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India Urban Lab: Ranchi Workshop

connect@integrateddesign.org (Integrated Design) — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 10:47:05 GMT

Theme: Water Resilience: Fostering integrated approaches at the region, city, and settlement scales

The India Urban Lab (IUL) is an endeavour by INDÈ to collaborate with communities, institutions, organizations, individuals, and governments to debate, discuss and arrive at solutions addressing “wicked problems” experienced by rapidly urbanizing geographies in India. The lab aims to initiate positive change across geographies through collaboration.

The previous labs were conducted in Bengaluru (2015) and in Goa (2018). The next lab in the series will be conducted in Ranchi in July 2022. With a thematic focus on water resilience, the upcoming Lab at Ranchi Lab will comprise of expert lectures, group discussions, site visits, and hands-on workshops to encourage innovative and multi-disciplinary perspectives to emerge. Know more about the India Urban Lab here .

The Ranchi Urban Lab anchors itself in the conceptual philosophy of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) to promote water resilience at the regional, city-settlement, and settlement scales. The Lab aspires to become a platform for participants from diverse backgrounds to co-produce water resilient approaches and solutions that combine traditional knowledge and lived experiences at the grass root level with policy and technical knowledge.

The Ranchi Urban Lab is organised by INDE in collaboration with Mahila Housing Trust (MHT). Click here to apply.

Situating Urban (City) Resilience within the City-Region

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 10:17:22 GMT

Being a member of the Adaptation Research Alliance, ARA (a global, collaborative effort to increase investment and opportunities for action research to develop/inform effective adaptation solutions) and an ARA Micro grantee, Integrated Design (INDÈ) was invited to organise a networking session at the Global Gobeshona Conference-2 (conference theme: exploring locally led adaptation and resilience for COP27). The networking session was titled ‘Situating Urban (City) Resilience within the City-Region’ and was held on 1 April 2022.

Session Overview

Mapping natural geography across landscapes, this networking session questioned the binary structuration of rural and urban that is popular in plan and policy development. While this structuration is widely and distinctively used as enquiry points and analytical frames to varyingly provision the people and places within these binaries, in effect, urban and rural are intrinsically linked. Even as the impacts of globalization, structural transformations of the economy and the recent climate change and attendant vulnerabilities manifest across these binaries, more than ever before the conventional divide between the agrarian rural and the industrial and services urban is blurring. Thus, in addressing questions around urbanisation and climate induced vulnerability and resilience, the rural-urban binary becomes a limiting factor.

This session through expert presentations and free flowing discussions aimed to position the city-region (irrespective of the urban and the rural) and attendant restoration as the canvas for systemic adaptation at all scales. Premised on the established urban-rural linkages, the discussions also explored how decentralised modes of thinking and acting can fuel action (and by extension policy feedback) in enhancing the resilience across at the multiple scales- city region scale (which cuts across the binary structuration), or at the sub-city scale. In doing so, the session explored ways and methods of acknowledging and foregrounding traditional knowledge and the every-day lived experiences as critical entry points to achieving locally led adaption towards resilience. The session panellists were Aninhalli R. Vasavi (Punarchith), Anna Taylor (Research fellow with the African Climate and Development Initiative), H.S Sudhira (Director, Gubbi Labs), Mariana Vidal Merino (Coordination Hub, Plan Adapt) and, Anjali Karol Mohan (Partner, Integrated Design).

Discussion

Setting the city-region as a potential canvas for adaptation, one of the key issues that the discussion brought out was the social, economic, and natural distress in rural areas induced by unprecedented urbanisation; cyclically and adversely affecting both the urban and the rural. There is often an ‘adverse integration’ of the rural world- inclusive of its production, labour and resources- into the larger political economy leading to expropriation of rural labour value, resources, and embedded knowledge systems. This adverse integration renders rural hinterland as highly vulnerable sites to climate change impacts.

The rural distress brought in by urbanisation was also further discussed in the session through examples of water resource management in the South African context. An exploration of the various natural and anthropogenic flows into, within and from cities (through a water metabolism approach), revealed various ‘dials’ that can be turned into positive or negative directions to manage the resource. Sustainable and inclusive resource management at the city region would necessitate an understanding of the actors who can influence these dials, and how these influences can be reconfigured to shift resource management from an approach based on competition to one based on solidarity and care. There is an urgent need to shift resource management from a ‘command and control’ to a more ‘bottom up’ approach where urban and rural communities work together to rehabilitate and conserve critical resources that they share and rely on. The session called for a need to change the relationship between urban and rural societies from that of ‘adverse integration’ to one of solidarity and care. While researches from across the globe pointed to existing frameworks for rural forums for protecting and managing resources (like ground water), a good conception or practise of what such forums could look like in urban areas is absent. To this end, the session pointed towards the potential role of local political representatives in mobilising users in urban areas which have highly diverse and contested demands for resources like water.

In the context of sub-national governance systems, the session illustrated cases of ‘entrepreneurial bureaucracy’ where public services like water supply, power, and transport are corporatized by the state and become highly techno managerial (New Public Management approach). This leads to lack of accountability, increased monopoly, reduced role of elected representatives, and lack of public participation. In such a governance context, the positioning of an effective agenda to address climate change impacts at different scales becomes highly ambiguous. The discussion called for a need to promote decentralised, democratised, and convivial forms of natural resource conservation rooted in and drawing from local knowledge systems and skills.

Through the example of Tamale in Africa, and Ranchi in India, the session explored ways and methods of acknowledging and foregrounding local initiatives (like urban agriculture), traditional knowledge and the every-day lived experiences as critical entry points to achieving locally led adaption towards resilience. While initiatives like urban agriculture has the potential to address increased emissions and food insecurity, these areas are under constant threat due to unsupportive governance systems (with limited capacity and corruption) and lack of formal mechanisms to practise the same.

Illustrated through the case of Ranchi, the session also foregrounded the importance of traditional knowledge systems in managing resources and the insights that it can offer in the present day context of increasing climate change risks. There is an urgent need to construct, communicate and institutionalise bottom-up planning scripts (as supplements to the top-down planning processes) that foreground the restoration and reparation of natural landscapes (and by extension socio-cultural) disruptions/ fragmentations to bridge inequalities in the urban. Traditional and local knowledge systems and lived experiences – historic and contemporary – could become potential pathways to inclusive planning.

The current discourse on climate change is increasingly recognising the value of locally led initiatives and traditional knowledge systems in adaptation and mitigation. This increased interest is already translating into climate finance in promoting adaptation and mitigation initiatives at the local scale. At the same time, climate action plans at the national and sub national levels are continuing to gain traction. Positioning these interests in a hierarchy reveals the limited significance rendered to the municipal or local government scale – a scale that has the potential to integrate and speak to the local and national/sub-national initiatives. This scale has the potential to acknowledge, collate, and integrate local knowledge systems within its policy and planning exercises through participatory and ground-up pathways.

At the same time, it can feed into and draw from climate action plans at the sub-national and national scales. The robustness of governance mechanisms at the municipal scale can ensure that the adaptation and mitigation efforts (local and national) do not fall into disconnected silos and impede effective impact.

Bangalore Needs Elite + Mass Activism to be Effective

Mon, 04 May 2020 11:12:19 GMT

In a reaction to the article published in SN titled ‘Has Fatigue Set into Civic Activism in Bengaluru’, Dr. Anjali Karol Mohan, a city planner, takes a closer look into why civic activism has had limited success and offers practical suggestions to enhance its impact

The online magazine SustainabilityNext carried an article by Benedict Paramanand titled “Has Fatigue Set into Civic Activism in Bengaluru?” The article caught my eye amidst the Covid 19 humdrum as I was looking for alternative news.

I have been actively engaged in the debates around the (ill)growth and mis(management) of Bangalore for over two and half decades in my capacity as a professional planner straddling civic society, public policy circles and academia.

The article revived in my mind some thoughts and suggestions that I articulate here. The attempt is not so much to answer the question, as it is to understand the shortcomings and limitations of civic activism in steering the complex politico-socio-economic and cultural layers that make up a vast conglomeration like Bengaluru.

A disclaimer here merits mention. The premise that no individual stakeholder, public or private, has the knowledge and resources to tackle the wicked problems underpins successful governance arrangements. What this premise implies, by extension is that all stakeholders – public or private – have limitations. Civic Society (CS) is one amongst the numerous stakeholders that have a role – by no means a lesser one- to play. Yet, there are limitations to this role. While these limitations are embedded in the very nature of operation of the CS, there are conscious ways and means of overriding some limitations to move towards a larger impact. Bridging limitations is a critical need. Much of what I articulate while contextual to Bengaluru, perhaps holds true for civic activism across domains and geographies.

To begin with, a critical question requiring reflection is the difference between civic activism and the much advocated (in (good) governance debates) Civic Society Organisation (CSO) engagement. These generally get clubbed in one category – while in theory and practice, that is not the case and therein lies the first limitation. Activism defined as direct vigorous action especially in support of or, in opposition to, one side of a controversial issue is willy-nilly an act of reaction. Reaction often leaves little space for taking distance and exploring the systemic cause of the challenge – the challenge itself sets the agenda.

In contrast a proactive engagement of the civic society, through progressive partnerships while also triggered by a challenge is different in that the challenge is anticipated and therefore the agenda is set by civic society themselves. In Bengaluru, protests against the state-imposed flyover (# steelflyoverbeda ) and elevated corridors (# TenderRadduMadi ) is an example of the former.

In contrast, the long-standing work on the ward committees which has seen some traction in the recent past – albeit slow and tardy – is an example of the latter. Having started as a proactive CSO engagement, the movement for neighbourhood planning and governance through ward committees (# NammaSamitiNamagaagi ) in the recent past has bordered on being reactionary, thereby hinging on activism. Although an ‘always proactive approach’ is not possible, given the capacity of our government to spring surprises, it is critical that the CS begins to move towards a proactive stance. There will always be a non-uniform interplay between being reactive and proactive.

A second limitation, linked to the first, is the lack of capacity of the CS to act on relevant and practical evidence. This will require the CS to open their doors and develop progressive partnerships, including partnerships with policy makers, professionals (note that I do not use the word experts) and academia. An all-time reactionary mode of operation allows neither for collaborations nor evidence. Evidenced advocacy and conversations require domain knowledge (experienced domain knowledge is even better) which can facilitate knowledge production and mobilization.

Activism hinges on passion (amongst other drivers) which is not the same as domain knowledge and knowledge mobilization. Both passion and domain knowledge have a role, yet the two can neither replace each other nor should be confused. Rather, passion that pivots on evidence and knowledge is a double-edged sword, one that has the capability to steer reactionary behavior to an informed proactive engagement. Such a move will serve to, over a period of time, course correct policies that are currently influenced by dominant political structures, electoral volatility and elite capture, as against being evidence based.

A third limitation that needs consideration is the nature, purpose, goal and objective of the civic society coalition/group. Most often mobilisation is around a seemingly common purpose, goal and objective. For instance, groups that coalesced against large infrastructure projects as mentioned above or the demand for footpaths and public transit (# BusBhagyaBeku ) and sub-urban rail (# chukuBukuBeku ) are not homogeneous. It is often a mixed bag as against an imagined and perhaps desired integrated unit. Underpinning this pursuit of collective goals and objectives are individual desires, identities (which in themselves are multiple), beliefs, perspectives and previous experience, all of which are critical drivers, often leading to fragmented voices. This fragmentation notably, also derives from the inability to use evidence or domain knowledge.

Elitist Activism

Furthermore, activism in itself is and can be elitist. When linked to high levels of access it can be potentially hampered by what is referred to as ‘elite capture’. There are two types of activism: elite activism stemming from mobilization of charismatic individuals capable of getting their voice heard. Mass activism, in contrast, is where the general public, the haves and the have-nots, mobilize collectively. The two are not mutually exclusive, although both are critical. Barring a few occasions, Bengaluru’s activism has been elitist with a few voices that can access public policy corridors and therefore get heard. Consequently, consciously or unconsciously there is a leveraging of public policy for personal or limited gains (to a neighbourhood or a community). Activism is a luxury that not everyone can afford. Those who can afford it have a dual responsibility of using it to build bridges by roping in knowledge and experience on one hand and ensuring inclusion by creating spaces and opportunities for mass activism, on the other. The current modus operandi lacks on both counts.

These shortcomings have led to what is being referred to as limited success, although limited from whose lens and success for whom is an additional enquiry, one that merits a separate post. What I do concur with is that at best the city has seen some cosmetic changes. Let me take the same two examples the article uses to demonstrate a going forward beyond cosmetic progress. First are the lakes in Bangalore that have seen a fair bit of activism. In many neighborhoods, thanks to the many charismatic residents, lakes have been claimed as better maintained natural resources. But for the initiatives of a few citizens, many lakes would have morphed into real estate projects. Yet, the same groups have done little to engage the larger neighborhoods to ensure that these natural resource ‘spaces’ become public ‘places’ for the neighborhood and the city. This would require a proactive engagement in identifying the larger neighborhood and the numerous linkages – backward and forward – that this neighborhood has had and can nurture with the lakes as public places.

The second is the Tender Sure roads pioneered by Bengaluru. The implementation of Tender Sure roads is progressing incrementally moving from a pilot in the city core to radiating outwards in various directions. Putting aside the debates on the efficacy of the design as well as the appropriateness and relevance of the idea, the incremental implementation is marked by controversies on the criteria to shortlist roads such that both the visibility of and utility to the neighborhood and the city can be maximized. This too has not happened.

Both these examples offer a critical insight: that the activism (and the few instances of engagement) has not translated into a thinking city. Changes are still hovering around the thinking individual. The transition to a thinking city is an emerging imperative, one that demands systemic change along various dimensions, some of which I have discussed above.

To sum-up, sustained and big bang change as against cosmetic and incremental change is the need of the hour. It requires at the outset, one, more proactive engagement and less reactive activism; two, passion combined with experienced domain knowledge to trigger evidenced advocacy and change; and, three a less fragmented approach through creating meaningful spaces for mass activism along with the existing elite activism that the city has. While there may be numerous ways to act on these three, the Ward Committee space offer a ready platform for proactive action, evidence-based advocacy and wider participation. Arguably, this space is rife with political contestations and may seem a daunting challenge, yet, an engagement within this space is a surer foot forward. Clearly, there is a passion amongst Bangalore’s elite to be part of something bigger and this is a moment to be seized.

A clash of plans for Bengaluru

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 18:30:00 GMT

The CMP uses the RMP 2031 as the starting point. Multiple policy guidelines recommend that the Master Plan should locate activities in a manner that encourages low-carbon mobility.

Bengaluru is subjected to yet another plan—one that aims to, yet again, make the metropolis liveable. Interestingly, yet again, the plan is opposed by various stakeholders, including citizens. The reference here is to the draft Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) by the Department of Urban Land Transport (DULT) and the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL). The fate of the Revised Master Plan (RMP) 2031 and the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Policy is no different. Both faced stiff opposition and continue to be in the draft stage, with little or no information on their status.

