A place called Street!

Route De Sospel, Menton, Monaco

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Sustainable City Graphics2

Disclaimer - Starbuck coffee / company logo style has been used for the graphics in this blog post with simple aim to create environmental awareness in the world and to promote sustainable urban planning and architectural design practices, considering this effort will only further enhance the image of company as a sustainable brand, in case the use of font/ logo style is felt inappropriate or objectionable by the company they should inform the author to get the graphics removed from the blog and post.  

Sustainable City Graphics 1

Disclaimer - Coca-Cola font / company logo style has been used for the graphics in this blog post with simple aim to create environmental awareness in the world and to promote sustainable urban planning and architectural design practices, considering this effort will only further enhance the image of company as a sustainable brand, in case the use of font/ logo style is felt inappropriate or objectionable by the company they should inform the author to get the graphics removed from the blog and post.  

The only sustainable retrofit whether it’s a product or city environment

To leave scope for future retrofits in the moment you conceive the idea of product or vision of a city.

Today you realize after 5 or 20 or 30 years that this product or system or infrastructure which you had planned back then with the most sophisticated tools and technology available at that time, with the best brains at disposal and the best hands available, that robust system of past desperately needs a technology overhaul and efficiency retrofit today, just to validate its contemporary relevance and to drag itself for few more miles in the tomorrow, but it would have been quite difficult for you to confront and accept this apparently unpleasant fact that this product, infrastructure, system or even strategy which you claim to be the most advanced and avant-garde today is very soon going to be outdated, very soon indeed!! Acknowledge it or not, that’s how it works, especially when technology, planning and policy is concerned only thing which remains eternal is aesthetics and nostalgia associated with such technology, possibly that’s why many people still prefer analog watch over digital one, that’s totally a personal choice.

Change is not only an integral law of nature but equally a law of technology, inevitable like growth of humanity, because humanity is curious and that’s why innovation and hence need to replace and retrofit old technology. Problem with the contemporary approach of planning and product design is that we tend to conceive and create a system or product which is 100% complete in its form and design “today” leaving no scope for future integration except few exceptions, even knowing that need for retrofit is waiting only at the next turn of system or product life-cycle  You see those overly stuffed embedded products, jam packed conduits, circuits and channels, overcrowded service corridors, saturated underground utility trench, suffocating right of ways (ROW), chaotic narrow streets, thousands of unventilated unlit city rooms and residences, all of this have two things in common, one, is the shear lack of vision and second, ignorance to change. Change which is inevitable, but we are happy and content with what we have planned today, who cares for tomorrow? Meanwhile, you enjoy all the attention and praise because of your new product and system. They might even have bagged few awards for best innovation and work in the field, but it all doesn't really matter if that product or vision fails in next couple of years. The single largest criteria of product or planning judgment and evaluation has to be sustainability, which means your product or system or vision have to have an inbuilt scope for absorption of future technology and efficiency integration for sustainability, to keep up with future pace of life and lifestyle.

Lets talk something about "sustainability" here. The word "sustainability" has been exploited much in recent years  increasingly assuming a very narrow meaning just revolving around "anything green". Lets keep in mind that being or doing green is just a piece of sustainability. Sustainability is much more, it is vastly inclusive a phenomenon, it is about the whole life cycle of product or system or plan. if you make a greenest product on earth which has a life span or tech-viability span or people-acceptance span of one or two year that is not sustainable when compared to a product which is though not so green in its DNA but which has a larger life span or acceptance span of may be half a decade or so or more. All the resources  which has gone into making of that short lived green product goes to vain at the end of its functional or acceptance span but the similar resources  which has been consumed in making that not so green product with a much longer life span seems more sustainable an option.  Using 5 most "greenest" products of same use one after another in just five years is much less sustainable than using 1 single "not so green" product for 5 years.

Now today you realize that environmental laws have become more stringent, people have become more educated, aware and choosy  technology has become more and more complex and sophisticated, every coming tomorrow product or system of yesterday is becoming obsolete, what to do. We can’t really plan for something which has not been invented yet, but we can always try to leave some scope for future integration, for the time when it is invented. It might add to few percent of capital or man hour but it’s worth giving a thought. Acknowledging the need for future retrofit and leaving some scope for it today will make our life easy tomorrow, products more relevant and cities more sustainable.   

Absolut city...

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For those who are very fond of Urban Axis…

Diluting significance of urban Axis due to land constraint and transit retrofits?? 

