CITY LIFE - Columns | Civil Society

CITY LIFE / V. RAVICHANDAR

Bangalore’s mobility woes

V. RAVICHANDAR

Last month the Annual Survey of Indian Cities (ASICS) released by Janaagraha comparing 11 Indian cities with London and New York saw Bangalore feature near the bottom across most indices of city living including mobility. Another global exercise saw Bangalore race to the bottom 10 on mobility – one

Every city can be smart

V. RAVICHANDAR

The selection of the first lot of 20 smart cities by the central government saw both jubilation among those selected and considerable angst among the remaining 78 that did not make the second cut. One calls it the second cut, because there was a first round that left out cities

Break free from cars

V. RAVICHANDAR

One Sunday in February, a miserly 250 metres on MG Road in Bengaluru was closed to traffic and thrown open to the public as an Open Streets initiative. There were shops, food outlets, street art, entertainers, music et al. And the public response was overwhelming. Over 100,000 people visited the

Flyover will kill Bengaluru

V. RAVICHANDAR

Since mid-September, Bengaluru’s civic news has had saturation coverage about a 6.7-km, Rs 1,791 crore proposed steel flyover from the heart of the city (Chalukya circle, next to the Governor’s residence and Vidhan Soudha) to Hebbal flyover en route to the airport. It has seen unprecedented citizen protests resulting in

A manifesto for Bengaluru

V. RAVICHANDAR

Karnataka is witnessing the election tamasha — a great spectacle with plenty of sound and fury. There are manifestos, but one wonders whether even the candidates bother to read them. There is little of substance to help voters decide between political parties on the basis of how they will fix the myriad

Citizens got candidates to listen

V. RAVICHANDAR

In the run-up to the Karnataka elections, one was reminded of the song from The Sound of Music — “how do you solve a problem like Maria, how do you catch a cloud and pin it down … how to make her stay and listen to all you say….” This certainly was

A lone mayor can’t fix the city

V. RAVICHANDAR

We live in an era of instant mixes, single-click execution and intricate technologies that don’t need operating manuals. In the city space this converts into simple homilies as fixes for complex problems complicated by a seriously dysfunctional ecosystem. Some sample fixes — a directly elected mayor is the need of

Urban governance is a failure

V. RAVICHANDAR

In 1992, the Constitution of India underwent two seminal amendments — the 73rd Amendment for rural areas and the 74th Amendment for urban areas. Twenty-five years later, it is apparent that while the 73rd Amendment for Panchayati Raj has worked quite well, the 74th Amendment for city governance as the

Let’s salvage our cities

V. RAVICHANDAR

Cities are meant to be centres of innovation and job creation. But in India we are staring at an urban apocalypse if we continue the way we are with collapsing infrastructure and weak leadership. Rajaji, Bose, Patel, Nehru, Rajendra Prasad. What did they have in common? They all cut their

Splitting up in Bengaluru

V. RAVICHANDAR

Against the backdrop of the perceived failure of the objectives of trifurcating the Delhi Municipal Corporation, it is worthwhile checking out a similar exercise involving multiple municipal corporations that is underway in Bengaluru. In late 2014, the Karnataka Chief Minister announced a decision to split the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike