Civic

I’m sitting at Lalbagh gardens. The sun is already strong but it doesn’t bother me. I sit in the shade of a Tree, listening to the birds. I can’t see them but know they are there somewhere up in those branches. I sense a gentle breeze. I could have been someplace else. But, I am here and I wonder: Why do gardens matter to us? Not all of the Public spaces in the city are what Lalbagh is. So, what is Lalbagh? How did it come about? How much of what Lalbagh is comes from the trees that belong here?…

It’s been nearly 10 months that the Confident Group has stopped work on their incomplete project, Antlia 1, beside NH 207 that leads to Sarjapur, Bengaluru. This project was supposed to have been completed, including all the 60 amenities, by 2010. The builder wanted to withdraw from the maintenance of this complex in October last year and convinced some owners; representatives to take over in a 'financial handover'. Financial handover, according to them was, the owners manage the complex on their own and the builder would refer maintenance personnel on a need basis. These owners’ representatives then called for a…

Report by Prasanna Vynatheya of PNLIT The event 'Raise Your Voice Bengaluru', as I understood it, was to bring those concerned people who would like to participate in their own capacity to make our Karnataka a better place for us and our posterity. The venue was NMKRV College, Jayanagar 3rd Block on Sunday the 27th Oct 2013. The lead person of the organizing group Mr. Rajeev Gowda spoke eloquently and sincerely, so too each and every one of the other seven speakers. The message was loud and clear! People come out and participate as rightful citizens of this nation, demand quality in all…

It is really the small changes, the ones that you see everyday, but don’t quite remember seeing, that seem to change a Street. As one street changes from being a quiet street to being a busy street, somewhere else another street begins its transformation. Every changing street changes its neighbourhood, and every changing neighbourhood changes the city. The small changes are seen everywhere, in almost every city in India. In Bangalore, it’s the Adiga’s lane off Bannerghatta road, in Mumbai, it’s the Hill road in Bandra - streets that are “not the same anymore”. Here, in Bangalore, we have been…

  The state assembly election held in May 2013 saw people in Bengaluru coming out in large numbers to vote. There were 67.71 lakh voters on the voter roll, while population was 97 lakh in Bangalore. Everyone praised this as an achievement of election commission. However, were the voter rolls totally problem-free? P G Bhat, who is a retired naval officer and software professional, also an activist working towards quality voter rolls for some years now, traces the recent problems in Bangalore’s voter rolls. The 27 constituencies of Bangalore had more than 66.83 lakh voters in April 2012. Then as…

We spend a lot of time talking about national politics in India, with the general elections in 2014 being a subject of conversations for well over a year now. Conversations on state level politics take up the remainder of our time. In contrast, many of the problems that we face in Bengaluru on a day to day basis are municipal in nature: be it the lack of good roads and public transport, unreliable power supply, unsafe drinking water or garbage that lines our streets. Who becomes your next corporator or local council member is perhaps as important as who becomes…

People from very different walks of life gathered on a sidewalk today. The common thread linking them all was "dignity" and an inexplicable oneness. A cleaner street and gifts for people were mere by products. Over a month, led by Anjali Saini and her team, well heeled residents of communities worked side by side with BBMP garbage collectors, children, housewives, small shopkeepers and villagers. They took former black spots aka garbage heaps and open sewers and transformed them. Then they took pride in it and kept it that way. Today they came together to honour those that either made it…

A movement called Whitefield Rising has been brewing in Whitefield in the last few months. Many residents, supported by a core group of experts in the field, have got together to make the streets of Whitefeild Rising cleaner and greener. With the initial focus being the main road from Hope Farm to Kundanahalli, involved, excited and determined residents, teenagers and retired people are meeting on the streets and brainstorming. A simple format is emerging:  1) Go for a walk as a group on the street near your house 2) Identify issues 3) Begin fixing. Residents can fix a lot, it turns out! 4) Learn to work…

ROADS AND TRANSPORT - 2013 - PROBLEMS • BBMP and BDA have been slow to develop Priority Corridors (BIG 10, Outer Ring Road). As a result, vehicles don’t choose to stay on arterial roads. • Road surface quality is extremely poor, and is made worse by inadequate planning for rains. • Speed of construction is ridiculously slow. BDA /BBMP /Metro all seem in slow mode. • Over-emphasis on vehicular movement. Pedestrians and cyclists suffer as a result. • Inadequate bus fleet, plus weak last mile connectivity. At least 1500 per year needed to be added. • TTMCs in wrong locations,…

In India, as in other emerging economies, 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 of the city in a random manner. The formal plan of the city finds it difficult to account for these everyday practices due to their changing nature and because they have not been sufficiently documented or analysed. To understand this phenomenon, a series of workshops with architecture students comprising of both conceptual…