At times you see someone being possessive or rather poetic about linearity of city architecture and geometry of urban fabric, being very peculiar about alignment of streets and visual axis, there is fair chance that he or she is an Architect and if you see someone rather sentimental or defensive about all this affair of axis and orientation, there is strong probability that you are interacting with an Urban Designer. Of course laymen also appreciate the beauty of carefully planned urban fabric and thoughtful positioning of landmark structures and public plazas etc. knowingly or unknowingly, they even travel faraway lands to witness the glory and charm of historic cities and as well as modern metropolitan cities and certainly formulas of urban patterns and  axis have great contribution in the making of a wonderful city as proven historically.

Let’s try to understand the quantum shift in the approach of city planning and redevelopment from couple of centuries back till today not to speak of future trend and try to analyze the “still un-deviated” intellectual affection for urban geometry specially axis call it inertia or stubbornness or whatever. All this in the light of mounting pressure of traffic; growing, busy and occupied population, all this in a city which is struggling everyday just to survive functionally that very day while managing the damage and backlog of many yesterdays. In a city which is going on a path very different than what perceived originally because of its changing priorities and unperceived growth, specifically in terms of transit requirements.

When Lutyen Delhi was perceived originally no one would have imagined that this very city is going to grow so much so soon that one day it will need a mass rapid transit system (MRTS) or may be more, like integrated transport system as we call it, no one thought that it will need “flyovers”? subways?? Underground transport!! Are you kidding? Elevated tracks, No way!! PRT?? What is that?? Such would have been the response of architects, Urban Designers and Planners of that time, someone go ask them, if you will, hire a time machine may be? And hence they planned wonderful avenues, boulevards, most importantly urban Axis what started as a core of city. Of course that’s the beauty and heritage of the city one can be proud of, but as city expanded the firmness and geometry of those axis and alignments got diluted, which was due to the race, race of providing accommodation and business to the exponentially growing population but still without recognizing the latent growth potential of the city otherwise they wouldn’t have planned low and medium rise land use in South Delhi and similar spatial positions at the present intermediate ring of city which they can’t really afford to! Now the focus shifted from axis to pockets, loosely arranged urban pockets, based on affordability and all. This diluting axial or otherwise geometry is also due to retrofitting, retrofitting of transit systems and development interventions and traffic management measures, like flyovers, underpass, subways, elevated tract, underground tunnel etc.

We were discussing axis, so let’s stick to the subject for a while. That colonial urban axis emerged from the need to showcase the extravagant luxury and prove their capacity, knowledge, authority and aesthetic or otherwise, while rest of the city fabric which emerged in recent decades was driven by the necessity to handle growth, priorities were different and will be different. The colonial axis was bliss to experience, still it is, while today’s axis in other parts of city is apparently agonizing an experience for many most of the time, waiting in a traffic queue today’s urban axis gives a view of more than mile long array of crawling vehicles bumper to bumper, again and again, everyday. Array of flashy car tail lights in the mirage of heat emerging from vehicles!   You can’t associate this axis with a very pleasant experience. What about aesthetic urban experience of thousands of those commuting in tens of mile underground tunnel or organic and maneuvering elevated MRT network? They don’t really come to witness the extraordinary experience which is historically associated with planned urban fabric.

Feelings attached to traditional values and formulas of what an ideal urban fabric should be have remained same while the needs and urban technologies have moved ahead. People tend to approach and appreciate modern cities and metropolis on the historically benchmarked cities and hence this disappointment. These contemporary cities demand a totally new approach of planning for preserving and nurturing its aesthetic beauty. What we seem to have achieved very convincingly historically, since centuries and beyond seems to be a big challenge today. It’s time to shed the nostalgia and comfort of proven urban design formulas and get back to drawing sheet to create new age aesthetics for new age cities in the light of new transit, growth and lifestyle needs and in the light of emerging and unexpected urban technologies and unexplored land use strategies. Though you can’t really design or plan for some urban technology or strategy which has not been invented or explored yet, but we can always keep some margin and scope today itself for future integration and urban retrofit which seem to be inevitable a phenomenon. Only one thing which is definite here is the growth, so let’s plan for growth. At least let’s try to acknowledge inevitability of growth today itself, for a better urban future, its aesthetics and character.

All said and done, fact remains that there is something really magical about the urban axis and it has repeatedly proven its worth and guess that quantum of our future city planning strategies and spatial arrangement will still revolve around it.          