The CMP evoked a massive signature campaign initiated by citizen activist groups questioning, one, the legality of who is the rightful owner of the plan; and, two, opposing the elevated corridor project that is reintroduced with a budget allocation. Interestingly, the RMP 2031 and the TOD policy were also questioned on the legality of the institution preparing it – the BDA vs the Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) for the former and, the DULT/ BMRCL vs the Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) for the latter. Thus, contestations on who should be rightful owner and driver continue to gain momentum.

In reality, the three are not separate from each other. Master Plan, Mobility Plan and TOD are intrinsically connected parts of a larger whole and can deliver effectively only when they inform each other. In their current forms, this is the gravest lacuna, one that is rooted in misaligned institutions and their inherent lack of comprehending the larger urbanisation footprint, on the one hand, and the principle of subsidiarity, on the other.

Mobility planning As per the National Transport Policy, a CMP should be a long-term vision for desirable accessibility and mobility for people and goods while not compromising economic, social and environmental sustainability. Contrast this with the Bengaluru CMP’s vision: ‘Efficient and Sustainable Transportation for All.’ Mobility and transportation are not synonymous. While transportation is about moving vehicles and people, mobility connotes access. Mobility planning requires a ‘people focus’ to ensure quality of life for citizens through easy access to places of work, entertainment, schools, hospitals, etc. It calls for an integration of the existing and proposed land-use with transportation, i.e. an integration of the Master Plan and Mobility Plan.

The CMP uses the RMP 2031 as the starting point. Multiple policy guidelines recommend that the Master Plan should locate activities in a manner that encourages low-carbon mobility. The Mobility Plan, in turn, should facilitate access to activities. Thus, an intrinsic, iterative connection—via the TOD policy—between the CMP and the RMP 2031. What this implies is that the three should have been prepared in conjunction.
Not only does the CMP come a good two years later than the RMP 2031, strangely, the thought of mobility planning is being initiated at a time when several transportation plans are underway, the Metro being a significant one.

The CMP, while reviewing the RMP 2031 for land-use integration, suggests that the latter be revised to adopt the corridor [transport] driven strategy. Notably, the RMP 2031 discards the transport strategy for a differential strategy. The latter proposes varying interventions for the different zones that the city showcases. Furthermore, the suggested strategy of the CMP is premised on future developments and redevelopments to be guided by TOD to ensure work-home integration. It suggests TOD-led redevelopment and urban renewal strategy for the core area which, the RMP 2031 is not in favour of. A conundrum that gets exacerbated with every new planning instrument.

Jurisdiction conundrum

The CMP adds to the already messy and confused understanding of jurisdictions. The ‘study area’ that the CMP defines is completely arbitrary or, at best, emerges from a rudimentary understanding of cities and mobility. It is neither Bengaluru city, nor its local planning area. Worse still, it is not the city-region. This new jurisdictional layer will further fragment an already fragmented and siloed approach to the city. Transportation and transit have a regional character. Hence mobility plans, to ensure coverage of the catchment area of commuting trips to and from the city, should consider the city-region. Fortunately, Bengaluru metropolis is one of the few that has a well-defined region. This is ignored by the CMP in favour of a study area that comprises of bits and pieces of various jurisdictions.

Sorting out the conundrum over which institution should prepare the plan, for what jurisdiction and timelines requires an urgent notification of the MPC with an embedded UMTA, although at the regional level. This is critical to address the urbanisation footprint. That all three—RMP 2031, CMP and the TOD—are still drafts is, in effect, an opportunity for meaningful alignment. Animated discussions around ward committees as platforms for future planning will operationalise the subsidiarity principle.

Bengaluru, sans a city plan

Sun, 13 Oct 2019 10:09:55 GMT

As of 2019, the city of Bengaluru is supporting an estimated population of 1.3 crore. The city’s provisional (Draft) Revised Master Plan (RMP), 2031 projects a population of 20 million for 2031. So how does the city, its administration and its citizens prepare for these numbers?

The draft RMP sought to lay out a blueprint with this precise objective. Amid severe criticism from the public, the plan has been in abeyance.

Media reports on the cancellation of the first phase tender for the controversial elevated corridor and the introduction of dedicated bus lanes in 12 high-density corridors by November 1 signal the government’s intention to lend an ear to citizens’ demand and resolve pressing challenges in the city.

If seen through, both these are merit-worthy although their reactionary nature cannot be ruled out. Steering Bengaluru’s growth and development proactively continues to be the need of the hour. An appropriate and effective planning exercise, and by extension, the plan itself — RMP 2031 — can address this need.

The draft RMP 2031 is not devoid of civil society and judicial activism. The draft was opened for public comments and suggestions in November, 2017 for three months. The government received 13,000-odd comments, a dismal number for a city of 13 million that prides itself of heightened awareness.

In addition, there is a case in the Karnataka High Court questioning the legalities of drafting the RMP 2031 on the premise that as per the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, the Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC), and not the BDA, should prepare the plan. The suggestions were scrutinised through a government-appointed six-member committee and were shared to assist plan finalisation.

The RMP 2031 (to replace the RMP 2015) is delayed by four years. In its absence, the RMP 2015 continues to act as the blueprint for the city. The choice between a weak and faulty RMP 2031 and an outdated RMP 2015 is akin to a choice between the frying pan and the fire.

The need for a revised updated planning tool cannot be overstated. Suffice to say that the RMP 2031 in its current avatar does not serve the purpose. Yet, the work so far has led to, at the minimum, an updated i) collation and analysis of data sets that were otherwise siloed within state departments; ii) mapping of the city; iii) demographic analysis; iv) an integrated analysis of traffic and transport and land-use planning seeking to prioritise mobility; v) a first time heritage listing in the city, to mention a few. In sum, the base data and some fundamental analyses exist, although, very soon, it will be outdated.

Reportedly, public money to the tune of Rs 10 crore has been spent on the work done so far. The new government must ensure that the city has a viable plan, one that finds agreement with the numerous stakeholders in the city.

Given the baseline data and the need to end the impasse, the government should commit itself to short and longterm action. Suggestions for the short-term action include:

1)Formulating a relevant and appropriate vision for the city supported by a development strategy;

2) A proposed land-use map that flows from the vision and the supporting strategy;

3) Zonal regulations that support the vision and the proposed land use normatively, are practical and easy to implement; and,

4)Most critically, laying down plan implementation and monitoring frameworks as most plans fail on this dimension.

Initiate a notification

In parallel, as long-term action, the government must initiate a notification of the MPC at the metropolitan region level (8,000 odd sq km comprising of several municipalities and panchayats) as against the current notification at the metropolitan area level (1,200 odd sq km comprising of Bengaluru and several panchayats), integrate the Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA, discussed in the Draft Bengaluru Transit Oriented Development policy) and equip the BBMP to take on the planning functions for the city.

In doing so, it will respect the spirit of the 74th CAA, 1992 which mandates that the MPC provide a framework for the RMP 2031 (and not prepare the RMP 2031 as argued in the writ petition) and the BBMP prepare the RMP 2031 through its ward committees as a bottom-up process.

The preparation of the RMP 2031 was outsourced to a consortium of consultants. Clearly, the delivery has failed for various reasons. A possible corrective measure would require the government to set up a steering committee (comprising of trained planners /urbanists) and a team of consultants to draft a forward-looking plan.

Together, the committee and the consultant should institute a process involving dialogue and negotiations among stakeholders seeking an actionable consensus.

The time is ripe with the new government showing a keen interest, the transit-oriented development (TOD) policy awaiting finalisation and the ward committees getting into action. The Bangalore Metropolitan Region Structure Plan, 2031 provides the statutory guidance framework.

Why Bengaluru’s draft transit policy is unlikely to make the city more liveable

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 10:48:44 GMT

TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

This February, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) published the Draft Bengaluru Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Policy. On inviting public suggestions and objections on the draft policy, BMRCL got just 32 responses.

To put this number in perspective, Bengaluru’s total population is approximately 120 lakh, of which the working population is around 55 lakh (46 percent). Adding to this, the 5-19 age group which also needs to commute, would peg commuter numbers in the city at an estimated 77 lakhs (about 64 percent of the total population). But, only 28 lakh use public transportation.

Obviously, the commuter numbers are bound to increase. The city’s master plan, the Draft RMP 2031, has projected Bengaluru’s population at 135 lakh in 2021, and at 203 lakh in 2031. Correspondingly, the commuter numbers in the 16-60 age group are likely to increase to 95 lakh (70 percent of the population) and 149 lakh (73 percent) respectively.

Just 32 individuals/agencies giving feedback on a policy instrument that would impact these vast numbers is both dismal and depressing.The poor feedback is attributed to the draft policy not reaching many citizens.

BMRCL had uploaded the policy online on May 8th, with a 30-day window for citizens to submit their feedback. Clearly, both the time given as well as the method of sharing and publicising the draft policy were inadequate. Wider publicity and a longer time frame could have elicited a better response.

My intention here is not to get into the rubrics of an adequate public consultation process, though that is a critical challenge.

The objective of this article is to suggest ways to align the philosophy and the main provisions of the TOD policy with the city’s Master Plan – RMP 2031, so as to proactively steer Bengaluru’s development. That both are in the draft stage is an opportunity the Karnataka government must leverage on priority.

The TOD policy should also be aligned with the Revised Structure Plan 2031 for the Bangalore Metropolitan Region (BMR-RSP 2031), approved recently. The latter part of this article explains why.

What is TOD and why is it important?

TOD is a planning and land development tool that seeks to integrate transit with land use provisions, so as to reduce travel time. TOD envisages dense, mixed land use development along transit corridors. The development should provision employment centres, housing, commerce and supporting services within a walkable distance from the transit corridor and its stations (such as a Metro station, for example).

The main objective is to create walkable neighbourhoods, with easy access to good public transport, so that more commuters can use public transport to reach their destinations in less time.

TOD, it is argued, will create a compact and connected city; and hence generate social and economic benefits like improved health, clean environment, strengthening of local economies and arresting sprawl. In India, where affordable housing is a big challenge, TOD plans prioritise several affordable housing options – including rental and temporary shelter – within the transit zone. Thus, TOD is aimed at helping manage rapid urbanisation processes.

What is Bengaluru’s draft TOD policy about?

The draft TOD policy has set an ambitious agenda for itself. It aims to address challenges like rapid growth of private vehicles, inadequate road network, long commuting time, traffic congestion, road fatalities, and vehicular pollution.

Acknowledging that the state government “has ambitious plans of expanding Metro and suburban rail services in the city,” the policy argues that TOD “will help mass transit to achieve its full potential and aid in sustainable mobility.” To meet its objectives, the policy adopts the 6Ds – density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, distance to transit, and demand management.

Draft TOD policy isolated from several national and state policies

The draft TOD policy comes at an opportune moment given that the central government is now finalising the National Urbanisation Policy Framework. In addition, the centre’s National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP 2014), National TOD policy (2017), Metro Rail Policy (2017) and National Value Capture Policy Framework constitute important reference points for the draft TOD policy. At the state/city level, the TOD policy should talk to the parking and street vending policies.

The intent of all these policies are closely linked to that of the draft TOD policy. Hence the TOD policy has to refer to the larger principles of these policies, to reverse the trend of siloed policies, and thereby, siloed implementation. But the draft TOD policy is weak in straddling these policies, except for the NUTP 2014.

Draft policy limited to Bengaluru Urban, confused about jurisdictions

For TOD to be effective, the policy should align with the land use plans for the city and the region i.e., the RMP-2031 and the BMR-RSP 2031 respectively. The statutory premise for such an alignment is in the NUTP 2014 as well. NUTP emphasises a mobility plan that integrates both land use and transport planning, through TOD.

The draft TOD policy does acknowledge the provisions of RMP 2031. But it has a muddled understanding of the planning and administrative jurisdictions of Bengaluru. What it refers to as the Bangalore Metropolitan Region (BMR), is in effect, the Bangalore Metropolitan Area (BMA – 1250-odd sq kms).

The BMR is 8000 sq kms, and comprises three districts – Bangalore Rural, Bangalore Urban and the Ramanagara-Channapatna district. It comes under the planning jurisdiction of the Bangalore Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (BMRDA). In contrast, the BMA is spread across just 1250-odd kms, and comprises of the Bangalore Urban District alone.

Similarly, what the policy mistakenly refers to as the BMA is in effect, the 712 sq km municipal area administered by the BBMP and planned by the BDA. It is the core of the Bangalore Metropolitan Area, not its entirety.

In any case, the draft policy restricting itself to the BMA of 1250-odd sq kms is short-sighted. Transit has a regional character both in its use and the required infrastructure. Hence, limiting it to the city would be a fragmented approach.

More critically, the policy will then fail to service the outlying and transition areas, which require transit interventions on priority. These areas are also spatially, and from an economic lens, fertile grounds to implement TOD.

Bengaluru needs a ‘mobility plan’, not a mere ‘TOD chapter’ in the Master Plan

The draft policy notes that the RMP 2031 advocates TOD, but that it does not propose land-use strategies accordingly. The policy goes on to say that “TOD Policies shall be incorporated in the Master Plan”, suggesting a revision of the RMP’s Development Control Regulations in line with the philosophy of TOD. Further, the Master Plan should have a separate chapter on TOD, describing the overall objective, demarcation of TOD zones, land-use and transport strategy, says the draft policy.

But Master Plans are the overarching and the only statutory tool, that can incorporate a multi-sectoral analysis – including transport – to guide and steer the city’s growth, coordinate service delivery, provide infrastructure and other day-to-day requirements of citizens. Thus, they have a larger, comprehensive vision of the city as against sectoral plans and policies.

Hence, instead of the mere “insertion” of a TOD chapter in the Master Plan, the draft TOD policy should mandate the preparation of a mobility plan itself. This mobility plan should incorporate the mandates of TOD based on the provisions of the Master Plan. And it should be notified as a statutory tool, either independently or appended to the Master Plan. It should simultaneously draw from and guide the RMP. As of now, the mobility plan is neither mentioned in the draft policy nor is it a part of the RMP 2031.

TOD strategies don’t consider the varied growth patterns within city

Since the different planning zones (A, B and C) in Bengaluru have varying development patterns, the Master Plan proposes different planning strategies for each of these. The draft TOD policy does acknowledge this differential growth strategy of the Master Plan, but does not draw upon it while framing TOD strategies.

The draft policy merely states that TOD will be implemented based on land availability. But contextualising the varying development trajectories within BMA will help design nuanced TOD packages.

For instance, implementing TOD projects in the core city (the erstwhile BMP of 200-odd sq kms) – that is, planning zone A – is a challenge. This is because of the high densities and high property values within this zone. But, as we move out radially from the core towards the periphery, implementing TOD is relatively easier. It is perhaps more relevant too, as a proactive measure to control city sprawl.

