Nov 2, 2023

Being mindful of what socio-technological norms we celebrate, and need of constant reflection!

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

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[NOTE: Thank you for visiting my Blog, hoping you will like it. Please Note, that I am conducting a FREE 45-minute online individual consultation on your interior design and home decor needs and aspirations, if you are in the Netherlands or even internationally. No strings attached. Drop me an email at anoop.jha@gmail.com to connect and schedule the session]

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History has taught us that every new technological breakthrough that finds a social and business relevance today, becomes mainstream norm tomorrow, gets celebrated for a little while, until embedded issues starts to get recognised. Being mindful of what we celebrate today, means constantly reflecting on what is perceived as a good practice today, and challenging the norm only to find even better alternatives, and achieve next breakthrough as soon as possible.

This is true for any country or region, industry and sector, and examples are prolific.

An example for instance, what a waste of precious energy, manpower and time as we sort, crush, break, shred, smelt, glass, metal and plastic bottles and containers to recreate glass, metal and plastic bottles and containers once again with a fresh label. Somewhat with an illusionary sense of satisfaction that we have intercepted, retrieved and recycled the material, but at what cost? Even if we sort using AI only to crush and shread it, its still an inefficient process. Even though it may not qualify for low value reuse of material, its also not high value usage of material.

The large fraction of these bottles and containers of all sort, size and material which can be retrieved intact and reused in its current shape with very little efforts and science.

Crushing, grinding and smelting an otherwise intact (millions and more) glass bottles and metal cans, to its constituents, to rebuild the same bottle again defies all logic and sensibility, considering all the megawatts of energy that might have gone into the process over years. When a glass bottle or glass vase can technically be retrieved, refilled and reused an infinite times for instance.

All this as an example, done in a rush to celebrate something, like a technology that we seem to have mastered today and also in absence of finding an alternative like practical and scale use-case of reverse logistics and high value reuse, where bottle and metal cans go to original producers or local authorized partner/ affiliate/ distributors for refilling. This is possible only if we see the point, do the math, do policy and regulatory restructuring, brainstorm with industry and research entities, retrace the supply chain distribution path, take environmental cost into consideration and reimagin accountability matrix.

Author: Anoop Jha

Image: Author

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, I am launching urban management (urban segment), interior design and home decor services and commissioned fine artworks (design segment) in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

The design segment is also capable of serving the unique needs of expats including the Indian community in the Netherlands.

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

Please also check and follow my Instagram interior design page where I am starting with sharing thoughts on what makes a great interior design. Follow @urbantenets

Also, do not forget to check my Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

Thank you for your attention!!]

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#circulareconomy #wastemanagement #energytransition #climatechange

#urbanplanning #smartcities #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #Utrecht #Hague #Denhaag #Netherlands #EU #Europe

Sign of a healthy city!

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

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A composite matrix of another kind.

Over time we have developed scores of indices and KPIs to measure the livability of cities. Somthing which has become a tool, a phenomenon, a race to climb the ladder of best city ranking. Why this race? because of the prestige, attractiveness to investments, economic growth, and in essence tagged as quality of life. Caution though, economic growth may not always correspond to better quality of life, as growth comes at a cost and with externalities.

You also only measure what you can, hence the indices tend to focus of measurable, tangible and palpable, also only something that correlate to other cities, as its a matter of who is doing better and who is the best.

There are possible indices which we tend to miss out, sometimes intangible, somtimes not considered worthy, sometimes tagged too vague, still signs of a healthy city. But most of the time we leave some purposefully, as corresponding data for same may not be available for other cities being compared.

What if we just measure health of a city, for its own sake, not for comparison, not for race to the best. Not under binding imperical rigidity, not though lenses of what should be, and not under fear for being judged. This freedom from external and established reference points may allow to look at city objectively, without prejudice and with a fresh perspective. In a sense where cities try to understand its own construct, and each city may assess its health based on unique indices, as unique any city is.

