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Young Minds for Urban Challenges
Illustrative projects in the areas of Urban Planning, Traffic and Transport Planning, Architecture & Urban Design, and Environmental Engineering. Please note that these are only examples to illustrate how budding professionals can potentially contribute in addressing some urban challenges.
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Redesign of neighbourhood park
Highly unlikely that a lot of thought and consultation would have gone into design of a neighbourhood park
A budding landscape architect can help the ULB redesign the park, to give it a unique character that meets the needs and expectations of their residents in that neighbourhood and is aligned to their socio-economic and demographic profile.
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Traffic signal synchornisation
As traffic volumes have increased, most cities have responded by introducing traffic signals at each intersections one-at-a-time.
A budding traffic engineer can help the city traffic police, synchornise the signal timings based on current traffic patterns, and contribute to smoothening of traffic flows.
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Design of public spaces
Many areas demarcated for public amenities are often neglected, not so much for want of funds but for it not being on priority. Such spaces often falls into disuse, encroachment, etc.
Deploy the creativity and dynamism of a young urban designer to create public spaces unique and dynamic in character that will be loved by classes and masses.
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Decision support with digital spatial data
Many cities have spent large resources and developed digital spatial databases (using GIS technologies). But often the data has been put to only limited uses, while it can potentially be a wealth of information.
Deploy an Urban Planner to analyse vast amounts of spatial data to answer many a questions confronting urban managers.
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Design of Hawking areas / zones
Hawkers – the set of road users’ people love to hate, and yet patronise
the most.
Enable the work of young architects and planners to design demarcated hawking zones. A design that balances the interests of diverse stakeholders, and is yet asthetic and utiliatarian.
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Optimise use of office space
Many ULBs have offices in old buildings, or have expanded their operations organically. As a result office space is sub-optimally utilised, with documentation storage occupying prime space, while citizen interface points are cramped.
Use the opportunity of using an architect / interior designer to thoroughly examine and optimise usage of office space.
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Feeder systems for Urban Transport
With modern fleet of buses being introduced in many cities under programs such as JNNURM, its time to evaluate the need and feasibility of feeder routes and networks.
Let a budding transport planner examine the need, potential routes and broad financial viability of such routes and networks. Early work will set the foundation for more detailed planning and implementation in the coming days ahead.
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Parking management
Despite all efforts, parking problems just do not seem to stabilise, making it difficult to even implement some simple measures.
Deploy a team of spatial and traffic planners to examine the possibility of implementing good practices in parking management.
For select parking lots in the city, have the team examine spatial, operational and financial viability for piloting some of these initiatives.
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Situation analysis of ground water
It is widely known that the situation of ground water level in the city is alarming. However, land allocation for new settlements and economic activities has hardly been informed by this data.
Let a young environmental planner examine the issues and its’ implications.
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Breathe fresh air into Urban Forestry initiatives
With ULBs battling problems related to water, sanitation, SWM and Urban Transport, areas like Urban Forestry are often neglected.
Despite so much investment that has gone in, plant survival rates are very poor. Tree guards are more of recurring expenditure than being capital expenditure.
Have a young engineer / planner deep dive into specific issues in your ULB and emerge with new ideas on improving urban forestry performance by the ULB departments.
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Improving road geometry of a city road crossing
Despite a number of road widening exercises, traffic woes do not seem to change.
Deploy the services of high-quality traffic engineer to closely examine the road geometry at key road crossings, and design improvisations suited to current traffic profiles to ease the city’s junctions.
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Regional implications of an upcoming SEZ
The implications of an upcoming SEZ on the fringes of the current ULB boundaries, has not been considered either at a strategic level nor operational (more requirements for raw water, SWM, waste water treatment, traffic, etc.)
Use the services of a budding Regional Planner to examine the issues and emerging implications for the ULB.
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Model Bus Bays
While alternate designs for bus stands have been experimented and implemented in few cities, the bus bay as a whole has long been ignored.
Let an urban planner and transport planner work in unison to design a few modern bus-bays, which can then be replicated on city-wide scale.
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