URBAN PLANNING

In July 2005, when 900 mm of monsoonal rains hammered Mumbai for a 24-hour period and wreaked havoc on the city’s infrastructure and housing, political leaders in Karnataka reassured us that Bengaluru was immune to flooding given its inland location some 3,000 ft above sea-level on the Deccan Plateau. Those assurances proved foolhardy. In October that year, over half of Bengaluru’s road network was inundated and thousands of homes and commercial establishments damaged following four days of unusually strong monsoonal rainfall. Floods in Bengaluru during October 2005, in Bommanahalli area. Pic: Champaka Rajagopal Ten years later, Chennai continues to reel…

Many of you may be interested in building your home on a plot owned by you. There are hundreds of private layout developers in all parts of Bengaluru, advertising all over newspapers and television. Private layouts are being developed along all the main roads from Bengaluru towards Devanahalli airport, Hoskote, Whitefield, Sarjapur, Attibele, Anekal, Jigani, Kanakapura, Mysore, Magadi, Tumkur and Nelamangala. Some of these projects are at a distance of nearly 50 kms from Vidhana Soudha. All layout developments have to fulfil legal requirements of the Land Revenue Act, the Land Reforms Act, the Town and Country Planning Act and…

Bangalore has a lot of problems. Here is a  guide to solve Bangalore's problem in 20 short steps. Cut some trees. Form a committee with a catchy name - B-SOMETHING. Involve famous citizens - KMS, NM, NN etc. Don't analyse the problem. Analysis is for losers. Cut some more trees. Come up with an absurd suggestion which will cost several thousand crores. Cut some more trees. Lament the loss of green cover in Bangalore. Assure everyone that for every tree you cut, you will plant 10 more. Hand out lucrative contracts to your friends for planting `saplings'. Start your absurd…

In his classic book, 'Ways of Seeing' John Berger says, "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. "Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it." what we know a Street for Cars and People to move what we see  what we know There must be an EDGE differentiating spaces and functions, a distinction between where the street vendor belongs, where the pedestrian walks and where the vehicles move. "We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice." And, if we were…

The Registrations for the CEPT Winter School in Ahmedabad are now open! There's a wide variety of courses and one of these is 'The Everyday City'. Sharing the details of this course below. Dates: 1st to 17th Dec 2015 Location: School of Architecture & Planning, CEPT University, Ahmedabad In India, as in other parts of the world, some of the physical development of the city is influenced by the everyday practices of its people. The urban spaces are continually transformed by social, cultural, religious, political, economic and other practices. Currently, these practices intermingle with each other and with the streets…

It is a sad reality that nowadays, by the time it's 26th Jan or 15 Aug, the flower displays are wilting and well past their prime at Lalbagh. Why do the displays have to open so much before the actual dates? Or if more days are needed for the general public to attend, surely the display could start fresh on Republic or Independence Day, and go on for a few days thereafter?

Pic: A file pic from BBMP 2010 candidates debate. It is that time again when everyone wants to make an informed choice, ahead of BBMP elections. Resident Welfare Associations are busy trying to organise meetups with candidates. Citizen Matters has compiled a guide on how to do this, with a set of questions that can be asked with a candidate. The first step is to collect information about candidates. We need your help to gather information about them and share it with us, to benefit fellow Bengalureans. You could ask them to fill this form. Alternatively, you can also gather the points…

The Bruhat Bangalore Beedhi Vyaapaari Sanghatanegala Okkoota is (Federation of Street Vendor Unions of Bangalore) is calling for a protest rally and a bundh on street vending on Monday, June 15th. The protest march is scheduled for 10 am from City railway station to Freedom Park. Thousands of vendors are expected to participate from all eight zones of BBMP. This come in the light of the spate of evictions of street vendors by Bangalore’s police (Law and Order and Traffic) and BBMP officials. While the UPA-2  has brought in the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihoods and Regulation of Street Vending)…

​The Urban Development Department (UDD) has published the draft of the Kamataka Municipal Corporations - Ward committee Rules, 2013 on May 26th 2015. Kathyayini Chamaraj, Trustee CIVIC, says they had not announced or published it on the UDD website. When Citizen Matters checked the website on June 8th 2015, the ticker on the homepage still carried the rules that were gazetted on November 10th 2014.   Kathyayini says that when she enquired about the rules on multiple visits to the UDD office, the standard response was that it would take ten days and the like. When she visited the office on June 4th…

The focus at Neralu this year was on Trees & Public spaces - including ashwath kattes, neighbourhood parks and streets. Alongside that, MapUnity developed an online platform where people could upload the location of their neighbourhood kattes, with photographs and a story. Please do log on to: Mapping the Ashwath katte if you have something to share about your own neighbourhood katte or one you’ve seen elsewhere. We hope that as we all share our stories about the Ashwath kattes we have seen and help to map them, we may uncover yet another story about the city of Bangalore - a story about its trees, its culture and…