For instance, density, diversity and richness of flora and fauna in each micro neighbourhood, proximity and ease of access to natural and manmade water bodies and water features for its inhabitants, diversity of language in sample population in high footfall areas, share of elderly in outdoor spaces and outdoor activities, intensity of health and recreational outdoor activities on workdays indicating work life balance, share of workforce engaged in part time vocation and rotational shifts with freedom of livelihood choices, survey and analysis of unreported friction incidents in community and in public spaces as a barometer of civic obedience and community harmony, and footage analysis of near-miss outdoor hazardous incidents, to name some.

Author: Anoop Jha

Image: Author

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

Please Note, that I am also conducting a FREE 45-minute online individual consultation on your interior design and home decor needs and aspirations if you are in the Netherlands or even internationally. Drop me an email at anoop.jha@gmail.com

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

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

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#healthycity #cityranking #cityindex #citymatrix #urbanplanning #urbandesign #transportplanning #society #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #Utrecht #Hague #DenHaag #Netherlands #EU #Europe

How do we embed circular economy in practice?

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

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It's obvious how circularity is missing or rather excluded from current processes and systems, in its existing shape.

How is it that your phone and accessories, fashion products and other lifestyle products-

[01]. Become outdated next year or next season, (made to believe that way, orchestrated reality, messed up collective consciousness, fast fashion and more)

[02]. Become faulty or near junk in 3 to 5 year with minuscule or no value or rather a liability (fragile by intention, designed to last only few years or months or weeks, designed for "repair impossible", outdated by design)

What do we do about -

[01].IDEA OF PRODUCTS BECOMING OUTDATED SOON

EDUCATE -

1a. Adding circular economy in educational curriculum including school and across higher education irrespective of stream, for awareness of those who become consumers, producers and decision makers tomorrow. Knowledge makes responsible behaviour possible.

SENSE MAKING-

1.b. Ease of access to trusted measurement matrix and legit interactive visualization tools (app, sensors ect.) for confrontation with material that we consume, and waste that we produce by individual action and or collectively as society. See it to believe it, to make responsible day to day and big choices.

[02]. PRODUCTS FAILING FAST AND GETTING OBSOLETE OR REDUNDANT SOONER

CURB AND INCENTIVIZE WHAT YOU CAN-

2.a. Curb the fragile design practice by stringent regulatory measures and responsible industry practice

2.b Incentivize the robust design practice, i.e. designing products that lasts, that are easy to repair, to keep products and material in use and in loop as long as possible.

MAKING REPAIR EASY

2.c. Incentivize repair at doorstep to see the impact

2.d. Statutory recognition of repair centers, as integral part of public and semi public facility (PSP) land use

2.e. "Return or repair everything under one roof", along with logistic support, and in accessible places within cities, ideally in CBD, for every product which you find broken or acting up in household.

WHAT IT TAKES

Not much, mere intention, willingness, strategy and some math!

Author: Anoop Jha

Image:Author

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

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

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

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#circulareconomy #urbanplanning #urbanmanagement #smartcities #fastfashion #resourcemanagement #supplychain #sustainability #keepinloop #repaircentre #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #Utrecht #Hague #Netherlands

There is increasing need of dialogue and new partnerships within each domain, for faster circular transition!

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

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Within each domain of industries, systems, businesses and professions.

In today's highly specialized world, the way various industries, systems, businesses, and professions have been conceived and organised, they can continue their growth mostly without talking to or interacting to each other. Kind of specialization where roles and responsibilities are predefined, and, goals and objectives are highly aligned with specific sectoral trait, typology and needs.

This equilibrium of sectoral autonomy is a result of decades of industrial efficiency logic, where value chain has developed and matured, following path of the least friction. It is considered that if two traditionally independent systems or industries or businesses, pause and speak or interact with each other, it will result in inefficiencies due to lost time and money.