Policy focuses on Metro and suburban rail, not buses

Also, the draft policy focuses largely on the Metro and suburban rail, and only makes a fleeting reference to buses and bus transit corridors. The lack of adequate focus on buses as a public transit mode is a gap that needs correction.

In sum, the draft policy should:

adopt the jurisdiction of the entire BMR
emphasize the need for a mobility plan for BMR
arrive at a land-use strategy that links with all modes of public transport.

‘Premium FSI’ concept may not be successful

Another point is that the policy is premised on the ‘premium FSI’ concept. FSI (Floor Space Index) is the ratio of a building’s gross floor area to the size of the plot on which it’s built. A higher FSI allows the developer to build high-rise structures. To achieve dense, mixed land-use development, the TOD policy allows a premium FSI that’s above the base FSI.

But builders hardly follow FSI regulations in Bengaluru anyway, in the hopes that building violations would later be regularised as per the state government’s long-pending Akrama Sakrama scheme. Given this, the likelihood of a successful ‘premium FSI’ is bleak.

The policy also takes a stand that “Steep penalty shall be imposed for violations. In case where building violations have severe negative impact on the surroundings, buildings shall be demolished. Adequate staff shall be deployed for monitoring the building violations.” But it is not clear who will be doing this – the BMRCL, or the municipal corporation whose core function it is anyway.

Clarity on these aspects is a must to evolve a meaningful mobility plan and an attendant land-use strategy.

The draft also suggests GIS mapping to identify and manage violations. Such a detailed exercise was already done as part of the RMP 2031. The same should be used or built upon further, instead of starting from scratch.

Lastly, it is laudable that the draft TOD policy earmarks a budget for communication and outreach. The government should use this in moving the policy from the draft to the final stage. Eliciting inputs from citizens and other state and non-state stakeholders to frame a more comprehensive, coordinated policy that informs and is informed by the Master Plan, is the need of the hour.

Mumbai building collapse

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 18:30:00 GMT

Mumbai, the financial capital of India, is facing its second serious infrastructure disaster in a month. The collapse of a building in Dongri area comes weeks after a wall had collapsed in Malad.

In Delhi, it took nearly five years to build and inaugurate a 2.7-km-long flyover. Chennai is facing a severe water crisis this summer, with taps running dry.

ThePrint asks: Mumbai building collapse: Should India save its metropolises before dreaming of smart cities?

We need a new perspective: focus on rebuilding entire area instead of one fallen structure

- Anjali Karol Mohan

Urban and regional planner

There needs to be a change in the way we approach the issue of crumbling infrastructure. Cities are not just inorganic structures; they are spaces that have evolved over centuries. The building in Mumbai’s Dongri, too, was 100 years old, located in a neighbourhood with extremely narrow streets. Therefore, we need to look at the age of the neighbourhoods as well as the spaces that surround them.

The perspective needs to change from a reactionary one, where we just address each individual collapse of infrastructure, to one where we look at a comprehensive refurbishment of the entire area. This assumes greater significance due to climate change and unprecedented levels of rain in Mumbai this monsoon. We need to be prepared and start proactively looking at renovating the whole city.

The issue of very poor public administration and governance is also one that needs to be addressed. The problem lies in determining who is responsible and accountable in the event of such collapses. Even when the accountability has been fixed, there are no consequences. In cities like Bengaluru, this has resulted in indiscriminate violation and sheer negligence, brought about due to a desire to monetise every available land, with haphazard quality of construction. The system needs an overhaul to fix responsibility and accountability. Raising awareness among citizens too needs to be encouraged so as to make them proactively care about violations.

This article was originally published on ThePrint. Illustration by Soham Sen - ThePrint Team

Bengaluru’s real estate market up last year; but can apartment construction ban help the water situation?

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 18:30:00 GMT

The spectre of water scarcity is haunting Bengaluru. And from a din of solutions to avert this man-made crisis, one suggestion has take the city over like a storm, and brought to the forefront a debate with myriad perspectives.

Recently, Deputy Chief Minister G Parameswara suggested banning apartment construction in Bengaluru for the next five years. His announcement invited strong objections from the real estate industry. Just a day after, the shares of Bengaluru-based real estate giants Shobha and Brigade plunged five percent.

However, Parameswara’s suggestion resonated with many citizens who have been facing the brunt of water shortage. Questions remain – at what pace is apartments coming up in the city currently, and would restricting new constructions improve the water situation?

Apartment sales and launches on the rise

Bengaluru’s real estate market is slowly picking up pace after the sudden policy changes (read demonetisation) that had affected industries. According to a report released this May by Liases Foras, a research and rating company, the city’s residential real estate sales had increased by 14 percent in FY 2018-19 compared to the previous year.

The number of new launches – that is, real estate that developers start marketing – has been increasing in Bengaluru as well. Across the eight tier-1 cities included in the Liases Foras report, the number of new launches had increased by 80 percent on average in 2018-19 compared to 2017-18. But in Bengaluru, new launches had increased by 96 percent. This rate of increase was second-highest in the country, after Pune.

In the top eight cities overall, during Q4 of 2018-19, the maximum number of sales were in Rs 25-50 lakh bracket. This segment accounted for more than one-third of the total units sold. But in Bengaluru, sales were highest in the Rs 50 lakh-1 crore bracket that quarter, indicating the city’s preference for higher-end properties, different from the national trend. Similar was the case with new launches too.

As the city’s real estate market is flourishing again, would a blanket ban on construction hamper this? How would it affect the thousands who work in this industry?

Farook Mahmood, Chairman and Managing Director of Silverline Realty, said a ban would shatter Bengaluru’s economy for the next five years. “Real estate is the second largest provider of jobs in the country. Since Bengaluru is one of the more vibrant markets, a ban would hamper its economic growth by denting not only the real estate market but also the ancillary industries connected to it. There are 45 different industries connected to real estate.”

However, urban and regional planner Dr Anjali Karol Mohan, who was involved with developing the city’s draft Revised Master Plan (RMP 2031), says this is not a black-and-white issue.

“Construction profits the few, but costs are borne by the larger city”

Anjali said that most new constructions are coming up in the periphery of the city since land prices are low there. She said, “Most of these apartments are being consumed for speculation. Construction is preceding development there, and many builders are extracting groundwater. If this is stopped, at least there would be some relief to the water table.”

Anjali said these houses are not being built for those who need it. “Some say that a construction ban would escalate the prices of the houses and they would become unaffordable. But unaffordable for whom? We are not really producing houses for the category that requires houses, or where the shortage is – that is, the affordable housing segment (below Rs 8-10 lakh).”

She said the fundamental question is, who should bear the cost of construction? “Is there an ecological, social and cultural cost to construction? Are the people who profit from these apartments and speculation bearing that cost? If yes, I think it is fair enough to go ahead with the construction. But that’s not the case – the costs are being borne by the larger city.”

Realty vs reality check

However, Mahmood said the government should find alternate methods to get water to the city rather than restrict construction. “We understand that the water levels are low, but alternative solutions like making rainwater harvesting mandatory for all buildings, plugging the loopholes in water distribution etc would help, instead of a blanket ban on construction,” he said.

But, with the threat of an acute water crisis looming, some Bengaluru residents welcome the government suggestion. Retired IAS officer V Balasubramanian said the suggested ban was a right step, but a bit too late. “There are already around 27,000 multi-storied buildings in Bengaluru and they are all dependent on underground and tanker water. Almost 60 percent of the total consumption of water in the city is from these sources. There are around four lakh bore wells in Bengaluru and most of them are going dry. There will be water rationing in the next five years,” he said.

Balasubramanian believes a ban would not be passed by the cabinet though. “Most ministers are themselves real estate giants and would be against the idea. Parameshwara must have floated this idea to make people feel the seriousness of the situation. Awareness has come into the public sphere and it is a good development.”

Balasubramanian said, if there was a ban on the construction of new apartments, there would be no buyers for upcoming buildings for a short period, the real estate market would go down, and the prices of existing buildings would go up; but not for long, as none of the new buildings would get water in the near future.

Anjali opines that eventually, a decision such as this should be based on a studied response. Currently there is no analysis on the housing requirement of the city. “We need to unpack what kind of houses are being produced, how many of these are really required, what the holding capacity of the city is in terms of water etc. If the minister said there would be a ban, I think it is a good option given how apartments are coming up now. If he said that certain kind of apartments would be banned and certain would not be, then it would be an informed decision,” she said.

It’s time to integrate data within municipalities

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 10:09:48 GMT

Excerpts of an interview with Dr Anjali Karol Mohan

There is a lot of excitement around urban data and its merits are visible; yet, there is a gap between what is being discussed as potential and, what is being practised, says Dr Anjali Karol Mohan, an expert in urban e-governance. In over two and a half decades of practise and research, Dr Mohan has engaged with various urban planning and urban management exercises, evolved planning tools, and evaluated plans to provide inputs to policies and effective planning exercises. Currently, Dr Mohan is curating a two part seminar series (at the EAFIT University in Medellin, Colombia and NLSUI, Bangalore, India) that aims to address planning challenges faced by cities in the global south. Dr Mohan is a visiting Faculty at the National Law School University of India, Bangalore, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, and Takshashila Institution.

1. Recent governance dialogues revolve around data driven governance and its benefits. What in your opinion are the main challenges in implementing data-driven governance in the urban or rural space?

In my opinion, there are two challenges; one is the data itself and second, the people who will be using that data.

The first challenge lies in the lens through which data is viewed by different scales of governments and, by extension, the manner in which the data will get utilised. Therefore, although large datasets are being produced and collated by various governments, departments, and hierarchies, the scale, granularity, and periodicity of that data is from a particular lens. This might make it not so useful for other stakeholders. For instance data produced by State departments, for instance, to monitor local governments, may not be required by municipalities and panchayats whose roles and responsibilities are different. The second challenge is, who are the people using this data. There is a gap in capacity in terms of using data in a consistent and lucid manner so that it enables decision-making.

While the first challenge might be resolved if we unpack and understand the requirements of different lenses, but the second is a much more daunting challenge. This is where one needs to get functionaries and managers in various arms of the government into the habit of looking at data to inform their decisions. This not only requires building their capacity, but also increasing their will power for the same.

2. Is there a greater possibility of data usage by different stakeholders if data culture is institutionalised to some extent by target-oriented reforms?

Data generation, capture, analytics (as we understand it today in the context of the technology revolution), and its utilisation are not systemically embedded in governance structures and processes. There is a lot of excitement around data and perhaps people are beginning to see the merits of it. But there is still a gap between what is being discussed as potential and what is being practised. There are arguments that technology-driven data culture demands a generational change, i.e. next generation of city managers are more likely to be tech savvy and hence, better equipped to appreciate the relevance of technology in generating and collating data, converting that data into information, and eventually to knowledge. But I think that the new generation will only be able to do it if they are capacitated in a manner where data-driven decision making is the only choice. This requires not just conventional approaches through training programmes, but also a change in work culture, habits, and practices.

Having said that, I have come across several municipalities where data entry operators, typically from a younger generation have begun to comprehend the efficiency that a computer brings in, and are taking to technology even if it requires them to leverage their own personal resources.

From your experience, how do cities perceive capacity building efforts, especially efforts that emphasise the creation of new positions in municipalities, such as city data officers?

Historically, within the states, skill sets that can engage with technology and tech-enabled data are lacking. Attempts have been made to implement municipal reforms in various states — Karnataka has been a front runner in this. Similarly, there is a digital presence in Panchayats too. Commensurate with these reforms, is the hiring of data-entry operators/programmers and setting up of data cells. This is an ongoing effort. Notably, in several places, staff associated with the data cells are employed on a contract basis (although I am given to understand that recruitment and cadre rules are being modified to embed these skills within the state). While it may serve the purpose of initiating technology driven reforms, in the long run, my experience (and research) shows that the data cells do not get integrated within the municipalities. In effect, these emerge as parallel systems. It is about time that measures are initiated to ensure integration of data and data-related functioning within the municipality. This has far reaching implications on accountability mechanisms, which tend to get compromised in the presence of parallel systems.

3. Do you think that the Smart Cities Mission and other technology-focussed initiatives are able to bring convergence between the State’s perspective of why they need data and the municipality’s perspective of how efficiently they can use the data?

That the Smart City Mission has foregrounded the need for data (incl. data-cells, observatories, etc.) as critical to urban development and management cannot be denied. There is a flurry, at times incomprehensible, around data production and collation. It is happening at several points. However, I maintain that data requirements from various lenses need not necessarily converge. The need for varying data-sets at different scales of government cannot be questioned. There can be multiple points of data generation, collation, and utilisation, as long as there is clarity on the purpose for which data is being generated and analysed. For instance, in cities, data generated at ward level needs to reach the municipality to facilitate decision making. The State government may apply its own lens to view/collate this data — like seeing how one city is performing in comparison to the other.

We need to understand that technology has this inherent tendency to centralise actions. I am not for a moment arguing for or against centralisation or decentralisation. Both are required. One to the exclusion of the other is not advisable. However, where centralisation is appropriate and where decentralised interventions/actions are more relevant, needs to be unpacked carefully. For example, beneficiary selection for welfare programme in rural areas is a function best performed at the lowest level of governance. Usually, selection is based on the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), 2011, followed by Gram Sabha verification. Yet, of late, we see State Governments using technology to directly select or indirectly impact beneficiary selection processes. This is dangerous.

4. There is an increasing emphasis on data for decision making, whereas entirely data-driven decisions can have their own biases. How should the discourse position itself so that we have enough checks and balances built into the system itself?

Institutionalisation of data can start to, in some sense, institutionalise decision-making. There will be a record of why a certain decision was taken and what the implications would be if we were to reverse this. The precaution that needs to be taken here, is that the data needs to be very relevant and context specific. That can only happen if we align principles of decision making with the idea of subsidiarity. That is what the decentralisation agenda is all about.

If the local government has to take an informed decision, the most relevant data is what is generated within its jurisdiction. It is a hugely positive step if a decision-maker is able to visualise data and then utilise it, to frame problems and challenges, and seek appropriate solutions / redressal mechanisms. In the discourse about data, observatories, and decision making, the lack of emphasis on the need for contextualisation, is the reason many cities are not able to move ahead on data-driven decision making.

5. Do you see the National Urban Policy Framework, currently being finalised, likely to emerge as an enabling tool facilitating data-driven urban governance?

The NUPF is still in its making. Notably, it recognises the prerogative of the State as far as local governance is concerned. It can provide a critical space for data-driven decision making by triggering the need, incentivising it, and further creating opportunities for State policies to do the same. While planning and governance are viewed as two different processes, these are intrinsically connected. The NUPF attempts to bring these together, but I don’t think it goes far enough. The NUPF should ideally incentivise proactive planning, and make data-driven decision-making a part of that narrative. How exactly it would be implemented should be left to State policies, as contexts vary across states. The NUPF needs to create this space by providing a broader framework for proactive planning with data as one of the dimensions which will inform both planning and governance.

