Essence of a true egalitarian city in actual and figurative sense.

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

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City is an embodiment of heterogeneity, a scintillation of aspirations and a crucible of democracy.

Metaphorically, a true egalitarian and utopian city will treat all it's inhabitants equitably, will provide abundant opportunity to everyone and will cherish indiscriminating spatial and build forms.

It's important question to ask here whether our current spatial and metaphorical dimension of city is egalitarian, unbiased, and equitable in true sense and built on values of democracy or it is still being built on edifice of aristocratic values as reflected in its built form, hierarchy and distribution of spaces in its struggle of power play. Is it that hierarchy and articulation of spaces as well as gradation, grandeur and power of built forms which help build image of city and which claims to celebrate the democracy are crushing the very egalitarian values itself.

From barbarian to kingdom to democratic set up, while social, political and economic structures have considerably changed over centuries and increasingly moving towards a flatter equitable world; structure and morphology of cities on the other hand unfortunately remained more or less unchanged; like capital complex replacing the castle, commercial and business district still occupying most prime zone and so on. Meanwhile lesser privileged and marginalized segment continued to made feel as dwarf in todays city as they used to feel in kingdom.

It is understood that all cities cannot follow a single template, but we must urgently think what could be model of a true egalitarian and utopian city where every citizen feels equally empowered.

To get a sense of what true egalitarian city may look like, government, planners and architects may try pushing capital complex to the fringe of city or making public buildings less imposing and less authoritative in its appeal or making low cost housing as a skyline and image of a city or making transit nodes at the core of high density lesser privileged neighborhoods where marginalised people walk to station and rich strata arrive using last mile transport mode or reserving most scenic and prime location of city for least privileged segment and public parks for example.

Traditions and philosophy of city planning, urban design and architectural built form needs to be revisited and some bold steps to be taken as a statement to make cities increasingly egalitarian in its reflection, functionality as well as in its spatial and built form.

Author: Anoop Jha 

#urbanplanning #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Delft #Denbosch #Alkmaar #Tilburg #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands

Possible pathway for resilient public transportation system:

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

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A resilient transportation system is one–

a) that is made of entire low capacity to high capacity public transportation system, and has such system under single apex governing entity, for better control, cross-subsidisation, and better access to fund due to critical mass (applicable in both mono and multi-stakeholder arrangement)

b) that includes even last mile connectivity in its project scope, offering matching service experience (often excluded and usually only limited to feasibility studies or sometime complemented with poor last mile fleet services)

c) which still plans for future growth and expansion even when battling with low ridership at any moment

d) mobilises sound instruments beyond transit infrastructure, rolling stock and fleet, like TOD, value capture, rail and metro station real estate lease, advertisement space lease, monetising experience etc.

e) which forms partnership with other forms of complimentary transportation service providers and competitions like app based cab service, rideshare, micromobility services, bicycle rental; especially for seamless connectivity, healthy mutually rewarding competition, and making use of anonymised data for passenger flow modelling, network analysis and empirical predictions

f) which has opted for digitalisation of governance and operations from customer centric services, network management to, unified cashless ticketing system, to fleet management and tracking, to predictive maintenance, to fleet automation, to on-demand services

g) which focuses on customer service, customer acquisition and customer retention in all separate target age, gender and ability groups and creates channels to actively seek passenger and anonymous feedback

h) which has excellent online and offline information dissemination and audio-visual display system and hence can devise flexible network configuration and flexible coach configuration without disappointing customers, required to respond to fluctuating demand, many a times experienced due to seasonal and diurnal variation, route characteristics and force majeure event; required to stay financially afloat (system that not just focuses on expansion, but one that is able to sequester as well)

i) finally, public transportation system, which may consider to experiment with real time flexible ticket pricing based of fleet occupancy level using gamut of technological aids like sensors and analytical cameras.

Additional thoughts on real time pricing for public transport system can be found in my other Linkedin article here [https://lnkd.in/eaa28zat]

Author: Anoop Jha

#publictransport #metro #tram #bus #transitionpathways #transportplanning #automation #technology #micromobility #bicycle #rideshare #fleetmanagement #networkanalysis #ret #ns #urbanplanning #smartcity #Amsterdam #Utretch #Hague #Delft #Denbosch #Alkmaar #Tilburg #Eindhoven #Rotterdam #Netherlands

An organism called City!

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

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A narrative.

While cities can easily be misunderstood as an efficient functional object or synchronised complex machinery, they are certainly worth more than there physical dimensions and material attributes. Cities born out of necessity, forged by time and sustained by human endeavor yet intricate and unfathomable enough to be comprehended in totality and measured by mind. With time cities assume a personified, organic and withering quality. Ever growing, pulsating and engulfed in its own nostalgic scent, familiar white noise and mirage of visuals; qualities which make image of a city. True cities are made of metaphysical qualities rather than just physical attributes. One has to have a right vision not just right tools to make a city of essence!

Projection for long range development vision- What are the limitations?

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

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One of the inherent limiting factor of long range development vision, especially City or Metropolitan Development plan is "Projection". While multiple alternate growth scenarios - like in case of population projections- are assesses including business as usual, exponential case scenario etc. through a scientific, statistical and pragmatic approach, but soon afterwards while selecting the optimal case scenario out of handful of alternatives, science tends to get replaced by somewhat abstract sweeping logic and individual or herd preferences and usually a "bullish scenario" is selected unanimously, because "vision" is perceived to be bright and luminescent,  and rest other scenarios are sidelined.