“This post is dedicated to friend “Poppy” who really enjoy studying and analyzing urban axis across the world and has the habit to relate everything with the Axis phenomenon and seems he is having really good time deliberating about it with friend “Roomy”, only if he gets time free from study, if at all"

Life at Edge

Satellite view of urban settlement trail along river edge


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Said to be the most photographed in the world…

Golden Gate Bridge

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Sometimes you appreciate unintentional grunge architectural experience!

Even architects refrain to talk about the darker intuitive side of architectural experience.  

Looking through a dirt clad window glass pan on a rainy day at  your half a century old sparingly used ancestral house, mysteriously thrilling fog and  street light setting as viewed from the window of a motel room in no man’s land where you stayed last weekend on your way back home from a road trip,  flickering interplay of light and shadows projected on the walls and roof  of your bedroom by the light of traffic passing by on the adjacent street,  bizarre abstract patterns on the under maintained damp bathroom or subway walls,  grunge white noise of much awaited rain pouring on the garage tin shed,  looking at the engulfing silence of valley from the balcony of a remote hill resort experiencing the shear lack of artificial urban sound of which you are used to or an experience of strange inquisitive damp smell while you are getting down the basement stairs in a dimly lit surrounding, you at times experience unspoken, unperceived, un-designed and unintentional side of architecture further accentuated by the time of year and day, your mood and company or absence of other people at that particular time.   

At times you feel so tiered of popular architecture, popular formula of architecture, formula of what should be and what not and all the glorification and stubbornness around what is popular, those are kind of beautiful, but they are every were, architectural orders, theories so much overvalued so abundantly repeated, interiors so much commercialized so much in order, so much restricted, so much formalized, you are left with no choice but to live in an environment which appeal to neighbors, your housing society and society at large, even You don’t know what you really want to experience. Spoon-fed architectural experience of what is good and what is bad being taught to architects as well as future prospective clients in the school. They are taught to create wonderful architecture but no one encourages them to create wonderful personalized architectural experience no matter even if its eccentric on conventional benchmark, experience of space which you can’t really create with the popular architectural tools, styles, mass education, thumb-rules available and being used widespread today. For example if you have already decided that a particular room, should have a particular lux level of lighting, particular illumination level,  uniformly distributed across the room with slight variation here and there as prescribed in the architectural bible or bylaws or general practice or as limited by the market availability and client’s choice of fixture, you can’t create an architectural experience which is thrilling, mysterious, inquisitive and even hauntingly sticky at times even for a moment, which are human psychological needs and part of their personality to experience such environment, at least just for sake of fun. No wonder at times you cherish that moment of darkness in the rainy damp evening or moonlit night when suddenly there is power cut for a brief period, because you have just experienced the dimly lit darker side of architecture which was never intended for you to experience in its original form, but only you know that how much it means to you to experience that very silence of spatial darkness, that mysterious view of dusk from the dark corner of your room, that stillness of ambiance and lack of bright LED light, that passionate experience in the beautiful and diluting sphere of space and light created by that single candle lit on the dining table, that momentarily grey sheds of otherwise bright and warm colors of interior walls. We are talking about darker side of architectural experience which induces a momentarily feeling of introspection to the occupant through its very silence, stillness darkness and grunginess, many writers, directors, photographers, architects, and artists will be able to relate to such experience. Grunge architectural experience which in thought provoking and inspires you at times and which is innate human psychological need somewhere buried in the subconscious under the monumental load of popular architectural experience!  

By: Anoop Jha

Real Estate price at user’s end: Transparency is the way to win-win situation!

When demand is so high there is no point keeping hidden costs and policies. 

Planning to buy a home? For some, it's joy of their life, for some it’s a mission, for some their livelihood but for many, it’s a pain. Pain of market research, confusion of what to choose, whom to trust, struggle of monetary arrangement, fear of being cheated, horror of future encounter with inevitable unpleasant surprises associated with real estate deals in constantly changing landscape of real estate market, volatile banking and public policies, unstable political and people’s affair and so on.  

There are so many places where your real estate judgment might go wrong no matter how smart, how educated and how networked you are. Forget about the traits and circumstances which are beyond your control. So volatile this whole affair is that at times it feels like it's a game of luck to finally secure a place without any conflict of guesswork and reality, which you can call your home sweet home.  

