Holistic solutions for creating an ideal city

Holistic solutions for creating an ideal city
The ideal city is one planned with a holistic approach to space and time, incorporating elements like shared commuting, well-planned, inter-connected roads, entertainment options and parking bays or vertical parking facilities
Deccan Herald


Bangalore is growing organically; defying all attempts to plan growth and in spite of impediments created by poor planning in the past. We are now on the verge of getting a new Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) for metropolitan Bangalore. What have been the guiding principles if any in this exercise? We don’t know and the powers in government have not thought fit to reveal them to us. Given the enormous potential for this city in the vanguard of India’s certain advancement to superpower status, the importance of planning with the future in mind cannot be emphasised enough. This article is an effort to think through to a solution, which could be a motivation for the public and government to start a dialogue.

Community, township or city planning must factor in the types of space used by different units of society: individual / family/ interest linked groups and the time each requires to spend in these spaces. We need a holistic approach amalgamating time and space use optimally.

Space can be broadly classified as, space to work, to live, to play, to govern and to commute.

Space to work

Workspace is easily understood as the minimum area required by an individual at his work place to effectively perform tasks. Thus ‘space to work’ can be expressed as an optimal number. Space to work is the smallest area required by the individual in the society and it can vary from 50-300 sft/person. In ITS (Information Technology Services) BTS (Bio Technology Services) or ITES (IT Enabled Services) industries, this space requirement is about 100sft/ person. In BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industries this requirement could be as low as 60sft/person. All industries, business establishments, government offices, and schools can have a 'space to work' quotient. An individual needs to spend quality time in his work place to deliver the best productivity.

Space to live

The home or residence is usually called ‘living space’,but it is better to include other essential shared space like educational institutions, hospitals and shopping malls . The space requirement for residences on an average could be considered at 800 sft/family assuming one earning member. Another 200 sft/family can be added for other essential shared spaces. So on an average total living space for a family or working individual is considered as 1000 sft. An individual spends maximum time in this space, therefore should contain all elements for good quality living.

Space to play

Play is a broad term to cover all recreational activities. This should include space for games and sports: golf, cricket, tennis, soccer, and a stadium for sports. Entertainment options would include cinemas, theatre, leisure clubs, parks, water bodies, restaurants and hotels.

In such common public facilities, as a shared space, a family or a working individual needs 300-400 sft. These facilities should be provided judiciously to match the size or class of the development (community, township and city). The quality of time spent in this space would reflect on the quality of time spent in one’s workspace and living space.

Space to govern

All government establishments for administration and public utilities like: power plants, waste and sewerage treatment plants and the like can be considered as space to govern. This space should include space to work for personnel employed in the establishment and space shared by visitors and customers. This space can be judiciously decided based on estimations of volume usage at peak. This space can be located to serve demand estimations and allotted to match the size/class of the development .The efficiency of this space will minimise visits of individuals from other work areas.

Space to commute

This space is for inter-connecting the earlier discussed spaces .The modes of connectivity could be roads, railways, waterways, airways and so on along with bus stations, railway station, airports, boat and ferry stations.

Roads are arteries of an urban agglomeration but it is the most unproductive, so inhabitants should spend the least time there. It is also the space which is the single largest energy consumer.

Roads have to be properly planned inter connecting all other spaces through shortest possible routes so that the least time is spent commuting. Roads are the costliest infrastructure to build and maintain. Given the enormous growth of the automobile population it is not possible to build them wide enough to take all the future traffic density because the investment to build two-lane, four-lane or six- lane roads is exponentially higher. Roads have to be planned parallel to each other and broad enough to take two way traffic initially and when the traffic density grows each road can be converted for one-way traffic. Parallel roads will not cause inconvenience nor increase distance travelled.

Whenever a new city is planned enough provision should be incorporated to install a mass rapid transit system (MRTS) as a contingency measure. MRTS is not a must in all cities if all the spaces are planned, located and inter connected by proper roads with a holistic approach.

Roads are the costliest place to park. When the traffic density increases it is imperative to use the full width of the road for vehicular movement. Parking bays or vertical parking facilities should locate off the road and near demand centres. Byelaws of the CDP (Comprehensive Development Plan) need to be amended to provide 30 per cent additional parking inside commercial buildings and 15 per cent in residential buildings for visitors. Parking on the road should be totally banned near building that have not provided for visitors’ parking. To enable better entry and exits from these building the driveways to the main roads should be angled to ease the vehicles into the stream instead of the present perpendicular exit and entries. (Not many architects have thought of this). City by-pass roads, ring roads, peripheral roads, fly-overs, under passes or grade separators are all elements to increase the efficiency of roads and to reduce the time speny in this space.

Ideal city

A city planned with a holistic approach to space and time, incorporating the above elements, where the habitants live in unison spending quality time at work, living and playing with least time spent to commute to these spaces is the IDEAL CITY. This approach with the above mentioned spaces and time can be applied to any city and to the smallest unit in it i.e. the residence.

