Idling under the Neem Tree

  Climate friendly infrastructure Building disasters shelters in critical in the day and age of Climate Change By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation In the day and age of Climate Change we need to adapt to help mitigate the debilitating impact Climate Change will make not just on our lives but also on the lives of other Creatures, Great and Small. Every small source of global warming needs to be countered with cooling factors. Common Property Resources like transport infrastructure / public transport and emission from private transport,  water supply, Climate friendly agriculture, aviation and architecture, Climate Change adapted fuel and energy supply infrastructure,  constructed landscape, or areas of human footprint / Carbon footprint, total emissions in a micro climate,  are all to be ‘planned’ for Climate Change Adaptation. In short the human landscape as to be Climate Change adapted. Climate Change does not manifest as a single violent watershed ev...

 Solid Wase Management Guidelines Paper and packaging Ware, Glassware, manufactured / hazardous stuffs, and toilet wastes that can be incinerated ... are stashed away in colour coded containers as shown here in Germany - the leader in Solid Waste Management.  By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation One of the greatest challenges of modern city management / governance is solid waste management. It can almost wholly be rooted to plastics mismanagement. Although plastics less than 20 microns have been banned legally, it is practised most in the breach. This is perhaps due to lack of effective publicity for guidelines. Equally significant is the fact that packaging material have not been given policy guidelines. Lack of effective enforcement of laws is largely to blame too. Citizens’ lack of separation of wastes and their lack of knowledge seems to be another primary cause. The citizens’ lackadaisical approach to SWM (more in the breach) lacks penalties so it’s a vici...

 Green Cover in Urban areas and their legal / administrative protection (Green Belt) Aiming to include a live water body like a river in its most pristine form inside a throbbing urban sace is the ideal for civic administrators to aim for.  © Malini Shankar  By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation Environmental concerns has become the central focus of urban governance over the decades as Climate Change manifests itself in more frequent extreme weather events to the detriment of the average citizen. Extreme weather events means more days of heat n cold waves per year in a given area. Other ‘hydrometeorological events’ include Avalanches, blizzards, cyclone, coastal incursion, Climate Change, desertification, droughts, epidemics and El Nino, fires, fog, floods, flash floods, hurricanes,   infernos, lightning strikes, landslides, mudslides, mud flows, twisters and tornadoes, thunderstorms, and urban floods… Volcanoes and earthquakes, sea level rise and rela...

  Incorporating HDI Common Property Resources like road infrastructure is mandatory for Smart City Governance. " Day 64/365 - Hong Kong street lights " by  natasia.causse  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 . By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation I was recently told “Malini your articles recently are becoming so esoteric that you will be well advised to put it in simple parlance, and preferably in Indian languages if you want our politicians to read and assimilate what you are saying”. So: Simply put Incorporating HDI means calibrating human development on a per capita basis. What is the value that our tax payments are giving us? How much of our tax returns are being invested by the Governments in Common Property Resources like roads, air quality management, capex on transport infrastructure and logistics, food security, livelihood security, cyber security, energy security, power supply infrastructure, industrial policy, insurance, manufacturing output, mana...

  A watershed created by Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre in Anantapur, in Andhra Pradesh where ground water has risen from 60  metres below the ground to 4 - 5 metres below the top soil, thanks to herculean efforts made by NGOs and the Government.  © Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre.  By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation Planning is central to Smart City governance. Given the iniquitous and unsustainable usage of resources in India today it is no wonder then that Human development is equally skewed. Just one example: While poverty remains unaltered the margin of the runaway millionaire is equally imbalanced in cities. Few millionnaires are guzzling most of the resources driving the impoverished to further abyss. Skyscrapers and gated communities in urban areas embezzle most amount of resources, only sustaining poverty, not uplifting the downtrodden. It is quite literally the manifestation of unsustainable vertical growth as against inclusive horizontal e...

  By Malini Shankar   Digital Discourse Foundation At the core of land use policy (for Smart city governance) or any other public policy related to landscape management is the priorities apportioned to prioritized land use. That asks for verticals of the urban economy to integrate with biodiverse ecosystems for a holistic natural resource management based Climate friendly sustainable economy. For example Climate adapted urban architecture utilizes the natural ecosystem by sequestering Carbon, and auxilerating the green belt sustainably. That means public policy has to clearly define land use priorities: 1.        Central Business District. 2.        Commercial and trade establishments. 3.        Agricultural land / food supply land / water and resources; grazing pens, veterinary hospitals, for livestock, grazing lands, all this must be planned for agricultural band. 4.  ...

  By Malini Shankar  Digital Discourse Foundation  Let’s take a look at zonation in smart city governance today. Common Property Resources (CRP) need to be accessible to all, to every resident from every quarter. So apart from Central Business district, hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, roads, public transport infrastructure, CRP should be given easy access to residents of all residential quarters. That means residential areas have to be proportionately planned factoring in Common Property Resources on a Human Development Index. CBD should be purely CBD. Circumambulating the CBD must be CPR like hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, roads, public transport infrastructure, fire services, veterinary hospitals, mental health care institutes, research centres and labs related to public and mental health have to be housed in this band / zone. Parks cultural centres and Recreational zones have to be planned meticulously as per HDI / on a per capita calibra...