Planning for Socio-Economic development in Bengaluru: From a land-use plan to a city plan

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 10:25:22 GMT

MASTER PLAN PREPARATION IN BENGALURU

In a conversation with a colleague on the draft Revised Master Plan 2031, I was told that councilors of the BBMP (of the 198, less than thirty sat in on a presentation on the Draft RMP 2031) are convinced that the Master Plan is not a workable plan. When probed further, I was told that many councilors brought up issues that are technically not the concern/ mandate of the Master Plan.

For instance, some mentioned that roads in their wards were in a bad condition. Others mentioned efficacy of water supply. Many others believe that the tool of Transfer of Development Rights (premised on a relatively lower base FAR -1.5 to 2), will not yield desired results.

A fundamental question that comes to mind is how can basic requirements of citizens – be these good roads or the adequacy of water supply – not be the concern of the Master Plan, the only statutory tool that guides the growth and development of the city? Who, or what else is supposed to address these concerns and demands? For the time being, I will push aside another niggling question, in the hope that it will eventually get addressed: why would a discussion on the only statutory tool – RMP 2031- that aims to manage and control the growth and development of Bengaluru witness such dismal political participation.

Flaws in the planning process

The reason for why the Master Plan does not (or cannot) address concerns of citizens, on one hand, and, the argument that these concerns are not the mandate of the Master plan emanate from two fundamental flaws in the current planning practice / process.

First is a flawed conception of what constitutes a Master Plan and the process of Master Plan evolution. Second, embedded in this understanding of the Master Plan and its preparation, is a lack of acknowledgment that planning and governance are intrinsically linked . Current planning processes have little or no regard to how and when the plan will be implemented. The RMP 2031 unfortunately is no exception to this rule.

The Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 1961 defines a Master Plan as a “series of maps and documents indicating the manner in which the development and improvement of the entire planning area [larger than the municipal area] and within the jurisdiction of the Planning Authority [not the municipal jurisdiction] are to be carried out and regulated.”

The development and improvement of the planning area is to be achieved through zoning of land use (residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, recreational, educational and other purposes) to be regulated through zoning regulations. In other words, the BDA (and not the BBMP) prepares the Master Plan (land-use plan) for the Local Planning Area which includes the Bengaluru municipal area, although is not restricted to it.

In contrast, the 74th CAA, 1992, premised on the principle of subsidiarity mandates that the municipalities – the BBMP in this case- should plan for socio-economic development within its jurisdiction. The amendment requires the Government of Karnataka to devolve the function of urban planning including town planning to the municipalities. In turn, municipalities are required to deliver socio-economic development through a city plan. This plan is envisaged as a bottom-up process that entails collation of, and negotiation among ward level needs and perhaps aspirations, articulated through ward committee plans/ projects.

From a Land-use Plan to a City Plan

For the city plan to steer socio-economic development, it should be more than a land-use plan. It needs to necessarily address issues of mobility, physical and social infrastructure, basic services, inclusion, security and gender in all its dimensions and not just as a function of land use. Clearly, the Master Plan does not deliver on this objective.

This objective can be met, were the 74th Constitutional Amendment, 1992 implemented in its true spirit. The amendment espouses the linkages between planning and governance in defining a planning hierarchy that amalgamates top-down and bottom-up processes. Were Bangalore to be planned and governed per this amendment, we would witness a much-needed departure within the planning profession: from a land-use plan prepared by the BDA to a socio-economic development plan (inclusive of land-uses, although not limited to it) prepared by elected governments such as the BBMP through its ward committees.

The 74th CAA, 1992, in conceiving the Metropolitan Planning Committee further strengthens the planning and governance linkages. The MPC should prepare a ‘draft development plan’ with “regard to the plans prepared by the municipalities and panchayats in the area”. The draft development plan is therefore, also a process of collation of, and negotiation between the urban and rural settlements in the metropolitan city-region.

Top-down approach not helping

There are two things that require critical mention. First, a city-region or a metropolitan region (as per the 74th CAA, 1992) is a multi-municipal and multi-panchayat jurisdiction. Hence, the draft development plan of the MPC has among its objectives resolution of inter-municipal [read jurisdictions] conflicts, addressing matters of common interest among municipalities and panchayats, coordinating spatial planning and planning and management of regional level infrastructure (like water resources and transport) with due consideration to environment and other natural resources.

Notifying the Metropolitan Planning Committee for the Bangalore Metropolitan Area has little meaning as the plan (RMP 2031) for this area (one municipality and several panchayats) is prepared by the BDA as a top-down process. It has little citizen and political involvement and, by extension ownership. If the Government of Karnataka is to achieve the objectives of the MPC in letter and spirit, the Bengaluru MPC should be notified at the regional level i.e. the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region. The region has several municipalities and panchayats and provides a spatial canvas large enough (8005 sq kms) to plan and manage regional level infrastructure while also addressing ecological concerns.

MPC plan by definition, is ‘draft’, not final!

Second, the operative work in the provision of the draft development plan by the MPC is ‘draft’. What this implies is that the preparation of the development plan should necessarily be an iterative process – one that can accommodate the continuous and rapidly changing needs of the municipalities and the panchayats expressed through their respective plans.

In other words, the draft development plan is conceived to be a dynamic plan. Needless, to mention that the dynamism of this plan will best be operationalised when the municipalities and panchayats prepare rolling plans for their respective jurisdictions. This contrasts with the current master plan approach which is revisited once in 10 years. It is for this that Master Plans are often criticized as static.

The RMP 2031 has concluded on the public objection and suggestion stage and is awaiting approval, notwithstanding the results of the Courts on PIL’s filed. In the latest hearing in the High Court, the BDA argues that the Master Plan is not the same as a draft development plan. While this is true, it is a partial argument. Clearly, the master plan and the process behind its evolution is not an appropriate fit within the hierarchy of plans envisaged in the 74th CAA, 1992.

If Bangalore were to be planned as per the latter, we will not have ‘A Master Plan’. Rather, we will have a hierarchy of plans that are rolling, dynamic and embedded – A Draft Development Plan, A City Plan and projects (if not a plan) at the ward level. Such a process will ensure an involved and informed bottom-up planning practice. More critically, it will ensure the participation of the councilors and perhaps a better ownership of the plan.

Note: Opinions expressed here are author’s own.

Flow of Time

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 18:30:00 GMT

An Architect rediscovers ancient secrets of water management

Sitting in his Bangalore office, sporting steel-rimmed glasses and a salt-and-pepper ponytail, 46-year-old Mohan Rao remembered his time working in Hampi. In 2002, the Archaeological Survey of India began conservation work at this World Heritage site in Karnataka, which was part of the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire until its decline in the sixteenth century and is still an important place of pilgrimage today.

Hampi’s 1000 Year-Old Water Management System

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Hampi, India: Ancient Water For Our Future | Richard Yelland

Mohan Rao is a Landscape architect at IndeDesign. He wanted to explore how to design cities with sustainable water management. On this quest, in Hampi, India, Rao uncovered a reservoir system dating to the Hindu empire of ancient Vijayanagra, circa 1000AD, that had sustained a population of half million (five lakhs) people for hundreds of years with very little rainfall. With the help of the Architectural Survey of India, Rao’s work in Hampi has provided much needed models for water supply management in the development of cities and urban complexes around the globe. Rao’s ancient discovery could promise to unlock the answer to the world’s dwindling water supplies.

Natural Systems are Critical

Mon, 16 Dec 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Large-scale urban design initiatives addressing the demands of dwelling and shelter often overlook critical issues such as site, neighbourhood and the natural environment

The transformation of cities is increasingly characterised by the notion of eﬃciency, by which I mean the tendency to maximise utility towards the regulation of urban capital. This theory of city making evaluates, restricts and recognises the role of various private commodities to the exclusion of public goods, notably the natural environment. Patterns of urbanisation in developing countries over the past six to seven decades shows a marked tendency where the understanding of these “public goods” remain two dimensional at best. Classical urban planning initiatives have invariably tackled settlement design through the consolidation and fragmentation of land, which is treated almost exclusively as an economic resource. All lands deemed unsuitable for development, notably marshes, wetlands, forests, hilly terrain, etc., are typically classiﬁed as non-developable land.

Two aspects of this approach to the management of public goods are important for our discussion: 1) the accepted notion of development, with its emphasis on the built environment and real estate, and 2) an approach to land that deems territory unsuitable for human settlement and development as wasteland, to be kept out of the realm of active programming and utilisation within an urban developmental framework. Together, these ideas have eﬀectively rendered all natural capital in urban spaces as a liability and nuisance, rather than viewing it as a landscape rich with productive potential.

The attitudes of urban development professionals towards land and the natural environment have gone through two marked phases. Initially the emphasis was on what I call “land in the making”. This phase was marked by the aggressive legislation of natural systems that resulted in massive alterations to the landscape—through landﬁlls, land-use modiﬁcations, reclamation projects, etc.—and seriously impacted regional natural ecology patterns. More recently, the emphasis has shifted to what I term “environment in the making”, where degraded and threatened ecological systems are cleaned, conserved and otherwise spruced up. The resultant landscape, whether real or virtual (in the sense that it may possibly be realised in the future), is then certiﬁed and presented as ﬁt for receiving global capital. These distinct and tectonic shifts in attitudes towards the natural environment are crucial in understanding the evolving concept of cities: from development visions of cities as sites of social and economic mobility and catalysts of modernity, to the neoliberal visions of cities as strategic nodes for the operations of global ﬁnance. Environmental policies and action plans oriented towards beautiﬁcation, development and engineered eco-restoration are merely idioms through which cities are positioning themselves in the global arena for capital accumulation through real estate. Rooted within this exploitation of natural resources and plasticity of environmental policies—which alter the very nature of relational value associated with natural resources and human habitation—is the closely related concept of informal settlements. Informal settlements are an urban necessity. Markers of continuous property creation in the city, they essentially represent property that is valued diﬀerently in the arc of a city’s history. Their erasure may be read as urban renewal, their appearance as urban decay. Typologically, they are hard to locate outside any urban centre, and—along with natural and human resources—form an essential infrastructure framework of the city. Natural systems, which conventional developmental policy views as a waste commodity, are often key sites for informal settlements. Myopic and superﬁcial engagement with natural systems in larger planning frameworks often produces unstable and hazardous conditions aﬀecting both the natural environment and human settlements established on them.

Remedial initiatives in this context often address mere beautiﬁcation of natural systems and formalise settlements by dislocating them from the city fabric, typically by creating yet another environmentally sensitive zone, or wasteland. These initiatives, well intentioned or not, eﬀectively create and/or further escalate deep fractures in the urban ecosystem. Environmentally, they delink and devalue natural resources and their crucial function within the city fabric. Socially, they exacerbate the unequal distribution and access of natural goods and services.

The improbable demands of capital-driven urbanisation, which are largely aimed at satisfying global investors, will continue to interlock ecological and social vulnerabilities in the urban terrain, and cut across—independently and interdependently—urban policies. This article, which discusses various strategies rooted in the Bangalore metropolitan region, is positioned in this ﬂux. It emphasises an ecological understanding of natural systems and their capacities as landscape infrastructure. This article further looks at their ability to generate new relationships between the city and society, as well as function as a crucial support system for informal settlements by creating livelihood opportunities. My central argument is that natural systems are a critical dimension not only of the physical but also of the social production of urban space.

The Bangalore Context

Located on the watershed of two principal river basins, the Bangalore region is part of the Deccan Plateau and presents dramatically varied terrains with the main ridge running north-northwest to south-southeast, eﬀectively dividing Bangalore into two distinct topographical regions. This topography exhibits a radial pattern of drainage, distributing from the apex and ﬂowing to the lower plains in dendritic and reticulate patterns. Bangalore, with its population of roughly seven million, is one of the few metropolitan cities located at more than 950 metres above sea level without any perennial source of water. The undulating topography, combined with a granitic geology, renders the region highly suitable for harvesting and managing water at both surface and sub-surface levels. Traditional settlements, which date over a thousand years, have used this potential extensively, creating a system of chain tanks and connected valleys as fertile ground for agriculture.

Though this linkage between natural system, resource and urbanisation has long been understood, even the most progressive planning processes have been unable to integrate them in a holistic and active manner. This is evident in the Bangalore Revised Master Plan 2015, which proclaims that the “green belt (composed of agricultural zone) plays a very useful role in limiting urban sprawl”. By conﬁning the “green belt” as the physical boundary of the city, Bangalore has been allowed to develop in a radial urban form, completely ignoring the millennium-old natural history of the region. Derived from outdated and non-contextual planning theories, the “green belt” ideas have ended up severely undermining the performance and connectivity of natural systems in the region. This ecological framework, referred to as “bourgeois environmentalism” by some, has caused immense damage to the natural ecology of the region. It is estimated that of the 262 lakes identiﬁed in the Bangalore region in 1960, only 81 exist today—of these, only 34 are recognised as “live” lakes. While highlighting the plight of lakes, what the numbers do not reveal is the massive and irreversible destruction of valley networks, the very lifelines of the regional landscape. The valleys feed the lake system, regulate surface runoﬀ, mitigate ﬂooding, and sustain aquifers and wetland ecosystems. Bangalore’s planning paradigms, which have eﬀectively turned their back on this natural framework, have resulted in, amongst other things, the severe depletion of ground water, increased ﬂooding, loss of biodiversity, and increased urban heat islands. A similar pattern is echoed in other parts of India, as in Chennai, a city located along the Bay of Bengal, with the destruction of its lakes (or eris), a pattern of disappearance that became more permanent as the conversion of water to land becomes a strategy of urban expansion.

“Natural systems are a critical dimension not only of the physical but also of the social production of urban space“

Together with colleagues at Integrated Design, a Bangalore-based consultancy, I have been involved in framing the 2031 structure plan for the Bangalore region, which covers an area of 8005m2. The objective of the plan, known as BMR RSP 2031 and provisionally approved by the state government, is to provide the strategic policy framework for planning, management and development in the region without compromising on the ecological and environmental health of the land. While traditional planning exercises are driven by two-dimensional spatial characteristics of the land determined by administrative boundaries, the proposal took a radical route of deﬁning land capacity based on the watershed character found in the region.

The deﬁnition of development was further reﬁned and elaborated to include all aspects of development, both built and natural.

The Bangalore region is one of the most sensitive regions with respect to water resources. The city’s development has been totally driven by a reliance on the nearest totally driven by a reliance on the nearest perennial source, River Cauvery, located 108km on a lower elevation of 450 metres from the city. There are numerous water and environmentally sensitive issues that are vital to addressing the sustainable development of the Bangalore region. To enable an identiﬁcation of these ecological parameters and allow them to be used positively for the development of the region, the BMR RSP 2031 engaged in a land capability analysis (LCA), a GIS-based decision-making method using multi-criteria parameters to arrive at a capability analysis. The output of the LCA is used to eﬀectively address and incorporate the region’s natural resources in the physical and policy planning framework for development Land capability analyses are not new in urban and regional planning exercises. The normal procedure is to use a Cartesian grid

for assessment and grading of land parcels, although such a division, assessment and grading of land resource, whether urban or rural, fails to eﬀectively recognise any of its natural characteristics. Acknowledging this aspect of conventional land capability analysis as a limitation and recognising the critical nature of the Bangalore region’s natural resources, specially the criticality of water resource, the random Cartesian grid has been replaced by a mini-watershed as the reference grid.