Now very much convinced with the assumptions and choice of decision, projected numbers (say derived future population) assume concrete significance and starts dictating physical planning and form of city (like BUA, FAR, PCU), but in actuality such numbers (say projected population) may or may not be achieved or may exceed projected numbers, only to be evident half a decade later or so. Over stressed city infrastructure and ghost cities both are  results of over reliance on single final future scenario and discarding equally valid other possible scenarios.

It's worth acknowledging that a single market ready technological advancement in span of 3 to 5 years, has potential to disrupt 30 odd year vision plan just like that.

Vision and long range planning should be as agile, accomodative and resilient as possible; to be revisited, reinvented and reconfigured in short intermediate spans and it should also have a monitoring dashboard mechanism with a continuous feedback loop.  Additionally, vision document must elaborate and articulate multiple scenarios, their impacts and concrete response measures, plan-B, Plan-C and so on.

Author: Anoop Jha

Need of quantifying and grading environmental footprint and impact of printing colors and paper type!

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

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A widely proliferated but much ignored area of environmental concern i.e. "printing and paperworks" require research and attention as deep and wide as ban on single use plastic.

From toxicity of chemicals (e.g. inorganic pigments, VOC etc. ) used in ink and printing colors, to heavy metal content of ink (e.g. Barium etc) ending up in Landfill, water and food stream, to intensity of resource and energy usages in production of range and grade of ink and paper are some of the key areas of concern.

Scientific research and modeling for panoply of color and grading them in order of environmental production footprint and environmental externalities is required to be done and to be widely publicized. For instance environmental footprint and impact of production and life cycle of white, yellow, red and black color cannot be same, likewise for pale white, true white and color paper, hence it should be established and much publicised that which color, shade, hue is most and least damaging to environment so that end user can make their choices responsibly. Brand is not compared here but the product in raw form itself is being diagnosed.

Incremental pricing based on type and quantum of color or dominant color in print and composition used per square unit and Incremental pricing of ink cartridge color based on environmental load.

What may also help is the incremental pricing on shades of white, assuming true white is most environmentally intensive and that A4 true white is most used printing paper type in day to day and official setting.

Legislation to minimise print copy version of documents in corporate, legal and government setting is also a much needed step.

Why this strange fascination with true white, why this affinity with printing itself unless it's genuinely unavoidable. Just because market is flushed with printers and ink cartridges that doesn't mean you must print. Ctrl+P can be more damaging than you think.

Author: Anoop Jha

#printing #paper #environment #footprint #color #red #yellow #blue #white #black #green #recycle #A4 #chemical #production

Statistical bias and insufficiency!

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

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The problem with statistics other than it's 1) susceptibility to misinterpretation and 2) confirmation bias is that 3) the moment you try to universalise statistical outcome, it gets diluted and loses its granularity and significance and 4) if you hardly get any robust and substantiated temporal data of a specific region or set of subjects (with its innate challenges, strengths, context and conditions) to support your argument it anyway still remains too remote, meagre or ephemeral to be of any material significance to the other three fourth part of world.

e.g., wrt above numbers

1) #Commercial / #political interest statistics

2) #Agenda / #ideological driven statistics

3) encompassing subjects like #poverty #urbanisation

4) statistics wrt #ecology, #heritage, #bicycleusage

If not true for all sectors, segments or subjects; same has been recurring  theme and daunting issue with majority instances of statistical interpretation/ outcome

Statistics to be presented with a note of caution and to be received with a dash of scepticism.

Author: Anoop Jha

#Statistics  #modeling #projection #urbanplanning #governance #commerce

An inclusive city needs more than smart interventions!

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

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Inclusiveness is not a function of smartness of the city. A city that is labelled intelligent still can't guarantee inclusion across spectrum of inhabitants or equity of service level across range of end users with varying needs.

Talking of smart citizen app for instance, we must deliberate who are the end users and whether digital benefits get distributed across citizens equitably or is it even accessible to all. Thinking of those homeless, those who can't read, those who don't own phone not to speak of smart phone, those who speak a different language, those whose needs are not listed in app, those who are too young or too old to use it, those who cannot access app due to health conditions, those who are not aware that such app exist, those who are running outdated app, those who do not have best data speed plan or access to internet itself and many others - a citizen app may mean different things to different inhabitants of city and meaningless to some.

Likewise in case of smart public infrastructure, how many actually access and uses public wifi other than tourists and few motivated others; who all actually have time and mindspace to switch to public wifi to save a miniscule amount of money and why will they risk malware attack and phishing if they have to use it only once in a while and when their personal telecom provider already gives them enough data and bandwidth. Again benefits reaches to only limited segment, actually those who are already empowered.

Like health equipment market which is skewed in a sense that those who are already fit tends to buy or use it more to be more fit, similarly E-governance for instance is more empowering to those who are already privileged in some sense or other, while the life of most of marginalized or at fringe or having specific or special needs may still remain unchanged by the noble initiatives like E-governance and public wifi network.

A sense of inclusion, belongingness and well being in a city has a different meaning altogether than solving city functionality through digital intervention or otherwise.

So how do we make a city which accommodates everyone's need - digital way or old analog way or with a parallel system of high tech and low tech intervention or on demand digital services or near-omnipresent services delivery or tailored door step governance and service delivery especially for those forgotten, those having limited means, those in dier needs, those marginalized and those at the fringe to make an equitable society.

Author: Anoop Jha

#smartinfrastructure #municipality #digital #future #policy #governance #cityplanning #urbanplanning #townplanning #inclusion #socialscience