City: Bengaluru

Across Bengaluru, lakes are being dug up, drained and desilted for development. BBMP is in the process of developing 67 lakes at the cost of Rs 200 crore. But the civic agency and the government have kept citizens out of the process. Citizen groups, residents and environmentalists across the city have expressed concern. They fear their neighbourhood lakes are being encroached upon or turned into soup bowl- shaped lakes that are not as biodiverse. There are fears that limited public funds are being wasted on unnecessary works. Lack of public consultation Lakes in Bengaluru are essentially commons, meant to be…

In the first of this two-part series, we discussed the quality of the building plans sanction dataset on the BBMP website. The data is potentially crucial in informing, visualising and guiding the built-form in the city. Thus, the imperative to streamline and quality-check the data collation exercise cannot be over emphasised. In the second part, we illustrate the insights from this data. The publicly available data was used to understand the direction and typology of built growth expansion across time at the city, zonal and ward scale. These insights, we argue, are critical inputs for planning and managing the city.…

For urban planners, visualising a city’s growth requires determining the extent and nature of urbanisation that the city has and is experiencing. While satellite imagery is often relied on for comprehending the built growth, this data does not provide insights on what is the ‘nature’ of the built form: i.e. residential, commercial, industrial, among others. Unscrambling the data on building plan sanctions can potentially bridge this gap in understanding. In urban areas, the built growth or construction of buildings is managed and monitored by local bodies through its Town Planning Department, the first of such management being sanctioning a building…

Siddu, DKS to take joint charge The Congress finally announced its Chief Ministerial and Deputy Chief Ministerial candidates in Karnataka on May 18th, leading Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar to tweet: “We are united to safeguard the interest of the people of Karnataka”. To 75-year-old Siddaramaiah, leader of the Congress Legislature Party, it is a dream come true for getting the second term after a gap of five years. He will be sworn-in as the 24th Chief Minister. Congress is also likely to induct 10 to 12 ministers along with him at the Kanteerva Stadium in May 20th. Both leaders…

The Urban Revamp Design Challenge – conceived by Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC) and Sensing Local, under the Sustainable Mobility Network, in partnership with the Institute of Urban Designers India (IUDI), Curiosity Alliance Foundation, and Kasturi Nagar Residents Welfare Association – is back in 2023. They are inviting proposals for reimagining two newly-identified public spaces in Bengaluru: CV Raman Nagar (Ward 117) and Padarayanapura (Ward 168). This initiative aims to blend technical expertise with citizen participation to transform certain parts of the city. About the second and first editions A common scenario experienced by rapidly urbanising Indian cities today…

Residents around Saul Kere woke up to a rude shock one December morning last year. A flex banner, with the former Mahadevapura MLA Arvind Limbavalli’s face, had been put up at the entrance to the lake, announcing its development. The lake would be drained, desilted and developed by the BBMP. The banner welcomed residents to attend the inauguration of the lake’s development by Arvind Limbavalli on December 12th. A group of concerned birdwatchers turned up at the lake on the designated day to ask the MLA and BBMP about their plans. But nobody showed up. Citizens learnt about the plan…

Bas saaru and massoppu. These curries made of mixed greens are staples in homes of Bengaluru residents. But these greens are not always bought in the market. They are also gathered from sidewalks, little strips of soil beside the road, from drains, and around lakes. The act of gathering such edible plant species, from private or public spaces in the city, is called urban foraging, and it is a common practice across the globe. Honagonne soppu (Alternanthera sessilis) foraged from lake beds in Bengaluru. Pic: Seema Mundoli Experts on local wild plants In Bengaluru, it is mainly middle-aged or older…

An old saying goes “it is better to side with the devil you know than the devil you don’t”. To me that seems the only reason for Bengaluru’s voters resisting whatever wave swept the rest of the state. Only in Bengaluru did BJP retain the 2018 number of 16 seats, even as it got washed away everywhere else. There are analyses aplenty in the media and the internet on how and why the BJP lost the state so badly. You can draw your own conclusions from them. Maybe India needs a new Long March revolution to get out of the…

As metro network expands and ridership increases in Bengaluru, crowding at metro stations will be experienced more frequently. This raises concern with regard to safety issues, stressful rides, increased travel time, among other problems. I have been commuting from home to college and back by metro since 2017. Yeshwanthpur metro station, my starting point is always heavily crowded, especially on Mondays and festival days. The metro station gets crowded as many passengers alight at the nearby Yeshwantpur railway junction. The main reason for my running late on most days is the bottleneck caused by the crowds at the ticket/token counters.…