The LCA as employed by the BMR RSP 2031 recognises the critical nature of Bangalore’s natural resources to eﬀectively allow the mapping of the sensitive ecological features as a prerequisite to identifying the development needs of the region. It employs the mini-watershed as the deﬁning parameter for analysis and grading of land parcels. The LCA also grades the natural potential of land in concert with anthropometric parameters such as industry, transport, demographics, etc., to evolve a development potential matrix.

Ecosystem Services Infrastructure

Urban planning and design discourses have, of late, attempted to promote a conscious engagement with the natural environment, largely driven by external rating systems—the results are far from desirable. This could be attributed to ﬁrst order political-economic demands, although it chieﬂy emerges out

of the understanding of capacities and performances embedded within these landscape systems, and the relations that they can nurture. Often, these systems are studied in isolation to their larger ecological and social-urban contexts, resulting in these systems being either objectiﬁed as mere protected corridors, or—worse—as beautiﬁed recreation pockets dotting the city fabric.

A conceptual shift is necessary, one that recognises and positions these landscape systems as networks and infrastructure critical to the larger ecological establishment. If one wants to successfully position natural landscapes and environmental systems within the seemingly improbable demands of contemporary urbanisation, a regimental shift is required, one that recognises that these landscapes must be evaluated not by their physical extent, but by their capacities and embedded performance. In short, it requires understanding the notion of ecosystems and their “services”. By deﬁnition, ecosystem services are the goods, functions and processes that are derived from the biosphere.

Hathi Gaon, Amber

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The primary concern of the masterplan was to recreate an ecosystem which addresses the physical and psychological comfort of the elephants and Mumbai-based architects Rahul Mehrotra and Associates were invited to lead the initiative. The settlement was to be a habitat for a hundred elephants, which included ones on active duty, calves, convalescent and aging animals as well as their mahouts (Elephant Keepers).

Limited access for tourists generates necessary revenue for the development. Vehicular access is limited to the entrance and a pedestrian pathway leads to the entrance court; a semi-shaded informal plaza for folk performances. Wetlands at the adjoining lower levels form the connection between the plaza and the elevated visitor’s gallery. Physical access for visitors is limited to the zone around the gallery, from where one can view grazing grounds and the bathing reservoir of the elephants. Housing for the elephants (Thans) and their keepers is developed along the elevated zones of the site, towards the periphery and arranged in clusters. The other built facilities include the veterinary hospital and fodder stores.

Establishment of a balanced ecosystem in this degraded site formed the crux of the design, an approximation of the natural habitat of the elephants. Zone-wise interpretation of vegetation, such as definition of the perimeter and microcosms of grasslands and wetlands, are characteristics that modulate visual access to the elephant habitat. The root system of the indigenous plant palette stabilizes the topsoil layer in this erosion-prone site in conjunction with other soil conservation measures.

Hathi Gaon | Amber India | Integrated Design (INDE)

Landscape Architects | Integrated Design (INDE)

Principal Landscape Architect: Mohan S Rao

Principal Architects | RMA, mumbai

Client | Government of Rajasthan

Location | Amber, Rajasthan, India

Area | 35 Hectares

Year of Completion: Ongoing; Phase 1 Complete

This article was originally published in World Landscape Architect

But Naturally

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The bamboo dome of India’s pavilion at Shanghai’s Expo 2010 offers a fresh, green vision for the architectural future.

Can a mere bamboo dome pose important questions about the buildings and cities of the future? Surely the urban form of the future will be shaped by industrial materials like glass, steel and aluminium, as in Gurgaon? The designers of the Indian pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which opened on May 1, hope that their bamboo dome covered with live vegetation will shake some of these certainties. I have not visited the project, but my discussions with its architects and the available information, drawings and photographs suggest that it deserves more public debate.

BUILDING FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

The theme of the Expo is ‘Better City, Better Life’. One glance at the pavilion reveals how little it accords with the industrialised world’s vision of the good urban future. It might well be the biggest bamboo dome in the world, but it looks like a cute, even ‘vernacular’ artifact, compared to the Chinese pavilion. The latter is stereotypically ‘futuristic’ — a big, shiny, whale-meets-spaceship form built with high-technology materials.

The contrast between the two buildings is a contrast in philosophy. The design of the Indian pavilion showcases an approach to architecture that involves consuming less non-renewable resources (including fossil fuels), and causing less damage to the planet (including by carbon dioxide emissions).

DOME DESIGN

Four Indian architects collaborated on the design. They were Sanjay Prakash, Pradeep Sachdeva and Tanmay Tathagat of New Delhi, and Mohan Rao of Bangalore. All have special expertise in sustainable architecture.

The pavilion (covering 2,800 sq mt and costing about $3 million) is an enclosed area with a domical exhibition space at one end. According to the official design concept, the dome echoes that of a Buddhist stupa, a form which is common to India and China.

Conceptually, it must be said, this design appears forced and looks like a leftover from the old Festival of India pattern book. The traditional stupa, after all, is a solid masonry mound. Domes are hollow, and this one is in very light bamboo. The design is thus a missed opportunity to explore a form that emerges largely from the unique strengths of bamboo as a material.

That said, the structure and vision are important. The dome is deceptively simple in form. Structurally, it resembles a basket placed face down. Thirty-six bamboo ribs spring from the base and converge at the crown. Each rib consists of six bamboos laid end to end and joined together. The ribs are connected by 10 bamboo and four steel rings, at different levels. The steel rings were used mainly to ensure that the bamboo structure was built to the correct geometry on site. There is one concrete ring at the bottom and another at the top.

This structure supports a two-inch-thick outer shell of micro-concrete, covered by a waterproof membrane. On this are fixed three layers of an innovative geo-fabric — a soil substitute that holds and delivers water and nutrients from a drip irrigation system to the green roof. Over 125,000 herbs were hand-planted in a multicoloured pattern. The plants are watered in part with water recycled from the toilets. They help insulate the building while capturing carbon from the air and releasing oxygen. An aero generator (an exhaust fan driven by small drafts created by temperature differences between inside and outside, not electricity) at the top of the dome helps ventilate the indoor space and avoids energy-intensive air-conditioning.

CONCEPTUAL SIGNIFICANCE

The project is significant for three reasons. First, it is ecologically benign. It uses a renewable natural material — bamboo — that grows quickly and degrades completely, leaving little waste. (Incidentally, after the Expo ends in September the dome is slated to be dismantled and re-assembled on another site.)

Second, it is very ‘contemporary’ even if it uses old materials and forms. It is engineered using the latest design techniques (including computerised energy and other simulations) and satisfies the latest international fire and structural safety codes. The management protocols involved in its construction were like those of any major international project.

And third, it shows that a big niche exists between high-tech, on the one hand, and crafts-skills in construction, on the other — which is relevant even for prestigious international projects.

FUTURE PROSPECT

The project makes a strong case for a scientific exploration of natural and renewable materials, especially bamboo, in building. It shows that one does not have to use large quantities of cement, steel and glass to achieve sensible architectural goals attractively. Quite the reverse. Industrially produced construction materials like cement, steel, glass and aluminium consume huge amounts of fossil fuel energy.

Meanwhile, India is rich in natural materials and techniques of building with them. In recent decades, Indian architects and engineers have developed dependable ways of constructing modern buildings in bamboo, mud and stone. The future clearly belongs to the sensible application of technological advances to maximise the effectiveness of natural materials.

If this bamboo dome sparks a debate on these issues, in India and elsewhere, it will have more than paid for itself.

BUILDING THE DOME

This was a challenge because of the sheer newness of the idea as well as the collaborations involved. Reconciling different technical visions from different countries and fields was part of the challenge.

Design-C (led by D R Naidu), a unit of HTA Pvt Ltd, was lead designer. It was appointed by the client, the India Trade Promotion Organisation. Architectural design and detailing were the joint effort of four architects and their firms (see main story). Dr Simon Velez, a Colombian authority on bamboo construction, was a special consultant. Lead contractors Shibu C, and local contractors China Jingye were responsible for ensuring that the design met the local building code.

The bamboo chosen was the edible Chinese Moso (Mao-Zhu, or ‘hairy bamboo’), sourced from Anji district 200 km west of Shanghai. A bamboo furniture factory agreed to process the bamboo. There, the bamboo was treated with hot boric-borax and lightly curved in a jig.

Joints were a crucial area of detailing. Tolerance for natural size variations in bamboo pieces had to be built in, to ensure the final form had a perfect geometry. Small quantities of industrial materials were judiciously used to make sure the final shape was right. Steel bolts were used to join bamboos together, and cement grout injected into the bamboo nodes near the joints. To absorb the differences in diameter of bamboo pieces at joints, a steel plate larger than the largest diameter was used. This plate also acts as a stopper for the cement grout in which the bolt is embedded.

CHOOSING THE PLANTS

Mohan Rao of Integrated Design, Bangalore, was responsible for landscape design (‘greening’ the dome). He describes the complex task:

“A two-hour drive would take us to nurseries where I would choose a plant, whose name was noted based on the nursery person’s pronunciation in Mandarin, validated and corrected by another Chinese person later. This then was used to track down the nearest common Mandarin/English plant name. More tantrums and sleepless nights led to its Latin name, all of which were recorded based on its growth character, flowering season, water requirement, medicinal properties, etc. I personally did this with the help of two Indians, two Shanghainese, one French [person] and one Chinese-American over five weeks. The compiled list was vetted and the species shortlisted in subsequent visits — four times over!”

To Rao’s dismay, the challenges of intercultural communication almost led to his work being overlooked by the contractors. Some quick action — involving Rao clambering about on the dome to redraw the pattern within a few hours — saved the day.

THE TREE OF LIFE

The pattern on the plant-covered dome is derived from the stone carved jali depicting the ‘Tree of Life’, in the Siddi Syed Mosque in Ahmedabad. The ‘branches’ are beaten copper sheets, and literally hold the entire composition together. A variety of plant material that changes with the seasons, represents the ‘leaves’. The tree pattern visually integrates the energy-producing components of the pavilion (the photovoltaic panels and aero generator), and helps the pavilion always ‘face’ the viewer, no matter what angle it is seen from.

This article was first published in Business Standard on July 18 2010

Sabarmati - An alternate perspective

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Published in

LA Journal 36

The Sabarmati Riverfront Development, both as an idea four decades ago and approaching reality now, has raised interesting and at times acrimonious debates on the larger questions of development, design polemic and environmental concerns, specifically as relevant in the Indian context. Interventions in the public realm are never free of such debates or controversies, increasingly so when the larger development vision is driven by a select few. While one has to recognize that it is simply not practical to address every single viewpoint in such public projects, it is critical that the vision in principle address a larger spectrum of concerns that balances society, culture, environment and of course economics.

Much has been written about the physical and spatial design of the Sabarmati Riverfront Development; as much on its impact on traditional social fabric, issues of equity and so on. This article intends to situate the debate around issues of environment and ecology.

Of course, it is quite futile to separate these issues and examine them independent of each other in a transitional society such as ours unless one takes an extremely narrow and limited view of development.

Every society has developed specific and unique responses to the natural environment. Traditional societies in particular tend to relate to elements of nature in a manner that is beyond the utilitarian and mundane. Cultural practices evolved over millennia recognize, respect, internalize and respond to these elements that respects their intrinsic and dynamic nature. Rivers in particular evoke not merely ideas of recreation or real estate but of an essential connectedness with nature; frequently invoked in spiritual, religious or cultural events. It has been particularly distressing to note the extreme disengagement of India’s planning and development processes from lakes and rivers over the past half a century. Cities have continually turned

their backs- literally and figuratively – to river systems that in most instances have been the originators have settlements. A sudden shift to engineering and technology based system for managing water needs has meant that the role and percieved value of natural water systems vis-à-vis cities has taken a serious beating. Rivers are seen as little more than nuisances to be tolerated and at best used to serve human needs in the form of a convenient drainage channel. A rich tradition of long-standing hydraulic civilization has effectively been buried under ‘slums’, landfills and sewage works. In this context, the Sabaramati Development is certainly a distinct and welcome break from the standard way of acknowledging rivers in cities.

Sabarmati is typical of the smaller river systems in peninsular India and essentially a seasonal river whose flow depends on the rainfall in its catchment in the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan. The very nature of such river systems transforms >

> the landscape they meander through between extremes – a dry river bed that can be walked across to a raging torrent. While such systems are ‘understood and tolerated’ in their natural setting, they start becoming ‘inconvenient’ when seen through specific design frameworks. As stated in the EIA report of 2007, “The Sabarmati is a monsoon river that remains partially dry for most part of the year. But for water from the Narmada canal that met it upstream of Ahmadabad, the Sabarmati lacked aesthetic appeal. Its (riverfront) is unlikely to be an inviting public place conducive to cultural and recreational activities.”

It is extremely important to understand this philosophical shift in the framework of aesthetics that does not see the river as the original reason for the city’s coming into existence rather it questions the nature of and reason for the river’s existence in the city

The stated vision for Ahmedabad to become a ‘world class’ city can be a useful starting point to understand some of the shifts and conflicts between perceptions and goals of ‘designer’ and the ‘designed for’.

It is not too surprising to note that visions of world class city is invariably rooted in the Neverland of leisure. What is surprising though is the kind of leisure that is seen as aspirational, as elaborated on the official website. “It’s like a dream that one lives. Waking up by the river, driving down the riverside; board meeting with vast blue vista in the background and then a cruise across the water for a power lunch on the other bank… And then, a dinner on the gloating restaurant with family to chill out…In the midst of concrete and steel that is the dream that city planners are conjuring for apnu Amdavad.” The process of diverting and disciplining an otherwise ugly and bothersome river does yield dividends, it seems.

As declared by a prominent thought leader like KPMG, the Sabarmati Riverfront Project is in the list of ‘100 Most Innovative Projects’ (1) ; hailing it as a project towards urban regeneration and environmental improvement, which will transform the river as a focal point of leisure and recreation”. Words such as ‘urban regeneration’, ‘environmental improvement’ and ‘innovative’ seem to often describe and decorate the development, albeit in a prosaic

manner and here in lies the contradiction between the construed and the constructed. Depending on the lens from which the development is viewed - environment, social integration and equality, urban place making, infrastructure or political - the hierarchies of contradiction or the ‘lost opportunities’ may differ but nonetheless are significantly cumulative towards ‘Sabarmati’s Sorrow’ (2)

It is easy enough to see the contradiction between the ground reality of a shifting, dynamic and living water system with myraid facets and the ‘requirement’ of a constant and unchanging canvas to help the city arrive on the global map of modernity. Specially when one’s vision of what is ‘modern’ is itself rooted in such a disconnected and irrelevant plane.