Long completion cycle of real estate development especially in case of housing and apartments, makes it more vulnerable and susceptible to volatile market and changing policy environment, susceptible to changes in policies and contracts leading to additional fiscal burden, majority on customer’s side and some on developers as well and to monetary losses occurred mostly to buyers who failed to understand the fine intricacies of initial contracts and hidden policies.

In midst of all this confusion you either hire or get channelized through someone or a firm apparently specialized in real estate dealings to make your life easy, only to realize that they have their own hidden policies and excuses to add to your frustrations.

Acknowledging and understanding the inevitability of market dynamism and inevitable growth in housing demand with little bit of fluctuation here and there time to time, a whole new approach is needed in the functioning of real estate affair.

You are a customer; you want to buy a house rather home, you know your financial condition, you know your aspirations and limitations. You see a home advertisement at fabulously low price in local newspaper or on internet with an assumed star (*) or applied conditions, you are already comfortable with that, you match your budget, you find out more just to realize that there are considerable hidden charges, you think for a while, going ahead seeing the same prevalent story everywhere, you go to bank for monetary help, they have their own complex structure of policy documentation difficult to fathom right away, leave it aside for a while because you urgently need loan for your sweet home, you do the deal formality with developer  while realizing that there are secondary and even tertiary level of hidden charges. Finally your deal is completed, but someone just comes to you and tells you that there are additional visitor parking charges subjected to availability, really high annual club charges you can’t escape, Monthly fixed or accelerating maintenance charges for several amenities you won’t be using ever, not to speak of the security and other welfare charges which issues would occurs later in future if you want to live there. And unfortunately you can’t hold developer liable for many of these things because they will say these monetary activities are beyond their scope of contract and deal. Oh, and don’t forget recently revised property related tax policies which is going to go increasingly taxing on your already demanding fiscal health.

Now, you are a developer, you are in this business for long, you know the intricacies very well, you adjust your position as market and policies change, you see that your business in not going to go down ever in future due to insanely high housing and real estate demand apart from occasional dip, you are in a position to dictate the terms so you don’t have to worry. Of course changes in real estate laws and public policy as well as volatility of politics and people’s affair are going to affect your business, but you are sure you will be able to recover what you want from those existing or prospective customers.

For every single customer who can’t afford the price you are offering for a piece of real estate work you are creating, there would be dozens of willing customers to buy the same piece of project. Acknowledging the strong and more or less stable future real estate growth, as well as abundance of customers, it’s your responsibility as a developer to be as transparent in your offers, deals and policies as possible. It will benefit both customers as well as developer. Customer will know early what is within their reach based on their financial position and assessment of realistic real estate offers and their search for house would be less painful and more fruitful, speedy and less frustrating. Developers should declare every possible instance where an additional cost burden can occur to a customer along with its tentative quantum, should declare every possible project constraint and policy in big bold font, emphasizing every liable policy changes and unexpected future charges based on their industry and regional experience. What worst can happen by this approach? You might lose a customer or two, but with such a huge customer base, who cares! It will sure have advantage both ways. Developers will get real customers rather than ghost customers, their transaction turnaround time would reduce considerably, their dealing process would be smoother, more transparent and honest and they can reinvest that saved time and money back into customer service, building repeat customers and word-of-mouth publicity as well as providing better customer service. Not to speak of huge value addition to company’s brand image. Customers will have in tern fair choice of selection, without any hidden fiscal or psychological burden, after all one can only buy a house with a price tag which he or she can afford.   

Public agencies would always be there to help, assist and control the exceedingly high real estate prices to keep the ball rolling and to keep it within reach of a city dweller, common or exclusive. Considering the positive effect it’s an option worth exploration.

By: Anoop Jha

When “Traffic Merging Ahead” on every alternate road, clashes are bound to happen

Bad transport infrastructure and poor road designs leading to conflicts on road.

No one wants to get into argument or fight on the fine morning office hour or while on the way back home, really!! Everyone has some plan for the day ahead, and they really can’t afford to waste time here on road arguing for nothing. But what to do with these urban roads that make these people susceptible to conflict and road rage due to design which lack consistency and continuity. It’s ironical that in the same alignment of road where mile long vehicle queue is witnessed also has a part of stretch like super smooth expressway, either right in the middle of metropolis or connecting neighboring cities, districts and states leading to gridlock. It’s like speedy route to gridlock. So 70-90 % of the whole journey stretch you can cover in 20-30% of journey time, spending rest of the journey in gridlocked section travelling in snail’s speed. Journey on that reaming 10-30% stretch becomes more frustrating because you have just witnessed a test of speed on the expressway like road stretch back on the journey.

