving substantial and growing inorganic packaging residual for good, as more and more people placing order online.

Edible products with little shelf life (Juice for instance) consumed or expired soon leaving it's packaging footprint mostly local but forever or for too long. Consumers must be informed that such products don't suddenly gets expired one fine day, give them the range and chart stating how consistency and taste may get compromised over time still in consumable range, also tell them how to increase shelf life.

Non-edible products coming with shelf life and consumed in numbers ( Shampoo for instance), have regional, sometimes national packaging waste footprint. Mostly delivered across regions by e-commerce websites.

Non perishable products having only expiry date wrt trend (shoes for instance) and consumed in bulk witnesses global packaging waste footprint.

Then there are another kind of packaging waste burden i. e. where individual or collective packaging weight and/or volume is rather more or many fold of product/s inside, and having huge market. (Gift hampers, festive gifts etc. for instance). In this category higher you go up towards luxury segment more wastage is witnessed.

Bulk packaging is being excluded from the discussion as they have relatively organised supply-collection chain and higher recycling percentage.

Author:Anoop Jha

#waste #urbanplanning #packagingwaste #landfill #recycling #swm #municipal #msw

Cities within city!

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

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These metropolitan cities are so big that many inhabitants spend their entire life without the need of visiting few other parts of city for any purpose be it business, socialising or recreation, and when they do visit that other part of same city for the first time, it's sometimes not less than a shocking experience, pleasant or otherwise - experiencing drastic change in built-up scale, a very distinct manifestation of architectural style, a juxtapose density, visible economic stratification, attitudinal and behavioural changes are observed, obvious difference in level of upkeep, city beautification and public services, varying degree of management witnessed, sometimes changes witnesses in regulatory enforcement, citizen compliance and level of citizen engagement; difference in lifestyle, life choices and opportunity landscape is worth noticing as well.

Several forces are at play here making different part of city very different in appeal and experience, like - chronology of development, different developmental vision for different city zones in an effort to create specialised nodes, different economic activity and status.

Silver-lining; Heterogeneity and diversity in a large metropolitan city was never an outdated idea, additionally possibility of intracity excursion and tourism is there. Learning opportunity from each other is also there. A city with multitude of experience is always welcoming anyways.

In all likelihood it can be safely assumed that there is critical mass in terms of a chunk of city with a cluster of habitation and segment of economy which makes it autonomous in many senses, making it a small city within a larger metropolitan, and metropolitan city can be perceived as agglomeration of several such smaller cities, of course huddled together with a symbiotic relationship.

Author:Anoop Jha

#urbanplanning #cityplanning #townplanning #habitat #urban #smartcity #cluster #neighborhood

Notion of good and bad Urban Streets -

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

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Notion of good and bad Urban Streets -sometimes it's mote than skill or fault of urban planners, urban designers, transport planners, road engineers and landscape architects! 

Broadly, there are only limited known ways a street can be designed from junction to junction, there are only finite ways street facade can be articulated and modelled. (Possibly 80% of street design work machine can do on its own, by running algorithm in near future) 

Then, what is the differentiator between a good and a bad urban Street design and quality of street experience? 

Some variables-

Outcome of Transport modelling

Quality of Development Control Regulations 

Compactness of neighborhood

Permissible adjacent Landuse 

Permissible Floor Area Ratio (FAR) 

Economic status of Neighborhood

Generosity of Landscape elements

Quality and thoughtfulness of Street furniture

Age of city neighborhood

Attractiveness of neighborhood

Locational context of street

Image and significance of city

You can see there more than 50% of variables from above list which are not in control of planners and designers; variables that influences and sometimes decides the ultimate outcome of urban street design exercise, and shapes the notion of street quality and experience. 

Author: Anoop Jha

 #transportplanning #urbanplanning #landscapearchitect #urbandesigner #urbandesign

 #design #transport #smartcity #municipality #municipalcorporation

Legibility of City by design not by labels!

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

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A case of many cities in developing countries and beyond.