As disturbing as the shift in one’s perception and relationship to natural systems in our cities, equally so in our response to such systems. It does not take years of studies to understand that peninsular river systems based on the monsoon in tropical India are vastly different from snow-fed ones in temperate Europe. That riverside cities with>

> centuries of history anywhere in the world have distinct and often unique relationships to the rivers that were the seed of their birth. Ignoring these simplistic trusims have in fact been the cause of much conflict in the case of Sabarmati Riverfront development both intellectually as well as physically. Attempting to articulate a river system that can change from a few metres in cross sectional flow to several hundred metres in a matter of weeks is an extreme challenge in any environment. The challenge is compounded when the desired end result is a predetermined model drawn from distant cultures and climates. It is unfortunate that the obviously alien aesthetic framework imposed on the river is continually justified with what basically amounts to pseudo-science. The principal designer has been reported and quoted extensively in the media on the concept of controlling a river system based on hydrological principles. ‘Pinching the River’ is a fond phrase of the architect which refers to the ‘art’ of training and controlling the river so that it does not flow into the city's nullahs and floods the low-lying areas’... “…If you want to reach plants some distance away, you tighten your grip on the hose so that the water spurts out further. This does not affect the flow of water in the hose. In the same manner, narrowing the river will not interfere with the natural flow of water.” (3) It is interesting to note the designers’ imaginative metaphor comparing the river to that of a hose pipe. While it is true that both convey water from point A to point B, the similarity stops exactly there.

The questions posed are pertinent, as the river front development reflects an attitude of entitlement to the environment rather than acknowledging the river as an invaluable natural resource. By equating river ecology to ‘hose piped water’, the project envisages a sad understanding of the Sabarmati merely as an aesthetically pleasing ‘water feature’ to benefit human pleasures and rarely makes an attempt to comprehend the embodied ecological dynamics associated with it. Rather than traversing the universal ‘promenade approach’ and by recognizing the non-perennial ecological dynamics of the river system, the development could have dared to “look at alternate water management

techniques (both storm and waste) to connect the city back to water, re-defining the edge, defining accessibility mixed with utilities and to bring about a dynamic landscape, a hard and a softscape which at times would be flooded and some parts retained, thus making one observe an ever changing and dynamic phenomenon.” (4) It would have certainly been interesting to see the completely varied solutions that could have been derived if, rather than stressing on the heroics of ‘channelizing the river’, the designers had explored a more nuanced or literate dimension so as to “evolve a strategy for the development of a coherent urban system which is capable of handling the pressures of a fast developing city” . It is rather unfortunate that ‘the vision is limited to focus on the development of the riverfront on either side of the Sabarmati by constructing embankments and roads, laying water supply lines and trunk sewers, building pumping stations, and developing gardens and promenades. (5)

In the end, though the project claims to address problems of flooding, sewage treatment, and “removal of slums” and providing a plethora of trade opportunities to the city, for the city of Ahmadabad it’s an immense and invaluable opportunity lost. Lost in terms of addressing development issues that negotiates between ground realties and political visions; of positioning and conceiving a development (that was most definitely required considering the lack of open spaces in the city) not in an overbearing manner but more in terms of strategic interventions and localization. A lost opportunity in addressing relations of river floodplains and urban development, one that recognizes contextual hydrology and ecology and is not fraught with Western ‘concretisizing’ techniques to achieve sweeping narratives of progress, beautification and cleanliness as seen and associated with the present development model.

If the Sabarmati project is the leitmotif in the context of river and waterfront redevelopment projects now popping up in Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Surat, Kolkata and Lucknow, then the larger

questions that looms the planning and design fraternity of the country is the understanding of our hydraulic civilization traditions. 'It is paradoxical that the old, low-tech/low-coat and rich systems of irrigation networks, tanks, ponds and ghats are not maintained and, in fact, disappearing, while largest investments are being made to build new dams, contain water in pipes and embank riverfronts. Urbanization and flood control are not developed in tandem, but in different sectors and often with contradictory consequences.” (6) . The design fraternity undertaking such ‘mega-projects’ probably needs to engage in a more multi-disciplinary approach that equates demands of ecology, pressures of development, associated livelihood, contextualization of ‘recreation’ and more importantly recognize that rivers are meandering by nature, dynamic in flow and supports living ecosystems and are not designed on a drafting board to flow in slide rule straights.

In the case of the Sabarmati Riverfront Development, it is unfortunate that the large scale intervention pays scant regard to an entire river system and limits the ‘vision’ of development to a stretch of ‘frontage’ as seen relevant to the immediacy of the city. Given the long tradition of design engagement (both traditional and contemporary) that the city is famous for, the strong economic climate of the region and the overwhelming political support the development has garnered, the intervention could have easily been positioned to benchmark the highest standards addressing public space engagement as well as the future of development in transitional societies. Rather than recreate insipid versions of riverfronts from the Seine or the Thames, the Sabarmati Riverfront could easily have leap frogged a century of design thought, demonstrating effective integration of natural systems, cultural appropriateness and development needs. It would have been extremely interesting to examine how dynamic river systems could have been understood, addressed and articulated in a manner that other public projects in the country could emulate for decades to come.

(INDIA Behind the Lens, Aug 2012)
(Darryl D’Monte, Frontline, January 2011)
(Darryl D’Monte, Frontline, January 2011).
(Choudhuri, P. (2009), Re-structuring the development along a non-perennial river. Case: Sabarmati river,CEPT University, Master Thesis, Ahmedabad)
(Darryl D’Monte, Frontline, January 2011).
Shannon, K. (2008), 'South Asian Hydraulic Civilizations', in: Water urbanism, Amsterdam: SUN

From the Sabarmati’s point of view

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Riverfront development shouldn't be about just beauty and aesthetics. It should address issues of environment and ecology too.

Throughout history, rivers have been our emotional connect to nature, an essential ingredient of religious or cultural events. Today the same rivers are no longer viewed as an integral part of our lives but merely as a thing of beauty or as a convenient drainage system, depending on our whims and fancies. The riverfront development project along the Sabarmati, which spans a 11 km stretch through Ahmedabad, is no different.

The Sabarmati is a peninsular monsoon river, fed from the catchment area in the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan that remains dry for the most part of the year. However, during the rainy season, the surface of the river stretches from a few metres to several hundred metres in a matter of weeks. The riverfront project has been hailed as a move towards urban regeneration & environmental improvement, which will transform the river to a focal point of leisure and recreation.

That may be true, but the bottom line is that we will be replacing a shifting, dynamic living water system with a constant, unvarying, modern concrete canvas- all in the name of urban development.

To attempt to design the riverfront on a pre-existing model drawn from foreign cultures and climatic conditions is folly. Instead, what needs to be acknowledged is that a river is an invaluable resource and should not be treated as a hose pipe system, that can be conveniently ‘pinched’ to control its flow or direction. Instead of blindly following the western system of concretising, we need to better understand our own heritage, our emotional links to water, and our rich, vibrant traditions.

Scope of the project

The project will reduce the riverbed from a variable width of 600-300 m to a fixed width of 275m [1]. Rather than channelizing the river, a far more interesting option would have been to develop a pulsating, living landscape around it. Instead of concretising the entire area, an option of both hard & soft land, some bricked up and some left as an open expanse, which at times would be flooded, and occasionally dry and retained, would create an ever changing dynamic picture with the river as the focal point. The river would

be seen as a spiritual and historical entity with a life and breath of its own and not just as something to be simply 'controlled'!

Unfortunately, today we would rather invest huge amounts to build dams, piped water systems and embank riverfronts. The expected cost of this project is to the tune of Rs. 15 billion, which will be covered by the sale of parts of the riverfront (15%) to private investors, as well as by funding from the JNNURM programme [1].

Systems of the past

How easily we forget our existing local technology, our low cost & rich system of irrigation networks, our tanks, ponds and ghats, which though traditional and a complete eco system by themselves, sadly are ill maintained and fast disappearing.

What is essential is to look at the entire river system as a whole, and not ‘develop’ an isolated stretch or ‘frontage’ for any river. Designers need to recognise rivers, to understand them as a meandering, living entity, dynamic in nature, which cannot conveniently be straightened and designed on drafting boards.

Instead of an insipid copy of riverfronts in developed countries, like on the Siene & the Thames, the riverfront project would have set the bar higher had it incorporated a holistic design, integrating our magnificent traditional natural systems, our cultural appropriateness and development needs. And then the river too would have the space and the time to breathe and meander gracefully, following its eternal natural rhythm as she has been doing till date!

The article 'An Alternative Perspective: Sabarmati Riverfront Development ' has been published in LA, Journal of Landscape Architecture.

[1] Trying to be 'sustainable' & 'global': Sabarmati riverfront development project

Bengaluru Master plan: Will RMP 2035 meet the fate of RMP 2015?

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Citizens who participated in a discussion organised by CIVIC Bangalore today vehemently called for an effective mechanism for proper implementation of the Master Plan of BDA. The discussion was held in the light of BDA calling for inputs from citizens to its proposed Revised Master Plan (RMP) for 2035.

P S S Thomas, retired IAS officer and former chairman of the Advisory Committee on RMP 2015, who made the opening remarks, stressed the need for citizens to be involved at all stages of the planning process and not merely at the final draft stage. All 30 sister organisations, such as BWSSB, BESCOM, BMTC, etc., also needed to be involved in the consultation process, which had not happened during the drafting of RMP 2015.

There was no Action Taken Report on BDA’s website on RMP 2015 and no analysis of what challenges were faced and how they were met during its implementation except for the cryptic statement that "challenges were experienced during the implementation". The Advisory Committee had recommended that there should be a committee headed by the Chief Secretary to review the implementation of RMP 2015 but this had not been set up.

As such there was no institutional arrangement to monitor implementation of the Master Plan. Thomas also emphasised the need for civil society organisations to strengthen their own capacities for responding to the plans and for BDA to take ownership of the Plan and its implementation. He lamented the lack of an attempt at growth with equity in the plans.

Anjali Mohan, Consulting Urban and Regional Planner, emphasised the need for building in the process of involving citizens and other line agencies of the government at every stage of the planning while submitting the Request for Proposal itself to the consultants.

The necessary finances and time-frames too for this process needed to be built into the bid. Though training and capacity building of BDA had been undertaken during the roll out process of RMP 2015, it did not bring in ownership of the Plan and its implementation by BDA. It was essential to ensure that RMP 2035 did not meet the same fate. She also lamented the lack of consonance between the Structure Plan of BMRDA and the RMP of BDA and the fact that the plans of the BWSSB, BESCOM, BMTC and BDA "never talked to one another".

Anjali cited the example of Delhi Development Authority which had called for all line agency plans and consolidated them into the master plan. She also stressed the need to break down the Master Plan into local area plans as citizens could give inputs only at the local level.

Karveer of Kalyannagar Residents’ Association lamented that without a strict regulatory mechanism for implementing the zonal regulations and building bye-laws, etc., prescribed in the Plan, it would remain on paper and Bangalore would continue to develop in a haphazard way.

Dwarkanath of North Bangalore Residents’ Association questioned the very Constitutionality and legality of both BMRDA and BDA making plans for Bangalore when the 74th Constitutional Amendment required a Metropolitan Planning Committee with two-thirds elected representatives to make plans for the Bangalore Metropolitan Region and the local planning to be devolved to the urban local body, BBMP. Some others stressed the need to engage with the existing system while parallely working for the legal structures to be constituted.

The lack of a system for data-base management within BDA was highlighted by others. Vijayan Menon of the Koramangala Initaitive called on citizens’ groups to prepare a "vision document" for Bangalore within the framework of several national policies, such as the National Vendors’ Policy and the National Urban Transportation Policy, and push for its implementation by BDA through the BBMP.

Surat Safe Habitat – Planning and Design Competition

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:48:25 GMT

Theme II - “Spatial Area planning of low lying area with high flood risk” Integrated Design

While the increasing number and intensity of extreme weather events materialize the critical pace of climate change, the extent of social and spatial impacts prove the extreme vulnerability of cities and their limited capacities to respond to major ecological crisis (Haq et al, 2007). To cope with these threats, cities can no longer be apprehended as merely physical artefacts; dynamic and evolving interactions between urbanism, environment and society should inform a balanced urban development model with capacities to become reversible (Mostafavi). Given the manifestations of urbanisation in the country, innovations to strengthen resilience capacity while mitigating impacts of climate change events need to be established to adequately respond to societal and urban imperatives.
The Indian competition “Surat Safe Habitat ” organised in partnership between the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC), Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority (GSDMA) and the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN), is an initiative that aims at stimulating debate and encourage design and planning innovations to address the challenges of urbanisation for natural and industrial risks prone areas.
Surat is located on the bank of the perennial river Tapi and close to the estuary created by the convergence of Tapi river and Arabian sea. Being a tropical coastal city, heavy monsoon rain has regularly brought floods in the river catchment areas. In the last decade, the city has witnessed two major floods, the worst being in 2006, adversely impacting low-lying areas in the city.

The 145 ha site in Ichapor selected for the competition is one such low-lying area which often gets flooded due to both the ingress of water during high tide time as also when the river overflows due to discharge from upstream dam. Besides natural hazards, the site is criss-crossed by a network of extra-high tension lines, underground gas and petroleum lines and is surrounded by petro-chemical industrial complexes. To respond to these challenges, the approach undertaken by the firm was based primarily on two parallel yet interrelated strategies of ‘land value economics’ and ‘landscape infrastructure’ that seek to inform a multidisciplinary proposal to reinvent a strategy reconciling the inherent conflicts between urbanism and ecology. In relation to the ‘natural and industrial risk’ parameters of the site (Ichapor) and its regional location, the development strategy was grounded on the potentials and limitations of the existing micro-planning tool (the Town Planning Scheme or TPS), and its necessary remodelling to provide a more equitable and balanced form of development and social structure. Within such a strategy the introduction of ‘Ecological Infrastructure’ as a design tool not only allowed reworking land dynamics and economics by equating non-built components in tandem with built fractions - as opposed to conventional notions but also derive malleable urban relations by negotiating natural (flood mitigation) and social (urban spaces) for the low lying, flood prone site.New Paragraph

1. Creating an ecology for the site

Establishing an inter-related development scheme

As a low-lying area, the assessment of regional flooding patterns has been identified as the main driver for the site development. Conceiving the site within an ecological loop allows it to be connected not just environmentally but also socially and politically to benefit from large scale strategies. It offers a regional approach that is more integrated in nature rather than one which is isolated from its large environment.New Paragraph

Establishing an inter-related development scheme

Based on the existing and future regional distribution in the Surat Region, it was critical to position the site in association and relation to its neighbouring residential and industrial developments. It is evident from prevalent development pattern that most of them are structured in isolation while ignoring neighbouring ones, containing only local services to suit present day needs while lacking larger institutional services to sustain the development. Such isolation is also evident in industrial developments creating smaller localized development patterns which have no interaction and services contributing little to the larger regional demands in social, environmental and functional terms.