Things become worse when variety of vehicles start competing for the lanes with suddenly reduced carriageway near bottlenecks at every few hundred meter due to variety of reasons like poor road design, bad road geometry, old narrow bridge, recent construction and maintenance works, frequent vehicle breakdown, faulty or unrealistic traffic signals (it’s unbelievable that there are also around less than 10 seconds of green signal assigned for some stretches at some busy road junctions) etc. at least similar is the case in many developing countries.

This induced conflict is result of lack of cohesiveness and isolated accountability among different agencies and consultations hired at different point of time, for revamping urban transit stretches and systems. In Urban scenarios, Road stretches cannot planned and designed in isolation, hence no question of isolated accountability, like trunk routes cannot be designed in isolation without  considering feeder traffic flow. What is happening here in bottleneck situations is that vehicles are allowed to reach the bottleneck at high speed which encourages quickly accumulated high volume traffic at bottleneck, and then the real struggle begins, people ruthlessly competing for limited lanes!! It’s a painful experience of struggle for daily commuters, not because of slow speed but due to immense psychological pressure and tiresome drive to negotiate that rude, ruthless competing traffic while trying to protect their asset and peace of mind. No wonder it also leads to frequent road rage incidents. Even if bottleneck situation is unavoidable there has to be smooth transition from high speed stretch to the bottleneck point, which can only be done through proper road design, sensible signage and its highly visible locations, commuter education, manual or automatic traffic assistance and guidance, strengthening alternate route, staggered office timing, land use restructuring, etc.

Changing landscape of rural architecture

While scrolling, zooming in to google earth or something you find satellite image of villages across the world very fascinating very different from the urban settlement, it’s almost enchanting to look at their wonderful spatial patterns, their distributed uniformity, their hierarchical cohesiveness in terms of architecture, spatial arrangement and surprisingly it all evolved without any development blueprint, without an preconceived vision, without any kind of architectural bylaws at least in the case of India, but with long sustainable past, at least it was the case decades back and beyond.

Now today when you look at the same villages of India you will find usually two sets of clusters in most of the cases, one organically evolved village settlement with impression of time, with wonderful lively streets, with hierarchy of spaces, driven by family needs, scalable with demand, a symbol of community effort and cohesion, built by local materials, crafted by passionate local hands, using indigenous skills, planned by intuition, nourished by centuries of experience, in the guidance of wise old people, architecture by personal choice and collective regional aesthetics.

Though many of them are financially weak, but they usually have a place they can call home unlike urban poor.

The other distinct set of cluster you will see in the adjacent part of village, which is either a result of recently accumulated wealth by the young generation of villagers who live in metropolitan cities of India for better livelihood opportunities and who bring wealth to their village along with new architectural exposure and experiences, new construction techniques and remote aesthetics of cities when back home. It is architecture in transition from traditional to contemporary from thatch-&-mud to brick-&-mortar and may be its need of time as well, but little confusing at the same time. This new strikingly different grid iron pattern of recently developed cluster of village can also be a result of some development efforts by government, not so surprisingly way different an architecture and planning from the traditional settlement and sentiments. An imagination of planners and architects sitting thousand miles away with their own perception and impression of what an ideal village should be, while being most cost effective replicable, scalable and with speedy construction possibilities, neat and clean imported village with all the amenities. Hundreds of thousands of house arrays being constructed throughout the countries, apparently job done! Similar is the case of several villages and outskirts of cities across the world. 

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It’s good idea to provide shelter to poor rural inhabitants, but their traditional architecture and planning needs and sentiments cannot and should not be ignored. It doesn’t cost much to incorporate century old traditional planning and aesthetic of the rural settlement of different regions in the contemporary rural architecture and planning solutions which need to be tailored for specific regions, it’s just demands a little more  communication and careful investigation as well as understanding of spoken and unspoken lifestyle and perceptual needs of rural communities. 

A wonderful destination: Gulf of Aqaba

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The Gulf of Aqaba is a large gulf located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian mainland. Its coastline is divided between four countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

The Gulf of Aqaba is one of the most popular diving destinations in the world.

(Wikipedia)

 

Planner’s Dilemma – A case of developing nation.

Choked Public Drain, Whose fault? 

