URBAN PLANNING

On the afternoon of 28th april 2014, I had set myself the task of observing two street corners at either end of Noronha road at Russell market in Shivajinagar - a corner at the Broadway street end and a corner at the St.Mary’s Basilica end (Fig.1). I am reproducing here what I noted and what I sketched there. These were ordinary activities. They probably happen everyday. I observed the urban space – how the vendors create their informal selling spaces on the street and how walkers/shoppers enter these selling spaces and engage in a bargain, a conversation or a purchase.…

The Akrama Sakrama scheme, which seeks to regularise unauthorized constructions and developments, has been one of the most contentious civic issues in Bengaluru. The scheme was initiated by the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act and Certain Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2004. This Act amended the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 1961, the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976 and the Karnataka Municipalities Act, 1964.   After this amendment was stayed by the Karnataka High Court in 2007,  having been found to be prima facie against constructional provisions, the state extended the scheme by passing amendments in 2009 and 2013.…

‘No’ means ‘No’… ‘No’ in itself is a complete sentence, it does not need further explanation. This now-famous dialogue from the movie Pink has been resonating across Bangalore over the past weeks as citizens from all walks of life have come together, in various ways, to vociferously assert their objection to a steel flyover that will connect the heart of the city, Basaveshwara Circle, to Hebbal. The 8.5-km flyover will purportedly ease the commute to the airport in a city chronically besieged with traffic woes, a claim that not many seem to have bought into. The rejection has not entirely…

The fate of the contentious steel flyover is uncertain now with the imposition of an interim stay order for four weeks by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), but the project is far from being scrapped. A media report suggests that the  the Chief Minister has ordered officials to commence work from the Hebbal side, with indications that the government may be open to consultations regarding developments south of Mekhri circle. The steel flyover has seen one of the biggest civil society mobilisations ever in Bengaluru, with very vocal public protests and petitions against the project involving people from different walks of life.…

The floods of December 2015 have made the various departments of the Government think beyond conventional solutions for Disaster Management. As part of a long term plan, the Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure and Financial Services Ltd (TNUIFSL) is currently floating a tender for an Early Warning System, that would typically predict the areas and levels of inundation depending on the rain forecast. This will take into account the level of moisture in the soil, which will increase the accuracy of the prediction. This is expected to take about 2-3 years. LiDAR mapping, a remote sensing method that uses light in…

Railway Under-Bridge near Bengaluru's Shivananda Circle is no longer an ugly, stinking, dangerous thoroughfare for pedestrians. It has been transformed in five steps: Step 1 (June 2016): Railways staff + citizen volunteers de-poster, remove garbage and transform 80% of the RUB over three days. The Ugly Indian poster-repellent design was used, with striking bright colours, to brighten up an otherwise dark and dreary under-bridge place. See the album of Spotfix no 1 here: https://www.facebook.com/theugl.yindian/photos/… Step 2 (July 2016): BBMP fixes the footpath and repairs the pathways, including installing lights Step 3 (July 2016): Railways fixes the leaking roof and trims…

In well-planned cities, the government makes the plans and the builders respond to that with project proposals - to build residential communities, commercial facilities, and so on. In our cities, the builders and individual plot owners make their proposals first, and the city then scrambles to figure out how to plan the city around that. The order in which we do things is itself wrong. Within this error, looking for solutions to 'manage' the way things are done is pointless. Which is why making the planning body for the city work - as per law - is important. People sometimes…

Pic courtesy: Janaagraha Smt G Padmavathi, Mayor, BBMP and Mr N Manjunath Prasad, IAS, Commissioner, BBMP launched the MyCityMyBudget (MCMB) programme of Janaagraha, to gather budget requests from citizens for the City Budget 2017-18. MCMB will gather budget requests from citizens’ on three tracks; 1) through workshops facilitated by the MCMB team at Resident Welfare Associations, schools, colleges, urban poor communities, workers groups and corporates, 2) online at www.ichangemycity.com, and 3) through the Budget bus that will collect inputs from citizens on the streets. Citizens can provide budget requests across any civic issue through a simple form at the workshops…

During the cabinet meeting last week, the State government decided to give a green signal to the metro rail project on Outer Ring Road (ORR), pushing aside the long pending ambitious Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) project; hopes of citizens who were rooting for BRTS or multimodal transport options were dashed. Though the proposal to introduce BRTS on the Outer Ring Road was hanging in balance for quite sometime, the plan to lay a metro line on the busy stretch has eliminated the possibility of BRTS. So why did BRTS, which was first conceptualised in 2012 and had a Detailed…

Today marks my 12th day in Bengaluru and I am proud to say my desire to take pictures of every single passing cow has subsided. Since arriving the weekend before last, I filled my phone’s camera roll with photos of cattle, likely confusing many passersby who have shared the roads with these guys their whole lives. I laughed out loud on several occasions, like when a large group of them walked right past my gate one evening, or when I moved out of the way of one only to have it move the same way putting me right back in…