In the existing scheme of things this need of dialogue and new partnership is considered inefficient as it consumes time, and time is of essence here, which actually translates to money. So they prefer not to talk to each other, unless its imperative or binding, also thinking what's the need when individual value chain is in equilibrium, when there is comfort in autonomy and when there is security in specialization.

In this increasingly material and resource constraint world, yes there is urgent need of knowing each other, need of finding compatibility and complimentary strengths, need of sharing pain points and learning, need of talking to each other, increasing necessity of sub-disciplinary dialogue and interdisciplinary perspective to business, industries, professions and value chain.

This is also in line with the idea of industrial symbiosis and circular economy where waste of one industry becomes feed for another industry for instance. Likewise, systems which works towards standardization at conceptual, virtual and physical levels for interoperability. Similarly, resources which can be pooled, shared, loaned, exchanged, leased or traded among businesses. Also professional knowledge, best practices, learning which can be crystallized, and modularized for dissipation, transfer, and exchange.

How do we achieve this?

By acknowledging that there is need to pause, and rethink about having more dialogue for larger good and in turn for their own efficiency. By finding new forms of compatibility, interdependencies, and vlaue exchange. By aggregation and co-location of industries. By common database and dashboard of business needs. By agreeing on common definition of standardization within systems. By digitalization and open source structure of best practices, and more.

Author: Anoop Jha

Image: Author

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

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

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

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#Circulareconomy #urbanplanning #urbanmanagement #systemthinking #designthinking #material #Rotterdam #Utrecht #Amsterdam #Hague #DenHaag #Netherlands #EU #Europe

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

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When the economy has to serve its purpose!

🏭When not producing anything is not an answer and when shutting down industries, businesses and operations may not be an option!

Then we need a statutory mechanism, moral pivot, and disruptive but viable business model, where every new and existing industry and business may still continue to function, but upskill themselves at the facility scale (and sectoral level) and devote up to half (not a token) of their capacity, resources, and skills to make things right, neutralizing the externalities that another half of their current business model or establishment generates. To be achieved either through circular procurement, reverse logistics, repurposing production, decarbonization, resource efficiency, or carbon offset.

This is highly important in today’s race of production and overproduction, as by any estimate for example, as on date -

👔There must be enough clothing stacked in the warehouses, stores, wardrobes, second-hand market, and on the way to landfill, that may serve what the entire world population requires for the next month or even a year or more

🏢There must be enough sum total square feet of real estate inventory, to give a respectable unit area of habitation to everyone in the world, considering all the vacant and under-utilized residential stock, all the extravagant properties, and all other land use that sits idle half of the time.

And more.

All of this that is currently being done, to serve inflated demand, and due to lack of a mechanism to recirculate material that is considered waste, and the inability to manage mismatched resources.

A new way of industrial and business operation will be a welcoming change!

Author: Anoop Jha

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

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

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

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#Circulareconomy #urbanplanning #urbanmanagement #urbandevelopment #economics #finance #industries #comemrce #World #EU #Europe #netherlands #Amsterdam #Rotterdam #Hague #DenHaag #Delft #Lieden #Sustainability #Resislience #Climatechange

One of the most important and underrated aspects of material flow.

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

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The conservation and (re)utilization of embodied energy - from the scale of the product to the built environment.

Yes, materials have been extracted and refined, and the products have been made, and transported for intended use, with all its embodied energy, the product that went through energy-intensive processes, leaving environmental externalities. What next?

It will be unreasonable and illogical to keep producing, while not knowing what to do with the product or refined material after the end of its first functional or fashionable life. The thing we know and focus on today is to grind and smelt products back to their granular, sometimes molecular constituents, or ship them to grey markets and landfills of less well-off places, after sometimes their deliberately short, designed, perceived, and valued life. Maybe it’s the only choice for some in their given context, maybe it’s a problem of not knowing whose Lifecycle responsibility it is after the product leaves the factory.

In any case, the post-perceived functional life of products, it becomes a problem of “compound” embodied energy associated with refined materials and products at a global supply chain level.