Repeatedly choked public drains, is it due to under capacity drainage Infrastructure, an unplanned network, inadequately planned disposal system, underestimated growth, unexpected demand, immigration externalities, over exploitation of resources, lack of vision, out dated technology, inefficient management, uneducated population, citizens with low or no sense of public responsibility, lack of willingness, lack of database for timely assessment, no early warning system, underreported occurrence, over hyped issues,  diverted attention, prevalence of corruption, discrete tax structure for usage of public infrastructure, lack of maintenance, insufficient funds, absence of relevant law, loophole in policies, or may be implementation failure?

Drainage/ sewage disposal issue is just an example to illustrate; there are innumerable examples and issues like this in an urban setting whether its inadequate water supply, transport chaos, interrupted and poor power supply etc, and innumerable reason for the each of these issues.  It’s a very common phenomenon in towns and metropolitan cities of developing nations, but what’s the solution.

After some time of tolerance people start losing their patience due to public infrastructure system failure like this, then some hue and cry, some demonstration, followed by media coverage, then suddenly public agencies wake up, some blame game, then some investigation committee, followed by months long survey, then few months of compilation, then some kind of outcome and recommendations, by that time people already start losing their interest in the subject, by that time there are  other hyped issues to deal with, and this show goes on. Somewhere in this cycle of events planner or some planning consultancy firm gets introduced to assess the situation and resolve the issue. Do you wonder how much or how little a planner can help to resolve the situation at least bringing down the scale of chaos.

Do you see how many vulnerable points can be there in the value chain of any system as we saw in the blocked drain example? More the number of elements more the chances of failure of system.  A system with a long operational or value chain can only work efficiently, if all the possible elements of interest work efficiently individually and cohesively together as well. When an urban planner or similar is approached by public/ private agency to resolve such development or redevelopment issues, they expect an out of box magical solution. Planners can of course suggest a wonderful infrastructure solution at some reasonable cost; they can propose some implementation and regulatory strategies as well, but one has to understand that a “multifaceted urban issue” needs an “inclusive solution”. Planners need to be empowered to have a say on any or rather every element which might affect the proper functioning of any urban or regional system, even if it’s an aspect which is tangential to the core system but which can impact the system in future. Planners have to address or at least talk about each and every tangential aspect of any core issue while suggesting a solution blueprint for development redevelopment projects. For example, one might argue how a drainage problem can be related to education of citizen, they can always say while problem like this demands infrastructure solution why to talk about education? Let’s consider this.  No matter how well you plan the infrastructure, if there are uneducated users, infrastructure is not going to work as the way it was perceived and planned. Even simply being educated is not enough, there has to be education with a sense of responsibility, a sense of citizenship.

What a planner can do in this situation for example. A planner has to talk about the relevance of educated citizens in proper functioning of the public infrastructure in its strategy report; he can go to the extent proposing restructuring of school curriculum, so that users become responsible enough toward public infrastructure while they are still in school. suppose If people are educated and responsible as well but still not using public infrastructure as intended there might be flaw in signage design or placement, planners need to talk about that in its development report, they might need to talk about the role of education through technological infusion to masses through different communication channels before they are about to introduce a new technology in public domain along with ways of infusion. Similarly they need to propose some short to long term strategic inputs for all the ancillary aspects revolving around the core public system or infrastructure issue no matter how distinct they appear.

Why such vast gap exists in statistical interpretation of a single fact?

Statistics considers raw data while people tend to value associated sentiments.

If you are going for a primary survey with a standard template of closed ended questionnaires or some kind of table to be filled with numbers you might not be doing real justice to the survey. You might have a reasonable amount of data at end of the day to conclude your assignment or research, but you won’t be able to do the realistic assessment of the situation. You might fulfill the acceptable standards of data gathering; you might even publish the result and can even bag an award or two, but if the very people who got surveyed are not being able to relate to the statistical conclusion, or if they do not validate it, all the efforts of data collection and analysis goes to vain.

You will be surprised to realize that still at many instances the situation shown of paper and the actual situation experienced by the population is drastically different, though data for situation analysis was gathered from the same population or community. Then why this vast gap of interpreted and locally experienced situation exists? Why this constant apparent difference of opinion between government’s point of view and what media and NGO’s showcase about the city, region or community etc. There are few possible reasons, first is that statistics is very flexible domain, though outcome seems very impactful there is enough scope to mould or influence the direction of outcome, still staying within legally of intellectually acceptable limit. The kind of data you select to gather, variety of assumptions you take into consideration, mode and tool of statistical analysis you choose to go with, time span considered for analysis, selection and heterogeneity of sample itself, there are so many such variables that one can interpret and influence the outcome in any possible direction depending on the purpose or intention. Larger the data set, greater the flexibility of interpretation.