Sense of getting lost and directionless in your own city can be a scary experience! More frequent is the phenomenon associated with planned cities compared to those towns and settlements which have evolved organically. Reason being several planned cities tend to get overwhelmingly repetitive in its modular spatial forms, sometimes making it unnerving during commute, while organically evolved cities usually boast multitude of visual cues and anchors to build a memorable streetscape.

Feeling disoriented or experiencing a sense of Déjà vu in a city is so common that people may repeatedly be unsure about correctness of path taken or exit chosen or flyover crossed on a daily basis on a routine path, as familiar as home-work-home.

Feeling of trapped in a maze is quite obvious and frequent a phenomenon in large residential neighbourhoods when it's sometimes difficult to orient yourself and finding an exit route seems a Herculean task, compounded by encountering random access gate closure.

It may take weeks or even months to actually being able to memorise or to get familiar with even frequented route, and then it's easy to forget again. It is clear that Legibility by labels or signage on its own and in all of it's collective forms, types and glory is certainly not being able to make a city legible in one go even for its regular citizens not to speak of visitors of city.

You cannot entirely rely on signage for navigation in a city, signage which are sometimes broken, sometimes vandalised, sometimes wrongly placed, sometimes unreadable by design, sometimes hidden from sight due to tree and plant foliage, sometimes owing to bad or no illumination. There are still only limited segment of citizens who actually or frequently are comfortable with or using or relying on GPS navigation maps and apps, and they who use such tools also encounter challenges like network connectivity, distracted driving.

Also acknowledging that a commuter driving a vehicle and continuously looking for signage and clues for direction is a potential threat on road due to lack of focus.

A careful attention and planning in terms of landscape variation and vegetation arrangement, landscape and urban design elements, lighting arrangements, architectural theme and design, facade articulation and zoning regulations, structural innovation etc. in combination with time tested and some better signage may possibly be the solution and attempt towards better legibility of a city!

Author: Anoop Jha

#urbanplanning #urbandesign #smartcity #landscape #municipality #municipalcorporation #neighbourhood #transportplanning

Solution of urban space constraints may possibly lie within existing spaces itself.

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

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Part of the solution of urban space constraint lies in the shared use of space, infrastructure, amenities and real estate inventory. Problem that is apparently caused by selective temporal and diurnal use of indoor and outdoor spaces and associated opportunity cost of space, and solution that possibly lies in multifunctional use of space.

Decades of inertia in terms of concept of space based on segregation of function, activities and power hierarchy, makes it rather challenging to have a broader discussion on such subject. Only some emerging shared real estate space concepts are being realised here and there.

Starting with space module of residential unit, where there is no universally agreeable standard floor space threshold between the wide range of low income housing to multimillionaire mansions, and if we focus primarily on quality of residential experience instead of floor space area, it is evident that living experience of a compact star category hotel room, possibly having one fourth or one third of typical residential unit floor space area, might be considered far better than average residential unit. (To calibrate, you may think of last time you went on vacation and booked hotel). Which theoretically implies two things, one, that if hotel chains for instance could design and manage residential housing across city, they may offer better living experience in less floor space of residential unit and saved real estate space means better quality of living experience in same or less price; second that they can come up with interoperable residential arrangement and contract, that means while you are away working, travelling or on vacation, someone else can use that space, something in line of timeshare and shared living, but at mass scale, by creating and repurposing residential inventory.

Similarly interoperability of other land use functions can be devised like offices, malls and retail spaces which remains unused for two third to one third of the day. Something like creating or repurposing land use and built-up area for shared working and shared commercial purpose.

Likewise there is immense possibility of multi-functionality in city in terms of shared infrastructure, shared amenities and facilities, which can still also make social, environmental and commercial sense.

We need to slowly move towards thinking of 24x7x365 usage of entire land use categories, making most of every square feet of precious real estate and outdoor spaces in city. This may mean regulatory changes, a new architectural and urban planning approach, real estate business model innovation, lifestyle and societal changes.

Author: Anoop Jha

#realestate #architecture #hotel #circulareconomy #timeshare #coliving #coworking #architecture #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Delft #Denbosch #Alkmaar #Noordholland #Northholland #Tilburg #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands