Join us on Feb 28th for a panel presentation and discussion on “Parallel Urbanism – local people regulating local spaces”.

http://parallelurbanism.eventbrite.com

THE PANEL

Major decisions that affect design and planning of cities are made by urban planners, politicians, policy makers, real estate owners and the government. The local people who inhabit the city usually don’t have much say in how their city is being planned, designed or restructured. These design decisions may include planning out services like healthcare, education, transportation and other urban infrastructure for the city dwellers. The panel hopes to explore the middle ground between local people and decision makers. How can the decision makers tap into the grassroots level community activism to come up with better decisions regarding urban living? On the other hand how do the local people get access to the decision makers to get their voices heard with regard to the city? These are some of the questions we hope to answer through this panel.

THE PANELISTS

Jyoti Hosagrahar | The Urbanist

Jyoti is faculty at Columbia University, New York and Director of Sustainable Urbanism International at Columbia University, and Bangalore, India. Architect, planner, and historian, she advises on urban development, historic conservation, and sustainability issues in Asia. Her research interests include urban heritage, cultural and environmental sustainability of cities focusing on the intersections of nature, culture, and the built environment, and postcolonial perspectives in design and planning. She serves as an expert for UNESCO on historic cities.

Lina Srivastava | The Strategist

Lina is the Principal of Lina Srivastava Consulting, LLC, which focuses on employing strategy, innovation, engagement and the use of cultural assets to create and demonstrate social change. The former Executive Director of Kids with Cameras, and the past Interim Executive Director of the Association of Video and Filmmakers, she is currently the strategist for Three Generations and a partner in the social change strategy team for the Resist Network. Trained as an attorney, she is based in New York City.

John Geraci | The Technologist

John has spent the last six years making life in cities better with the use of web technologies. His latest project, DIYcity.org, has web developers and urban planners all over the world teaming up to create open source tools for residents of cities everywhere. Prior to DIYcity Geraci co-founded the hyperlocal news network Outside.in. His earlier work, which includes web-meets-real-world projects Neighbornode, Foundcity and Grafedia, has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Popular Science and other news sources. You can visit his website at johngeraci.com.

THE ORGANIZERS

Shagun Singh

Shagun is an interaction designer and founder of designwala.org. At present she works for frog design in New York City. In the past she has worked for design shops like Antenna design, 2×4.org, C&G partners, Method Inc and SOM. She also coordinates the Architecture for Humanity NY Chapter Studio initiative that promotes architectural and environmental design-driven social change in New York and abroad by empowering design activists with the tools of collaboration and open forum.

Sonali Sridhar

Sonali has been the board member of SAWCC from 2008-2011. She is currently an Interaction Designer using web, print and mobile electronics to explore the connectivity and psychology of design. She spent two years as an Interaction Designer for The Open Planning Project where her work focused primarily on web applications that fostered citizen engagement with government entities. In her spare time Sonali also works with wearable technology, designing objects that interact with daily life, form addictions and provide comfort.

Ruhi Shamim

Ruhi Shamim is a social media marketer and blogger, specializing in corporate social responsibility, urban planning and sustainable transportation, and cultural diplomacy. She has worked with Sosauce, Justmeans, Sparkseed, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and is currently developing a Green Network for JobThread, a New York based technology startup.

The event is co-sponsored by SAWCC, Designwala.org & Wix Lounge

In this interview, Deepa Mehta who is an urban planner living in San Francisco, talks about heritage, modernity, technology and urban design. She explains how the integration of modern tools and technology with traditional arts and crafts will help carry these age old techniques to the next century. Deepa mainly works in cultural heritage planning and sincerely believes that community, culture, and design are catalysts for sustainable development. She likes to test out this hypothesis by engaging in relevant projects.  One such project is Shipyard Community Arts, spearheading the development of a new arts center and cultural district through innovative partnerships at Hunters point in San Fransisco.

Supertable (previously called the Mobile Activation Station) is a project  by Holobiont (Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert) . It was  selected as the winner of the ‘Grand Idea Competition‘ organized by Designwala this summer. Haruka and Frank won a grand or $1000 to make their idea come to life. Supertable is a portable reconfigurable table with built-in power distribution, lighting and storage. It turns empty stores into communal spaces. Once built, the Station will be available for short-term use in vacant storefronts along Rogers Avenue in Crown heights, Brooklyn.  Supertable will be built off of an easy set of instructions with easily available kit of parts. It follows the idea of hackable and DIY culture of building structures that are flexible, adaptable, reusable and community driven. Stay tuned for the Holobiont’s other community and urban planning projects in the upcoming second part of this series.

