BANGALORE - it needs the CHANGE

My first imagery of Bangalore city was at Kasturba road along Cubbon park way back in 1997 when I came here for the first time. A nice wide road with huge tree canopy alongside and calm weather on a sunny summer noon. It was a feeling of acceptance, acceptence between me and the city. It absorbed me instantly. And it absorbed me so deeply that by now I've spent more than half of my life here and it is my home now. Recently on a social media post I saw a caption which made me think very deeply - 'people come to this city and never go back'. It is quite 'painful' for the people who are part of this city for long enough time now and 'aspiring' for the people who are going to come here in future. 

Let me elaborate.

In another post, I had mentioned that city is a place of opportunities ( http://rm-raindrop.blogspot.com/2016/07/does-city-shape-us-or-we-shape-city.html ) and thus people get absorbed in the city. When this happens at a larger scale, the physicality of the city starts changing. Have a look at the diagram below which shows the increase of built form in Bangalore city time to time. Towards the end of previous century, nobody even thought of population density in the city as it was hardly anything. Even till 2004 - 2005, the density of Bangalore city was unnoticeable. But there was an alarming rise in that then on and the whole scenario changed rapidly between 2005 and 2010. Post 2010 till now the growth of the city has become unbearable. It is felt at every moment when one walks on the street or drive or ride a bicycle or even open the window of their bedroom. 

Now why did it happen !

Actually it happened very silently and almost invisibly. Once a quiet high altitude city, slowly started getting flooded with lot of immigrants which were not envisaged and hence no planning was done to accommodate the situation in time. As a result the city's central portion remained the same physically and started getting packed with settlements. That not only slowly poisoned Bangalore's claim to fame pleasant weather but also changed the whole character of the city. Those old big houses, an interface with the outer world through a slice of veranda, a sense of neighborhood with lots of trees, a leisurely walk on the footpath, a pristine calmness, very less traffic on the streets which made the streets feel very spacious - all started vanishing one by one. Even though few attempts were made to create satellite towns little far away from the city centre and designating few industrial zones etc. but those did not fetch any good result as the whole assumption of future growth was not anticipated and there was no clear vision about planning. Slowly people moved into the city for various reasons and opted to get a shelter as close as possible to their work place. At that time the demand of real estate was soaring up but pathetically no planning authority could implement a proportionate infrastructure. Till a certain time the deficiencies did not show up and started becoming bad when the proportion of occupant versus accommodation blew off. The accommodation is not only the shelter but the adequacy of the roads, public transport system, power supply, water supply, food supply etc. Few fly-overs, bridges, under passes etc. came into being over time but by the time those could start functioning, it would had become inadequate or out dated due to numerous unpredicted growth of population. In the game of football, there is a famous phrase - 'increase the field'. What is that? When many players of both the teams go behind the ball to posses, suddenly the field shrinks to that particular location leaving the vast portion unused. Then the game makers always resort to passing the ball around the field in such a way that all the corners are utilised well to create movements towards the goal posts. When Bangalore saw that sudden influx of population who all got busy to grab a place around the job opportunity, totally forgot to 'increase the field'.  

Since 1990, Bangalore has seen a steep increase in population and in 2016 the count of people must be around 1,30,00,000. 

Bangalore has a very high number of vehicles running on the roads and that number would be around 60,00,000 now including two wheelers, four wheelers, buses, trucks etc. and unfortunately excluding bicycles which is a minuscule. Earlier there were no local train system and now the work is going on in certain areas but it will be quite inadequate with the present plan.