A need for introducing shared services has been identified as critical to enable regional associations and promote inter-related development patterns.

Figure 1 illustrates the urban-ecological system that is proposed within the Ichapor Site. By introducing two critical functions i.e. ecological infrastructure and public amenities, the associative services generated allows for a strong inter-linkage between the residential facilities and the industrial needs that will contribute to an overall integrated pattern of development.

Performing ecological infrastructure

Ecological or Green infrastructure refers to an “interconnected green space network (including natural features, public and private conservation lands, working lands with conservation values and other protected green spaces) that is planned and managed for its natural resource and values and for the associated benefits it confers to human population” (Benedict and Mc Mahon). Part of the ecological Infrastructure, the concept of productive landscape needs to be understood and commissioned through a different set of parameters as compared to agriculture and horticulture.

It conserves natural resources while enhancing the social and economic potential of the land within the context of urban development. In the context of Surat, it aims to respond to the flooding events, acting as both a catalyst for non-irrigated cultivation as well as a mitigating measure through the effective use of wetlands. Sustained by performant mediums such as bio swales, natural ground cover, soft treatment of the river edge, phyto-remediation, floodplains, etc, productive landscape allows a more measured and appropriate response to the hydrological demands of the site.

By correlating urban development with the performance of productive landscape and more largely with ecological infrastructures, it reduces the reliance on engineered systems and allows the flood waters more malleable and organic space. For instance, flood plains provide space for storage and conveyance during periods when the flow exceeds channel boundaries and hence ensure adaptation to flood frequency and intensity. They reduce flood velocities and peak flow rates by out-of-stream bank passage of storm water through dense vegetation.

In contrast to natural systems, construction of embankments along the Tapi river and its canals in Surat is bound to worsen the problems of floods with time. By confining the flood waters to the river channel and a narrow passage, embankments force the sediment load which would have ideally been deposited over a much wider area into a limited channel, resulting in higher flood levels and increased flood water velocity. By depriving the wider flood plains of the sediment deposits left behind by receding flood waters, it reduces the natural fertility of river banks which is vital for sustenance of agriculture.

To effectively demonstrate the higher performance and values of Ecological infrastructures, a detailed set of parameters has been assessed and compared to engineered and centralized infrastructure through multiples indices including maintenance, implementation, flood mitigation, environmental, social and economic benefits.

Materializing site development

The physical form of the site plan has been derived from several conflicting forces acting on-ground: the water course and annual flooding footprint, embedded gas lines and high tension power lines, limited access bound by railway corridors, etc.

A mixed land-use structure with shops fronting the main road encourages continuous pedestrian activity and hence safer streets. The massing of the built form is staggered and provides for terraces and plazas that help in mutually shading the building as well as the pedestrian street below. The residential land use is one level above the ground plane on arterial roads and raised on stilts along intermediate roads, ensuring maximum flood protection. The built-edge engages pedestrian movements through a multitude of activities occurring at various levels, as opposed to being a rigid physical and visual barrier between the street and the building.

In addition to large areas of productive landscape, specific open spaces are identified to serve the needs of neighbourhood. The built and green space structures alternate along the main arterial road in

a manner which ensures at least one edge of the road always connects directly with the green network. At critical nodes, this edge is treated as a public plaza that extends into the productive landscape increasing pedestrian accessibility.

The spaces rendered unbuildable by the power lines are transformed into a productive landscape model while ensuring all safety norms. The landscape is treated such that there is a constant presence of protective and productive landscape. While the ground over the embedded lines itself would be planted with shallow rooted seasonals, the ground away from the lines is progressively planted with second and third tier vegetation of a more permanent nature, culminating in a dense tree cover along the edge of the buffer zone. At the junctions of the crossing over the railway track, the edge of the landscape is raised and merged at the level of the freight line so as to embed the track within the landscape and create a seamless plane of movement.

2. Re-defining an equitable model for development

Along with the physical design which aims to implement adaptable mitigation measures, a new model for development has been defined to respond to the limitations of Town Planning Scheme in the context of industrial and natural hazards, and hence ensure wider benefits of local communities

Being a micro-planning tool, the Town Planning Scheme (TPS) promotes land transformation mechanisms whereby land parcels are reshaped and re-adjusted without transferring ownership (S. Ballarney, 2008). While a portion of land parcels are appropriated for roads, infrastructure and public amenities, it is nevertheless assumed the overall land value will increase several times as plots become more organised and accessible with better infrastructure.

Given the low-lying flood prone nature of the area and the numerous extra high tension lines that traverse the site, many parcels are affected by a high degree of exposure to natural and industrial hazard risks. Future development will further exacerbate the disparity between owners as plots with lesser risk will be developed first– increasing their value - while the remaining plots with higher risk will most likely remain undeveloped and be considered as “undesirable”. The inequity among owners will severely compromise the economic and social balance of the entire Town Planning Scheme. Unfortunately, the existing legal framework does not make provision to assess externals risks (both industrial and natural hazards) and compensate owners for the lost of land value.

To mitigate the existing risks, the proposed physical planning has clearly assigned lands suitable for built development and land not suitable for built development but with economically productive urban functions i.e. productive landscapes.

Given the inequitable risk distribution on the site, defining an equitable sharing system that should neither compromise the owners’ rights nor the land value has constituted a critical objective of the approach.

To this end, the proposed model suggests that all the individual parcels shall be unified together to form a single site treated as a single physical and financial entity (using land pooling mechanism). As land is pooled together and not subdivided, development right shall be defined uniformly for the entire site and then shared between individual land owners proportional to their initial land holding. Having demonstrated the value of ecological infrastructure, the development right encompasses the productive performance of the land and includes a share of the built-up right and a share of un-built right (i.e. Productive landscape).

By establishing the economic worth of the ecological infrastructure, the new model for development demonstrates the gain and benefit ecosystems services can deliver to local communities. By moving from a land ownership right to a pooled development right based on land performance, it balances the spatial inequity of the site to ensure an improved social and economic cohesion among land owners. As a result, the proposed area becomes a resilient and sustainable development, socially viable, naturally stable and one that relates to its regional forces of urban distribution. More importantly, the proposal is conceived as a prototypical development whose urban relations and development issues could be scaled and differentiated to meet the demands and forces within the given disaster prone region.

References

Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) (2009), “Responding to the urban climate challenge”, Eds. ISET, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 60 p.
Ballaney S (2008), “The Town Planning mechanism in Gujarat, India”, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The World Bank, 57p
Benedict M.A. and Mc Mahon E.T. (2006), “Green infrastructure, linking landscapes and communities”, Washington Island Press,
Haq S., Kovats S, Reid H. And Satterthwaite D (2007), “Reducing risks to cities from disasters to climate change”, Environment & Urbanization, Vol 19, No1, pp3-15
Mostafavi M. “Why ecological urbanism ? Why now?” in ‘Ecological Urbanism” edited by Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, pp12-51
Muller M (2007), “Adapting to climate change: water management for urban resilience”, Environment & Urbanization, Vol19, No1, pp 99-113

Land should be pooled not subdivided

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Have you wondered why a BMTC bus is forced through a narrow 9-metre road in Bengaluru? Why entire layouts come up without amenities that they city later has to somehow account for? Plenty of noise is regularly made about lack of ‘proper planning’ in Bengaluru city.

You need planners who understand how cities work, you need planners who have backgrounds of geography, economics, architecture and urban planning, says Mohan Rao.

However, it isn’t that Bangalore itself lacks qualified planners and architects to work with the city administration. One such planner and ‘urban practitioner’ as he calls himself is Mohan S Rao. Bengaluru-born Rao, 43, feels that local authorities must reverse the process of viral housing that is the result of agricultural land being contiunally divided into sites for housing. He instead advocates land pooling into larger chunks of several hundred acres for planned expansion with amenities.

Based out of Jayanagar, Mohan Rao is currently working with the Government of Gujarat and the municipal corporation of Surat for planning an orderly expansion of that city. He is a trained landscape architect from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. Rao’s firm, Integrated Design (InDe), is a professional design firm providing consultancy services for environment design, regional planning and landscape architecture. Outside India, InDe is involved with urban planning for cities in Morocco, Libya, France, Italy and China.

How is it that an accomplished planner is able to help other cities in India and even across the world, and not his own beleaguered home town? Citizen Matters caught up with Mohan Rao in a freewheeling conversation last month on the backdrop of ‘Imagining Cities’, a week-long conference organised at Chitra Kala Parishath. Readers, be prepared for a close-to-home explanation from an expert who actually does what he talks about.

The mess that Bangalore’s infrastructure has become, is this really a planning disaster or a political disaster that planning can’t fix?

It’s both, the planning disaster is the bigger one and it’s easier to fix.

Why is the planning disaster easier to fix?

First of all you really need to look at the institutions that do this. They have no internal capacities to understand these issues that plague our city. They keep on producing band-aids after band-aids without understanding what the organism is all about. You cannot have piece-meal consultancies that deliver a fly over system somewhere else, a park or a lake management system. It has to be coordinated.

Let’s move to the violation side of planning. A lot of people complain that the setbacks required for 40×30 sites are so out of touch that people will just build out their house on the entire site and violate byelaws anyway. What do you think should change in the bye laws to cut down the number of planning violations that are happening?

Legitimising violations is not the answer. To reduce the violations first of all you need to understand why they happen. Because they are based on a very sad premise of land sub-division. You cannot have endless amount of land sub-divided into little pieces no bigger than a handkerchief for individual people. What kind of a city are we building? Can you, for example, start looking at land pooling and say I am not going to give permission to every 3 acre or 5 acre piece of land that comes in for conversion irrespective of the fact that they are in the CDP and in the right zone.

Can you explain to a lay person what is land sub-division?

Land sub-division, for example, say, I own three acres of land on Sarjapur road; I have been a farmer all my life. Now the prices have gone up and I will go to the district commissioner and submit a proposal and sub-divide it in to 50 or 60 or 100 sites or whatever it can take and that‘s it. For this land, as a developer or as the final owner, I am in no way responsible for any services that have to be provided here.

Will the BWSSB say sorry you cannot build here because we cannot give you water? Can the BMTC say we cannot stretch our mobility till here? And then you want to have more cars or vehicles or whatever. Then you say you say there’s no parking space, you need bigger roads.

So you are saying the problem begins in the process of housing being created by land sub-division in a way that is completely unrelated to all the other infrastructural needs of the area?

Absolutely. You need, for example, urban services to work. You have now urban transportation, BMTC buses negotiating 10 metre wide roads because they are now declared as main roads that go into a locality!

New housing (layouts) are added to the city without any provisioning for water, transportation links to the layout, etc. We assume that all these citizens are going to have vehicles and they will find their own way to work.

Have I planned a bus terminus which can cater to the 30,000 living there? The bus terminus just happens to find a place and blocks the road. It’s not just a question of size but of vision and integration.

What is done in other cities or other countries that do it well that links the process of land and housing creation?

You don’t even have to go outside the country. Within the country there are lots of good examples where the first thing that you need to do is you need to have a minimum of land that needs to be converted.

For example if we assume that the BMRDA is now a functioning body and you have a vision for the city that says this is the housing sector industry…the people of the area will need to pool in land and have an approved layout that works together. It cannot work individually as pieces of land. So if there are 40 farmers in the area and there is a proper process for notification and inviting and pooling. When you are doing collectively you can have you playground, parks or public facilities without compromising on your housing and development need.

So you are saying layouts should be much larger than what they are now so that everybody pools land together and it has enough infrastructure.

Not just larger, they need to be better integrated.

City’s layouts need better integration

So like MICO Layout or Bankers’ Colony or Canara Bank Housing Colony, Vijaya Bank Housing Society, all this housing that’s coming up and all these society layouts. We have just been slapping them into the city wherever land was allocated. How else would you actually see it happening?

Look at these layouts; they have no public institutional space. Where will hospitals go? Where will educational sector go? Where will playgrounds go? We do have norms that say 30% of the area should go for civic amenities and sites. That 30% we know very well is invariably converted to some or the other commercial use. It becomes a marriage choultry or it becomes something else that earns back the money. Where do the public amenities go?

Is there some way I can introduce the question of mobility in to this. We assume that all these citizens are going to have vehicles and they will find their own way to work. Have I planned a bus terminus which can cater to the 30,000 living there? The bus terminus just happens to find a place and blocks the road. It’s not just a question of size but of vision and integration.

Can you give a example of a particular city which has been doing this well?

Surat has done a nice start. Simply because of experience. Because I am involved in the exercise I can say so. Land pooling as a mechanism has been mandated by the State and Gujarat Town Planning Act is strong about this.

Give us an example of what that means. What is land pooling doing there?

For example, now Surat has to extend one part of the city like a layout because of housing and industry demands. So it has notified a certain parcel of land. It is about 400 acres. Now all the land owners, by law, have to pool their land and get a scheme approved by the municipal commissioners which will cater to all the demands that the city has on that piece of land. It is not just a piece of real estate but it has all these responsibilities to the city.

These, let’s say, of 400 acres land there are about a 100 owners of various land holding sizes, they have been pooled in together and the city puts certain conditions that these are the minimum that will be surrendered back to the city like a police station, a bus terminus, a school and the rest of the plots are mandated within the larger vision. You can’t just put in anything you want there. So much area is commercial, so much area is residential and so on and that is how land pooling works and now you know that this whole area will work together and because the city is involved, the city also has a responsibility to provide basic services there.

We (Bengaluru) have also expanded along Kanakapura road, we have expanded along Sarjapur road, we have expanded along Whitefield road.

None of these are planned expansions. You travel along any of these roads and what is worse is if you travel between these arterial roads. Arterial roads are where big developments happen. What happens on the inside? Every farmer who had a 2-acre and 3-acre plot has sub-divided it and sold it as sites.

They haven’t pooled it with other farmers who sold their land?

They don’t care what happens after their site ends. So they are filled with these 6 metre and 9 metre roads. They are terribly congested. There’s no way the city can reach services in to those areas. So you will have violations. Every site will end up having bore well. It is much worse than having a building violation.

We don’t need amend any laws to allow organised expansions

There is no requirement to any kind of amendment to the law. The law is strong enough as it is. The law recognises pooling. It’s a question of implementation and more important than the implementation is the matter of interpretation of the law. Right now we are interpreting in the shortest and the most shoddy manner possible.

Which is the right agency to do ensure land pooling?

It has to come from local planning agencies. What those local planning agencies are, can vary depending on the landscape we are talking about. In Bangalore’s case it will certainly have to rest with the BMRDA, which will set out a vision. And within the larger vision, there can be many possibilities. Giving power to the Deputy Commissioner (district revenue head) or some other official for granting conversion of land is completely senseless because they have no clue what a city in their district needs or how the city needs to grow.