Once a product or refined material enters into local geography through a global supply chain, with all its embodied energy associated with processing, transportation, etc., it is the responsibility of the local economy, regional industry, and governing institutions to create enabling grounds for maximizing the use, reuse, and repurpose of refined materials/components and products at varying scale, be it extension of life, second, third and fourth life or reinvented multi-functionality of such products. Just because we have figured out how to make new products or refined material from scratch, doesn’t make it necessary to discard old and create new at the pace at which it is being done, just because you can.

Be it paper, plastic, cardboard, and glass products, packaging and residues (which hold high circular potential due to their numeric strength), or of course concrete (that holds circular potential due to sheer scale), or discarded EV batteries, chemicals, PV modules, wind turbine components (that holds less explored circular potential in the need of hour).

A product or refined material of any scale, at any historic or contemporary timeline, once produced, with or without thought of the future or post-functional life, becomes immensely valuable due to all the efforts, time, and embodied energy associated with it, and its never too late to reassess the real value of such product, to explore how these can be put to best use tomorrow and in times to come, especially within the local geography.

Author: Anoop Jha

Image: Author

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

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

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

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#circulareconomy #urbanplanning #resourceeffeciency #materailflowanalysis #LCA #climatechange #systemthinking #designthinking #Amsterdam #Rotterdam #Utrecht #Netherlands #EU #Europe

The dilemma of oversized urban houses.

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

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Yes, they live in oversized houses, as they gradually reached there, as they wanted to, as they needed it, and as they could afford it at one point in time. They still continue to live in oversized houses even if they don’t want to as it becomes unmanageable with age and weakening abilities, even if they don’t need it as they become empty nesters, and even if they can’t afford it at another point in time, with drying wherewithal and acclivitous expenses.

Yes, it’s not that easy to reconfigure something made of brick and mortar, at the unit scale and at the neighborhood scale. It’s difficult with architectural rigidity that doesn’t consider modularity in its inception. It’s harder still with binding urban design regulations that don’t consider such future reconfiguration requirements and possibilities in the first place. Even more difficult with land use restrictions, that don’t consider real-time land-usage convertibility, and are nearly impossible amidst stringent building bylaws that are dictated by the idea of dimensions.

Having a choice is fundamental. We are discussing reconfiguration, from a house to a neighborhood scale, not with the conventional idea of accommodating more people per unit or per acre, not with the sole idea of co-location or sharing; but to offer inhabitants a choice that they deserve, the choice to sequester their operations in the humble Sqft of area, carved out of their own house, that is still respectable for a home, that is manageable, and affordable with growing age. If we end up gaining room for more inhabitants per acre through the reconfiguration of houses and neighborhoods that is a byproduct.

In any part of the world, it’s counterintuitive even from a policy perspective, surrounding this phenomenon of living in oversized houses at a growing age, with household size considerably reduced, when many of them may not require it or want it but still live there in the absence of choices. Counterintuitive, as administrations may choose to offer money as a social welfare gesture only to take some of it back unintentionally in the form of higher energy bills generated and associated higher property taxes due to those additional sqft of area which many residents might not require.

While the discussion around retrofitting and circular built environments is gaining traction, we should further move beyond the idea of material trade-offs, and, design, plan, and strategies to consider the matter of mutating requirements and choices and focus on this much-ignored immutable fact that human spatial needs drastically change with time. Technologically, reconfiguration and retraction of the buildings and larger built environment is not impossible, possibly focus has to be on statutory reconfiguration and policy reengineering.

Author: Anoop Jha

Image: Author

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[Recent update

Starting 2024, launching urban management, interior design, home decor and commissioned artwork services in the Netherlands, serving local as well as international remote clients.

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

Instagram interior design page @urbantenets

Instagram fine art and illustration page @urbanoregional

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#urbanmanagement #urbanplanning #urbandesign #smartcities #circulareconomy #Rotterdam #Amsterdam #Utrecht #Netherlands #EU #Europe