Let us look at the Bangalore map above. It does not have any kind of geographical barrier to grow in almost every direction unlike Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai which are hugely restricted by it's geographical positioning. That clearly indicates that the city has potential to grow physically. City needs to have physical tensions at various directions to grow. The best way to create that would be to establish the satellites at a reasonable distance which can provide enough stretch to the existing physical demarcation. Let say we create 10 satellites like :

1. Tumkur
2. Dodaballapur
3. Devanahalli
4. Kolar
5. Chikka Tirupathy
6. Hosur
7. Anekal
8. Kanakapura
9. Ramanagaram
10. Magadi

All these 10 satellites are connected to the city centre as shown in the above diagram in blue colour lines. These connectivities would include predominantly railway system, reasonable motorways with proper hierarchical right of ways, proper bicycle highways, segmental footpaths. Each sector distance would be within the range of 25 kms to 80 kms. So on an average to travel a distance of 30 kms by train, it would take around 45 minutes which is absolutely comfortable. And the maximum distance of 80 kms can be covered in 2 hours time at the most by train. This kind of high speed mass transport system will ensure a safe, fast, productive and comfortable commute for everybody. This will be the lifeline of the city complemented by other mass transport systems such as bus, shuttle car etc. Bicycle and other electric vehicles will play a major role to reduce the use of private automobile vehicles. Combination of all these transportation and commuting facilities will restrore the good weather by reducing the level of pollution and will ensure a happy healthy walk on the footpath at any part of the city.  

Establishing satellites alone will not help as they are relatively far from the city centre. So we need to create intermediate nodes to get the desired hierarchical thresholds. We can think of a corresponding set of nodes like this :

1. Tumkur                  - Nelamangala               
2. Dodaballapur         - Rajanukunte
3. Devanahalli            - Yelahanka
4. Kolar                      - Hoskote 
5. Chikka Tirupathy    - Whitefield
6. Hosur                     - Electronic city
7. Anekal                    - Jigani
8. Kanakapura            - Harohalli
9. Ramanagaram        - Bidadi

10. Magadi                  - Thavarekere

Having satellites and intermediate nodes will help to decongest the city centre and we can restore the old charm of Bangalore. The existing cluttered developments can be relooked into with lot of urban design aspects and can transform lot of areas into actual public realm where art and culture can be energised and that would feed back into the social integration. A right synergy can be achieved by careful balance between public, semi public and private space allocation. We can learn a lot from India's only designed city of Chandigarh and not repeat the short falls of it.

It is highly important to save the green cover what Bangalore is left with and start planned forestation. Around the existing settlements, we can leave the green patches untouched and use that as a buffer between different land usage. 

The intermediate nodes can start developing as different hubs such as - logistics, industrial, educational, IT, alternate powers, water resources, art & culture, research & development, tourism, agriculture,health care, etc. 

Correspondingly all the satellites also need to be empowered to cater to the intermediate nodes and hubs. Here the very interesting thing will take place - this kind of layering of hierarchical spaces and social fabric will create a much needed threshold between villages, towns and the city. This will bring in adequate ordering in terms of the space utilisation, over all civic sense and discipline of every aspect.

Once this fabric is laid out then correspondingly the residential zones will start fitting in to places in and around the hubs. This will reduce the concentrated footfall at the city centre tremendously. Here comes the logic of 'increase the field' from the game of football. De-centralise the activities and create sufficient amenities at different nodes to cater to larger mass.

 All these intermediate nodes can be connected through an arterial railway track for faster commute between different hubs.

A city with so much of adequate facilities will certainly bring prosperity in terms of - better life, economic growth in every sector, ever growing, create cultural heritage, embrace sustainability, global recognition, attracts investors, plenty of job opportunities, liveability for all stratas, work - life balance, climatic balance, planned forestation. 

Planning for a better city is not an exclusive affair rather it should be an inclusive approach. Every citizen has a moral responsibility to think about their city and give back to it's development whichever way it is possible. 

Bangalore can grow forever and slowly start connecting with the neighboring cities in different directions. It might sound very ambitious at the moment but it can be achieved through a clear long term honest vision which will not over sight any aspect of growth for planning. It would require lot of fund to execute but again it is not impossible. Ultimately we are talking about a future city which will have the aura of old Bangalore and sustain on its own. 

It is my continuous quest to understand the complexity of city life and will be happy to enrich it in any way possible. 

We all live with a hope.