Government being a powerful entity with ample manpower and resources has generally upper hand when it comes to data collection and interpretation and usually less probability of misrepresentation, but again it depends on what they want to prove or convey. Media and NGO who generally lack enough data due to manpower constraint to prove a fact applicable to a larger domain generally tend to rely on emotional values attached to the subject or region and sentiments of population or communities to prove their point. They generally choose small set of data though having high perceived or emotional value and exploit the associated sentiments. On one hand there is ample scope of playing with data and on the other hand equally or more or less scope to play with people’s emotions and sentiments but ultimately both leads to distortion of fact. And this show of constant blame and justification goes on and on. Actual fact seems to lose the significance while this argument is on, later no one really bothers to reach to the actual fact.

Unless statistics as a knowledge stream would device a method and make it a mandate to consider or quantify and incorporate the emotional and sentimental values attached to the subject of research and aspirations of communities to the extent possible along with some kind of post analytic appraisal and indigenous validation method, data representation would remain deceptive and at the mercy of decision making individuals or groups. Meanwhile we as a layman can mitigate this doubt of data misrepresentation by keeping a questioning, skeptical or neutral attitude towards impactful data being presented day to day from both government end as well as media and social welfare representative’s end, without being panicked, without arriving at immediate conclusion, cross verifying the fact from different sources, applying our own head and intuition, knowing and reminding them that their job is to inform us not to instigate or incite us. You are capable enough to judge yourself; all you need is a fair amount of fair data and statistics or simply a fair representation.

By : Anoop Jha

Urban underground art : perception and mainstream absorption!

A case of graffiti culture in a city environment.  

Some say its vandalism, some find it an art, some say its irrational some say it’s cool, some see it outdated, at places it’s in vogue, reasons can be many, from fun to revolution but result is one - Graffiti. In this varying landscape of purpose and perception, there is always an apparent struggle to conclude what is right and what is wrong in an urban environment. What with graffiti? Why this perpetual struggle between city administrations and those who create such art-pieces, some anonymous, some leaving their stamp.

Graffiti is an art form standing at the edge of law. Some do it for thrill; some to put across their message, for some it’s an outlet, some do it for recognition and some to revolt against established values and norms. Even after decades of existence there has not been any consensus on the subject. City administrations are either strictly against it or will shy away from the subject saying that they have larger issues of city infrastructure, education, poverty and all at hand to deal with. Go ask a planner, what with Graffiti, what to do with it, you will find them clueless, though some of them might tell you few ways to curb this phenomenon.

Why graffiti culture exists in first place? Unless we try to understand the psychology of underground art, we can’t find a reasonable answer and solution to it. May be it’s the very imposition of rule to curb this behavior, triggers and sustain this behavior. Thrill of breaking the law, mixed with artistic skill, daring move and motivation by some cause, results in graffiti.

Isn’t it good to have wonderful artists in your city? But an artist needs to express and if you won’t give them enough opportunities and enough canvas they will express themselves in any manner, anywhere,  even if it’s a wall, and in this case public properties become soft target. Art itself has no boundaries, but we divide it in good and bad, civilized and vandalism. Piece of art by those few artists who have enough opportunity and money to display their work of art in an upscale gallery becomes a civilized and socially accepted art while the similar piece of art or poor or better if expressed on the walls of city streets and subways and any abandoned structures in form of graffiti gets a tag of vandalism. Can we do something about it?

There are few cities which provide long public walls at sea shores and other specified places specially for making graffiti, for those underground graffiti artists, who do not have to remain underground any more. They are making wonderful graffiti, day and night on these public canvases provided by city administrations, they don’t have to paint the subways and public structures anymore. Temporary, though they have a place for their creative outlet. We can always have some control strategies in place to check the nature and subject of graffiti to respect the feelings and sentiments of citizens.   

They say Taki or someone invented it, I think it exists before the dawn of civilization, remember those wonderful paintings from prehistoric caves? Its basic instinct of human being to express, expression in tangible forms, expressing it for good, to document, to leave it for generations to come, tools doesn’t matter, modes of expression is irrelevant and changing constantly. From prehistoric caves to modern urban wall they have expressed it and they will find out ways and means to express in future. So, it might be a good idea to start thinking of some city level policy intervention measures to provide an appropriate and recognized platform for easy and legalized creative expression, rather than negating its existence and simply trying to get rid of it.   