Town planning

Bangalore City development is controlled mainly by the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) regulated by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) and Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA). If one studies successive CDPs over the years, it can be very clearly seen that planners have not even used the basic principles of town planning i.e. space and time. Thousands of acres of land are reserved for industrial use in Electronic city, Bommasandra, Whitefield, Rajajinagar and Peenya without providing any space to live and play close to these areas. The planners/government, expected people to live in residential areas elsewhere and travel to these work areas. Even if some companies want to build housing colonies for their employees within these areas, they have to take laborious permissions for change in land use. Even then only about 10 to 15 per cent of the land is allowed for housing use instead of 70 to 80 per cent, which is required to live and play. The government should insist that large-scale industries provide housing for their employees, while issuing permissions and bring legislation for this. The requirement for work space to live and play area is 1:3:10, i.e. when we allot 100 acres of land for industrial or business purpose, at least 700 to 1000 acres of land need to be reserved for living and playing close to the work area, so people can work, live and play in the same zone without criss-crossing the city centre daily. Hazardous and polluting industries are anyway located far away from the city. Whenever these industries are planned, space to live and play, for the work force within the permissible distance is to be provided. A well-planned city with a holistic approach to space and time can with stand the pressures of large scale and high-density industrialisation.

Car pooling

No government can provide roads, which are infinitely wide to take this kind of spurt in traffic density. Cars occupy approximately from 50-100sft of area on the road depending on the type of the car. In a single occupied car this would be the area occupied on the road per person. Two wheelers occupy approximately 15sft/ person and a bus with 50 seats occupies 5-7sft/person.

Car-pooling is encouraged in other countries to reduce the area occupied per person on the road.

If Hosur road, Bannerghatta road and Whitefield road have failed it is because of single user vehicles to reach the work place. One way to reduce road usage is to consider it as chargeable infrastructure like electricity and water supply and the unit of measurement would be sq.ft/hour/person. Then people using roads indiscriminately, even if they are forced to, will gradually look for car-pooling and public transport.

Transport solutions

The recently introduced ‘Safe Road to School’ is a good idea but not implemented with the cooperation of all concerned. The authorities did not take enough time or efforts to educate parents about the problems, intentions and solutions. The intention is to reduce the sft per hour per student spend on the road during the peak hours. Shared commuting like car-pooling, private or public transport will reduce number of vehicles on road. This could have been enforced with a ban or discouragement of children in school uniforms, travelling in cars and two-wheelers. The introduction of ‘no parking’ zones for private cars within 200 meters of school gates has only shifted the traffic congestion to near by roads. If authorities would have taken pains to map the residences of the students and put in judiciously planned separate school bus stops selected for the convenience of the children with a re-assurance of safety, the parents and the school authorities would have cooperated in this endeavour. BMTC should procure smaller buses its school service painted yellow in colour (international school bus colour). These smaller vehicles could go through smaller roads to reach the newly planned school bus stops and could easily enter and exit the school premises.

The recent trend of converting most roads into one-way traffic should supposedly control congestion. One-way traffic can be introduced when roads are parallel and there are many optional roads. As of now it compels vehicles to enter roads, which are clearly not enroute to their destination, and they are forced to drive much longer distances. Ideally the one way re-routing should add only minimally to the total distance travelled. This is the main reason for the congestion on Richmond, Residency and JC Roads after they were made one-ways. One-way re-routing should be done only after conducting extensive traffic flow and density studies using computer simulation and should be based on data collected from the site using data collecting devices. Synchronising traffic signals and programming these signals to suite peak, lean and night time traffic requirements will also ease traffic problems.

The trend

Spaces to work, live, play and govern are simply getting integrated. The large scale introduction of entertainment facilities like home theatres, play stations, cable TV with 100 plus channels, entertainment through broad band, satellite radio, home fitness equipment, home games and more have to be considered as a step towards integrating living and playing areas and to reduce the use of the space to commute. Huge shopping malls with multiplexes and other amusement avenues again integrate these activities.

The introduction of neighbourhood shopping chains is a great effort in this direction. Old Bangalore is also evolving slowly with stand-alone residential centres like Jayanagar, J P Nagar, Malleshwaram, R T Nagar, Indira Nagar, acquiring their own shopping centres and markets. Denizens don't have to travel anymore to Russell Market, K R Market and shopping areas in Commercial Street, Brigade road, K G road and Avenue Road.

With rapid technological advances in networking and connectivity and broadband we are slowly becoming an online society. We can do practically everything online like banking, trading, shopping, travel booking, paying bills, even consulting a doctor with tele-medicine. Imagine, one can start working in IT and ITES industries by tele computing, or network computing from networked homes.

Immediate solution

What we need is an immediate validation and reconsideration of the CDPs by BDA and the BMRDA before they are implemented, to suit this holistic approach of space and time requirement as discussed earlier. Reserve large scale areas for housing beyond and close to Electronic City, Bommasandra, Whitefield so that stand alone townships with high density housing can be developed with their own facilities to live and play

IT companies can also think of introducing tele-computing or network-computing to reduce the need for their personnel to travel daily to work. Most of them work on target based assignments and the shared facilities can be easily connected to homes.

Future

The future is for huge ITS and BTS Townships developed in 2000-3000 plus acres, holistically providing world-class space/time to work, live, play, govern and commute. These townships would not have to depend on existing congested cities for anything except embarkation and disembarkation with respect to long distance travel.

These towns will have villas, town houses, row houses and high rise high-density housing to suit all levels of housing requirements from the common man to the laterally high ranking professional. The housing unit would be planned as work homes (home office), with tele-computing facilities. The need for dedicated offices will be minimised: housing only shared facilities, conference rooms, meeting rooms and maybe cabins for the senior executives. The opportunity to develop this type of a township is available for the developers individually or as a consortium. They can offer 3000-4000 units of work homes to companies instead of just office space in separately demarcated areas.

Benefits and Savings

The biggest benefits will be the increase in productivity, by reducing stress on the work force, savings in the national fuel bill, drastic reduction in air pollution, savings in de-stressing solutions for staff and efficiency in time management thereby leading to a reduction in global warming.