RECLAIM BANGALORE

Extending an invitation to all concerned citizens of Bangalore, to join a common platform to RECLAIM BANGALORE.

Bangalore is today, arguably one of Asia's fastest growing cities. We are also fast becoming the most polluted, the most congested, the most unsafe on the road. For all the public money spent on widening roads, building flyovers, increasing the number of buses, are we moving any faster, safer or more comfortably? Why are our roads some of the most unsafe for pedestrians in the world? What happened to Bangalore, the garden city? Are we a Sustainable City?

Its time for Bangalore's civil society to find a way to engage in open and meaningful dialogue with our city planners and administrators. Time to jointly analyze problems and find solutions.

Yes, It's time.

introducing

Bangalore's first Unconference focusing on sustainable transportation solutions.

MobiliCity will bring together urban planners, policy makers, environmentalists and concerned citizens to:

• Find a framework in which to assess our current trends in transport planning and policy in Bangalore
• Look at best practices in urban transportation design around the world
• Discuss the role of pedestrianisation, cycling, mass public transit and other low-carbon transportation alternatives in fostering sustainability
• Promote free, open, goal oriented discussion amongst the city's civil society

How you can be a part of MobiliCity

1. Write to us with ideas you have on this issue
2. Register to lead a session / talk on any issues concerning sustainable transportation.
3. Volunteer to help in organization of the event.
4. Turn up at the event and just be part of it.

Date: Nov 21, 2009. Time: 9:30am - 5pm Venue: CiSTUP, IISc, Bangalore

For more details check out mobilicity.praja.in
Contact: Manjari Vishnoi 9611348339
send a mail to: mobilicity@praja.in

Lets Reclaim Bangalore!

Back to the basics

The dangers of being on the top of the food chain is there is nobody to cull the overpopulation of people based on carrying capacity of the space we occupy. I shudder to think of the day when we need to do that ourselves. Close to 40% of the worlds people are in India and China. Yet in India we work on the we 2 ours 2 philosophy. Even at sub 2% growth we are going to run out of space on earth in a little more than 700 years. So we need to get to zero population growth very quickly. Not celebrate more octomoms. There will be attendant issues, but if we cannot manage the population growth forget about controlling the available resources. Like Prof. Bartlett says it is our inability to understand the exponential function that will be our undoing.

In the meantime, voices against urbanization demand we stop building living and working spaces because we destroy the natural resources. Is this possible? How do we fulfil the requirements of growing life on earth without being able to occupy more space on the planet? Becoming cavemen eating berries is not the answer. We cant have 6 billion people go back to sitting around idle hunting for food. We are going to run out of berries anyway. What happens to the economy then? I can understand the argument to get away from the dollar and choosing a more neutral currency. I can even discuss the options of going back to gold (or a widely available valuable metal of you choosing) standard. But barter system living in caves! Thats stretching things bit too far.

Its not the economy which is directly harming the environment, it is the people and their requirements. But, we cant have the economy that we have by living in caves. So what is the next best thing? Sustainable living.

In my view we need to be able to occupy the land we live and build what we want without upsetting the balance of nature. We can do that only by measuring the amount environmental damage a building or habitation causes and creating an offset somewhere else for an equivelant amount.

The carbon credit system is the first step in measuring damage and allow the creation of offsets. The sustainable living of the future is going to have carbon credit play a major role in it. The carbon miles on a persons card will determine the cost of carrying the person on earth. Sorry to sound harsh but in the near future it will define how valuable a person is when it comes to culling time.

Transformation of a city

Bangalore has been thru exponential growth in the past three decades. It has mostly been driven by the IT/ITES industry. Most of this development has been uncontrolled. There were no plans that administrators worked towards. There was no vision of how they wanted the city to grow. They reacted mostly. The growth of automobiles have outgrown the capacity of the city to support them. Humans have lost out to automobiles. Partly because the administrators were decades behind the demands both in capability and capacity and were unprepared for this growth. Now they are so behind they only have time to catch up and firefight the troubles.

Not too many people believe this can be turned around. Like Prof T G Sitharam, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IISc, told Indian Express: “We do not want to touch Bagalore right now. The city is in a mess and there is not much scope of development.".

But it cant be all that bad. How do we turn the city around? Are there any examples in other countries we can borrow? The video tries to explain how some cities have refocussed their priorities and have emerged more citizen friendly. Can this work for Bangalore?