Planners and city administrations need to come forward and suggest strategies to integrate underground art in their city development plans and urban landscape. Making this form of art publicly acceptable and giving it mainstream recognition by taking illegality, obscenity any kind of provocation out of it. They need to propose strategies to recognize urban talent which has remained underground till now, and propose plans to nourish them by channelizing their talent in right direction and at right place. Simply creating and imposing the anti-graffiti law and trying to maintain the same is not the answer to this ever growing phenomenon, we need to channelize that creative energy in the right direction and at right places by creating favorable environment and instruments in city landscape.

                                                         

By: Anoop Jha

So that you never run out of development ideas again!

Wonderful list of vision script for urban development,

Have created a list of possible vision statements in snippet form for your quick reference, just to keep your creative thinking wheel running. 

Reshaping city, Re-harmonizing urban clusters, Recasting city silhouette, Re-energizing spirit of city, Re-establishing magnificence of old city, Revisiting the glorious past, Re-engaging population, Re-engineering city infrastructure,  Reconnect to past, Rethinking city, Repositioning city, Recreating       history, Reinventing urban mobility, Reorganizing urban growth, Rebuilding city aspirations, Reintroducing urban techniques, Redeveloping business hubs of city, Rerouting transit veins of city, Re-knitting city fabric,  Reuniting city fragments for better functioning, Urban rezoning for optimization, Reintegrating smart urban technology, Redesigning mobility grid, Re-envisioning historic city, Re-proposing mobility, Reimagining urban future, Redefining boundaries of urban innovation, Repurpose  city finance, Reorienting city growth direction,  Rebuilding city governance structure, Re-linking destinations, Rearranging development priorities, Realigning development objectives, Reprioritizing urban development avenues, Restructuring functional hierarchy of city, Re-exciting life in urban public spaces

Anything you find out in Google in 20 seconds shouldn’t be asked in interview!!

Rethinking entrance process for higher education 

University entrance interview, a day in a life of aspiring students, which is going to play an instrumental role in deciding their future course of life, on this occasion one has to be very careful to ask the right questions, and to assess the candidates holistically. Even in that short period of interview candidates should be judged not only on technical grounds but on many more qualitative parameters as well, like their tenacity to learn, adaptability to new environment, receptiveness to new thoughts, respect to righteousness, having courage to put forth their ideas in which they believe, an ever questioning and inquisitive mind etc. different institutes use different mix of these and many other parameters to identify the right minds for their institutes and universities. Good news is that today institution’s focus is already started shifting from simply technical and quantitative aspects to perceptual, analytical and other qualitative aspects of candidate’s persona in the academic interview process.

Still many prominent educational institutes have apparently not been able to embrace the pleasant change which new information age is providing today. They still seem to be caught in the same old technical assessment issues when it comes to academic entrance process. Still asking basic technical and quantitative questions like it’s a quiz show running instead of an interview. For instance; questions like “Who conceptualised Garden City?” or “what are the sources of municipal finance?” or “What are the main elements/ components of so and so?” or “what do you know about such and such thing?” are wrong questions to ask today. Who designed what in which city in which year in which architectural style, how does it matter here, who cares? Asking such questions to a kid already or soon to be laced with smart-phone is irrelevant these days. Right question to ask are “How relevant you think is the garden city concept today?” (Explain the concept first, even if you have to), “What do you think can be possible innovative sources of income for a municipal body?” (no matter how bizarre is the answer, let’s face it) what are the takeaways from that architectural style (show them the images even if you have to, even if they don’t know a bit about that building or that architect), ask them about their perception, what do they think what’s so great or ugly about that design without being judgmental or biased, how relevant is that design today and so on.

When they have all the quantitative information at their fingertips through internet, social and professional networking and all, they can’t afford to memorize encyclopedia of architecture or planning to get admission in architecture or planning institute, there is no need to do that. These new breed of candidates should be rather judged on their aptitude to analytically infer and logically translate the available information for a better world. They should be judged on their apparent intensity and inclination to learn rather than memorizing capability. After all they will be here in institute for few months or years, so they can always be taught those technical aspects they don’t know yet, but these technical and factual questions are no ground to judge their capabilities, no ground to accept or to reject them at this point of time.  

By Anoop Jha    

    

Glimpse of cultivation worldwide

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