The second part of the video is titled ‘Indigenous Modernities’ based on the title of Jyoti Hosagrahar’s book with the same title. In this video, she talks about modernity in the context of the developing world. She brings up the perception of ‘Modern’ where it is equaled to western living vs it being understood as sustainable and practical response to day to day problems. To emphasize on that aspect of ‘Modern’, she talks about Old Delhi, Hinglish and FM Radio as examples of practical solutions, interactivity and modern living in the context of the old world. Jyoti Hosagrahar’s recent book Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (Routledge 2005) won a 2006-2007 award from the International Planning History Society.

For Jyoti’s video on sustainability, click here.

A Grand Idea -Inhabit Section competition culminated on June 17th. A lot of  interesting entries came pouring in from all round the world. The ones published are a few that stood out. Our judges Raul Smith Correa from FAISCAS and Soo-in Yang from The Living are going over the entries and plan to pick a winner soon. The winner gets to develop a prototype of their design using $1000.

Vid de Gleria & Ziga Kresevic – Urban Rebagers

Robin Liu – Popup Bookstore

Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert – Mobile Activation Station

Jirawit Yamkleeb – Double Take

Marco Antonio Castro – Bus Roots

Hiroyuki Ichihara – The benches of Tsuchibokasi

Robyne Kassen – Monkey Bar Bike Racks

Jurriaan de Brujin – Metro

Yusuke Sakuma & Akihito Matsushita – Forest Bath

Dominik Chung – Park Hill, Sheffield

Daniel Ebuehi – Construction Cones

If you would like to see more than one design to come to life, please make a donation. The donations are tax deductible.

If you would like to see more than one design to come to life, please make a donation. The donations are tax deductible.

For some of us who grew up back home in India, we understand the perils of living in an unplanned city. Dodgy transportation system, consistent power cuts, inefficient waste disposal and sewage systems, gridlocked roads and a broken, corrupt bureaucratic government. People develop ways around problems. They adjust. The idea is to work the system in order to get maximum returns from it. It is tough to think of rebuilding or fixing this broken system since living in that system, if one is not rich or if one doesn’t work for the government, is such an ordeal.

This is an excerpt from a recently published article in the NY times. The writer is Akash Kapur – “Between now and 2030, the report (a Mckinsey report ) estimates, 250 million Indians will migrate to the cities, a figure that exceeds the current total population of all but three countries (China, India and the United States). As a result, India will have 68 cities with populations of more than one million (compared with 35 in all of Europe today)…….”Like much of the country, cities suffer from the legal ambiguity, rampant corruption, political infighting and institutional inertia that block even the most enlightened policies and policy makers.”

Are we equipped to deal with this influx when the cities cannot even handle the numbers that live in them right now? What if the policy makers have a way of getting round the government and mobilize the people instead? What if they can develop a community and network of people genuinely committed to changing the system or atleast identifying the problems within it, in an analytical fashion. I came across ijanaagraha today – an online platform to initiate community building to create change.

A cut and paste from their about section says – “The iJanaagraha portal envisions a huge online networking community that is committed to urban issues – electoral and civic. It aims to initiate change, build networks of communities & local civic bodies, provide data on urban issues, civic awareness & training – all of this at a local neighbourhood level. With the relevant information presented intelligently through use of simple interactive MAPS and a powerful platform to ACT, we aim to inspire everyone to get out and grab opportunities, participate in campaigns, events and community projects and become an Active Citizen in our society.”

The number of people using this portal to connect to others and identifying problems is unknown. However the fact that a step has been taken in the direction of using the internet or the online community to mobilize change is a powerful one. Another great example is FixmyCity.com. FixMyStreet is a site to help people report, view, or discuss local problems they’ve found to their local council by simply locating them on a map. This is UK based application. It launched in early February 2007. The various projects under DIYCity initiative are a step towards using the internet to improve civic services and urban problems in NYC. The government initiated ‘Dial 311′ is a great way for the public to get in touch with the New York City services and information also.

The democratization of the internet has allowed a number of grassroot level initiatives to take off and create substantial change in the way governments are run and cities evolve. India, with its abundance of people and knowledge needs to use this medium effectively and to its advantage.