Bengaluru’s planners – what needs to change?

You said in a related conversation to me there are not enough architects and urban planners employed within Bengaluru.

Absolutely. Architects are not at all in the picture in the scale that we are talking about. You need planners who understand how cities work, you need planners who have backgrounds of geography, economics, architecture, urban planning.

What kind of planners does Bengaluru now have?

We actually don’t have any. In probably the entire city of Bangalore, at least in the municipal agencies, the BDA and the BMRDA put together will have a dozen planners employed.

But there is a department of town planning in the state government that seems to appoint people with town planning roles that go in to municipalities.

Yes, but if you look at the size of the city that we are talking about and the capacity that is needed, BDA has all of, the number may be wrong, two or three planners. For a city of 60 lakh people spread over a 1000 kilometres, you can’t have three people doing this job and blaming them that they are doing a bad job. It is a reflection on us as we don’t even recognize this as a need for this city.

What is the benchmark? Is there one for other cities that you are intimately familiar with, where you have an idea that for this size, this population, this should be the number of planners that they ought to have?

Well, for example, DDA, Delhi Development Authority, probably has close to a 100 professionals, internally for their organisation. It’s not the question of just qualification, like I said, you could have specializations. You could be a landscape architect; you could be a geographic planner.

Mumbai probably has, you know, maybe half that number, maybe fifty or sixty. It’s still a sizeable number. Bangalore does not even have a fraction of that.

But BBMP will argue that they have got town planning kind of designation, at the zonal level, people who have approved plan sanctions..

We don’t need planners to approve a plan. We need planner to make the plan. Who envisions what the city will be like, twenty years down the line? Do we continue to allow individuals and developers to define what my city will be? Every one acre and two acre is sub-divided and declared commercial or industrial and if somebody approves it, where is the larger vision?

How should the larger vision come about, to account for the massive socio-economic variations in Bengaluru?

It should come from a nodal agency like the BMRDA (Bangalore Metropolitan Regional Development Authority). Whether they do it by appointing a 100 consultants or appointing a 100 staffers it does not matter. That’s only a question of a process. But we still do not have a vision for the city. Each time we have a problem then we ask ‘BMTC to put in another 100 buses’.

Do you feel that the city council should actually come up with a vision for the city or the state cabinet should come up with a vision for the city?

No, it should not be the state cabinet at all.

They (cabinet ministers) are the one who usually do the talking about Bangalore. The city council usually seems sidelined.

Correct, that’s where the money is I guess but they (cabinet) are in no way either technically or constitutionally mandated to be doing this.

The article 'Land should be pooled not sub-divided continuously' was originally published in Citizen Matters.

Who controls the parks in your layout?

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:30:00 GMT

If you are living in gated community – be it apartments or a layout with independent homes- did you know that your builder would have had to relinquish the parks (you paid for) to get the layout plan sanctioned?

Bengaluru’s townplanning rulebook says apartment complexes with an area more that 20,000 square metres must relinquish parks to public. Likewise layouts – whether ‘gated’ or not – have to relinquish parks to the public too. While some layouts have relinquished albeit reluctantly, some have sued the BDA for it and some are clueless about a rule like this. Authorities on the other hand continue react on a case-to-case basis with no clear-cut policy on implementation.

Some parks in M S Ramaiah city still sport boards restricting public entry. Pic: Navya P K

According to the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) 2015, Residential Development Plans (RDP) should relinquish 10% of their land for parks and open spaces, while layouts should relinquish 15% of their area for the same. While some communities allow the public to use the parks with some restrictions, others do not allow public in at all. RDPs are apartment complexes with area greater than 20,000 sq.ms. In Bengaluru’s CDP RDPs are different from layouts.

‘Private’ layouts, public parks?

Take a walk in the parks in M S Ramaiah South City in JP Nagar on an evening. You are likely find very few non-residents using the park. Legally, the park is public as it was relinquished to BDA while obtaining plan sanction for the layout. It is now supposed to be a BBMP park, as BDA handed over the layout to the Palike in 2007.

But among the five parks in the 45-acre layout, some still have boards that say ‘Entry restricted: To residents only’. Mainly the residents use the parks, though there would be couple of outsiders during the evenings. A visitor, who was not a resident of the layout, said, "You can use the park, but it is the residents’ property. If they ask you to leave, you have to go." Another said that he was not sure if he could use the park.

There are no security guards restricting entry, but it is apparent that non-residents are not encouraged to use the park. A resident of the layout says, "It is the residents’ property, but it is your decision as an outsider, you have to think about whether it is right of you to use the park."

KHVR Sagar Holla, General Secretary of the layout’s RWA, says that the boards restricting entry would be removed, and that the residents are accepting of outsiders now. "Earlier many residents were ignorant of the rules. Now we are educating them about this. We do not place any restrictions on public using the park, but after 10 pm those who use the parks and internal roads would be questioned by security guards," he says. There is also fear among residents as incidents of chain snatching and robbery have occurred there recently.

The residents’ reluctance to open the park to public is not just due to security concerns, but also because the park is still maintained by them, with very little help from government agencies. RWA member Eswaraiah says that the residents spend around Rs 50,000 per month for maintaining the parks – this includes gardening, pumping of borewell water for watering lawns etc. Holla says that BBMP’s Horticulture Department had once supplied 400 saplings for planting in the parks, but that there has been no other support.

Unlike MS Ramaiah South City, many layouts and RDPs in the city do not allow public to use their parks at all. For example layouts like Chaithanya Samarpan and Akshaya Red Stone in Kadugodi, adjoining Whitefield, restrict public in parks.

RDPs like Brigade Millennium and L&T South City in Puttenahalli, also place such restrictions. R Rajagopalan, Vice-President of the L&T South City’s apartment owners association SUGRUHA, says that maintenance required would be higher if park is opened to public. "There would be vendors too, especially since the park in complexes like ours and Brigade Millennium’s are located along the internal road marked for public use. In MS Ramaiah South City, the parks are located away from the thoroughfare; many people do not even know about parks inside the layout," he says.

RDPs and layouts are different

Also, in RDPs, the parks are usually the only patch of green in the middle of high-rise apartments. This is unlike Ramaiah City, which has only independent houses in its 300 occupied sites. Also residents in Ramaiah City are required to pay only Rs 325-650 for common area maintenance per month, which is much lesser than what residents of apartment complexes pay.

BDA also appears to give more freedom to RDPs than layouts with respect to park maintenance. E Imbavalli, Technical Assistant (Banglore North), says, "In layouts, parks by default come under the BDA; the RWA can maintain those only if BDA lets them. In layouts like MS Ramaiah North City (Nagwara), HBCS layout and Vyalikaval layout, BDA itself maintains parks, not RWAs. But in RDPs, residents can maintain the park and restrict timings for public use."

BDA Commissioner Bharat Lal Meena says that residents have first rights over parks. But he adds that "Parks are government property and residents cannot stop public from using it. But they can put restrictions to ensure security."

Meena’s statement seems to be only a subjective interpretation of the law. The CDP does not mention anything about the extent of authority residents can have on relinquished property; it only says that residents can maintain these spaces with BDA’s permission.

In some layouts, the park area remains undeveloped as it is ignored after relinquishment. In Amar Jyothi layout in Domlur, three sites were relinquished – one for park and two for civic amenities. All three areas are abandoned or occupied by encroachers. "Neither civic authorities nor residents are enthusiastic about developing these areas," says Prabhakar Alva, former President of layout RWA.

Panduranga nagar layout park is maintained by BBMP and open to public. Pic: Navya P K

In Panduranga Nagar layout off Bannerghatta road, the park area had remained abandoned for over two decades, until the RWA started developing the park two years back with Rs 1 lakh. They also appointed a staff to maintain the park. Due to fund constraints, they sought support from a BBMP Corporator.

"After this, the BBMP started developing the park. Almost 75% of the work is complete now. BBMP has appointed its own staff for maintenance; so we have no control over the park at all, but we do not mind, as it is developed," says Parameshwar Bhat, Secretary of the layout’s RWA.

No coherent view within BDA

If parks are going to be have to be relinquished anyway, who should be developing them? The private developer of the layout (builder) or the BDA, which sanctions the RDPs an and layouts? Even within the BDA, there isn’t coherent view on the law.

BDA’s Technical Assistants and Commissioner Meena also have different interpretations of the CDP, regarding whether parks should be developed with residents’ money. Imbavalli says that builders of layouts/RDPs only have to relinquish the area marked for parks and not necessarily develop them, to get plan sanction. But Meena, and BDA Town Planning Member S S Topgi, say that builders have to plant trees and fence the area.

Meena says, "When the builder develops the entire area, how can they leave out only the park area? If not them, who will spend the money for that?" he asks.

Rajesh, PRO at Chaithanya Builders, says, "BDA does not develop the park area after relinquishment. So eventually we develop it and hand it over to residents. Residents have no ownership; they only have the rights to use it."

Buyers of homes or plots, who bear the cost of building and maintaining the park too, are often not aware of relinquishment. Later and not surprisingly, they resist opening up parks to public. Meena does not address this concern. The only reason some of such layouts appear to let the public use their parks is that the law demands it.

In the case of L&T South City though, the apartment owners are contesting the ownership of the park itself, as the relinquishment was not mentioned in the sale documents.

Real estate agent Santosh Bhurani says that relinquishment has not yet emerged as an issue. "Builders keep quiet about relinquishment as the rule is still on paper only. BDA does not insist on letting public use parks either. In layouts BDA might interfere, but in RDPs it is assumed to be private property," he says.

Sudarshan, Technical Assistant (Bangalore South) in BDA confirms this. He says that the rules are not insisted on as BDA got the land from residents in the first place. "We have not got any complaints from public about not being able to use parks. If you want to use the park you can, who is stopping you?"

Raghavendra Rao, President of Chaithanya Samparpan Owners Welfare Association (CSOWA), says that the residents would be willing to pay higher taxes to retain the parks for themselves rather than open it to public.

Does relinquishment help?

Architect and consultant Mohan Rao says that it is BMRDA’s (Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority) responsibility to develop a plan for integrating parks. Rao runs an a design firm called InDe from Jayanagar. His latest work includes planning for the city of Surat.

"BDA gives sanction by looking at the numbers only; the vision should be BMRDA’s. Many ‘gated communities’ are 4-5 acres of land and the parks here are small patches compared to the city’s landscape. Relinquishing them does not serve any purpose; such spaces should be integrated to form a larger green space for the public."

Layouts are not islands, they should be developed by considering the realities in the neighbouring areas, says Rao

Lessons in Sustainable Hydrology from an Old Indian Empire

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:30:00 GMT

Imagine my delight when I got to interview Bangalore-based designer Mohan Rao of Integrated Design (ID), whose small, multidisciplinary firm is now working on a sustainable restoration scheme of the reservoirs around the small but legendary town of Hampi, in the Indian state of Karnataka – a World Heritage site and certainly one of most magical places on the subcontinent and where the surrounding ruins mark the historical location of the fourteenth-century South Indian empire of the Vijayanagara.

Firms such as Rao’s in India are interesting because they present alternative methodologies in an already-blossoming sustainability movement in India – synthesizing and building upon traditional/historical experiences with modern, holistic know-how to address problems of conservation and heritage preservation.

In a nation where each new, big hydrological dam spawns more environmental and social problems than it solves, Rao is busy challenging large-scale methods of resource management and hydrological restoration with alternative, sustainable and small-scaled approaches of revitalization in Hampi. Rao also recently finished up some disaster management consulting on the Nicobar Islands and an urban habitat project in Morocco.

Treehugger: Could you give us a little information on your background and why you started Integrated Design?

Mohan Rao: I am originally from Bangalore, but I’ve worked and travelled around a lot. I received the conventional bachelor’s in architecture and a master’s in landscape from School of Planning & Architecture at Delhi. After a few years of working in architecture, I was rather disillusioned with it and started ID as a conventional landscape design firm – but also quickly became disillusioned with that as well. That’s because in conventional design, everyone has strict lines between architecture versus landscape versus engineering versus site management that you are not supposed to cross. That’s why ID is a little harder to pigeon-hole because we do it all – we do a little bit of architecture, a little bit of landscape, some resource and site management and hydrology here, and sustainable restoration and consulting there.

TH: What is your focus now in the context of projects that you are currently involved with?

Rao: We have a few points of concentration now: one of them is water; another is site management, especially on smaller acreages (usually two to three); and another focus is the role of sanitation cycles. The last few years we’ve gotten involved with on-site heritage restoration and resource management at the city level.

TH: Could you describe the Hampi heritage restoration initiative and what is ID’s role within that?

Rao: Though I’ve been working in some capacity with the initiative for the last 20 years, it is the only last five or six years we became formally involved with the archaeological survey taking place there. We were asked to do the landscaping for the gardens, which attract a great number of tourists annually – but eventually it became more than just a superficial greening when we got really interested in investigating how the old empire of the Vijayanagars (1336-1646 AD) dealt with water issues in what was a very dry area. For the last 300 years the River Tungabhadra was never touched – so how did the empire get its water? So we started learning about traditional ways of rainwater harvesting and storage and came up with some very interesting findings.

We unearthed small percolation pits, detention ponds, swales and valleys which were all part of a system ensuring a year-round supply of water in the historical city of Hampi, which had about 600,000 inhabitants at that time. We were working to understand how the water supply system worked, with wells and pipes all working energy-free and integrated that awareness into our efforts.

TH: How do all these lessons from Hampi apply to current water scarcity issues in the region’s cities?

Rao: Well, today’s Hampi offers many lessons for huge living cities such as Bangalore. Over the last five years, globalization has overtaken Bangalore, with obvious things such as traffic congestion increasing eight to tenfold. It’s one of the few cities in the world that has no sizable natural water source nearby and for the last 300 to 400 years it was necessary to build small water tanks at 50 to 100 acres in size. Lakes in Bangalore used to number around 200, but none of them were large enough to satisfy Bangalore’s present demand and right now water is being pumped from 100 kilometres away. So you have these water issues that not only find their roots in history but also in the geography of the region.

Lake revitalization is usually seen as an engineer’s domain: taking out muck, building retaining walls and beautifying it with gardens. However, instead of addressing the real problem, which is not the lake itself but the quality of runoff, land use, management and so on – you can start treating it as a natural resource which has a larger bearing on the environment – it’s not just something on the map – and start from there instead.

TH: What specific measures and methods did you employ then?

Rao: We started by cleaning up and controlling the inflow using passive and biotic methods, using plants that will clean up the water, for example – as the inflow determines whether the lake will live or die (due to influx of pollutants, organic matter, etc.). We did not use any kind of machinery, and this is basic hydrology and traditional wisdom across the world.

Next, using micro-catchments are the way to go, as they are cheap, need no energy to run and don’t displace people or submerge forests. Everyone wants development but that doesn’t mean you accept every technology without question.