Cities and self rule

silkboard - 27-NOV-2007

Mayor of London, Mr Ken Livingstone, made headlines when he visited Mumbai and Delhi recently. Amongst the things he said, here is one that I thought stood out.

"London mayor Ken Livingstone said on Wednesday that ... when it comes to the development of a city like Mumbai, he said he was not sure if his counterpart here can do much to change people’s lives with limited executive powers."

Thats a quote from TOI Mumbai Nov 22 2007. Truth hurts, but Mr Livingstone was almost right when he said that:

"... unfortunately the mayor of Mumbai did not have any power regarding important matters affecting the city. Almost all the powers are with the state government."

Can we move to make Bangalore either autonomous or as Union Territories

City.Zen - 26-NOV-2007

I am grateful to Tarle for inspiring me to write this. Some ex-CMs in the past did express their desire to transform Bangalore into a Singapore. What made Singapore what it is today, a role model for all cities and countries?

Why does the State Govt. want to be a vegetables vendor?

City.Zen - 24-NOV-2007

There is a Saphal outlet located in a single storied building on a sprawling site in 8th Block Koramangala, selling vegetables, etc. I believe there are many such outlets all over the city. Questions: (1) Why is the Govt. so eager to run a business?

Following sarkaari projects

silkboard - 18-NOV-2007

How would you like the ability to watch and follow all work that our local governments do? All concerned citizens want it. A lot of work needs to happen though to make such a thing possible. Fancy websites for bodies like BBMP and BMRC are only the face, there need to be internal government systems to store and expose the information about their workings. And then you need easy to use tools that sarkaari babus and engineers would use to enter information into these systems.

Forget the technicalities for a moment. What we want is this. Tender gets floated for a work, we see it. We should then see all the bids, and the winner. And then on, the status and progress of work. Last, after the work gets completed, the details of how it was signed off as completed or successful.

Campaign style in Mysore and Kawasaki

GVK - 28-OCT-2007

My young friend C K Naveena wonders why candidates need to lavish so much resources on banners and hoardings at election time. “I am sure nobody votes for a person just because they see his cutout and banners in every street corner”, writes Mr Naveena, who edits Mysore Matters, adding, ”political parties need to realize this simple truth”.

BBMP- Delivery of Municipal Services Award

tsubba - 10-OCT-2007

BANGALORE: The Government of India has chosen the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for the runners up award for improvement in delivery of municipal services.

Prez Rule - What's In It For Us?

tsubba - 9-OCT-2007

So we are in for president's rule for the next 5-6 months. so what happens to things like AT ramaswamy led joint commission that is probing land encroachment? what about airport expressway and metro? and what about ULB elections? already we are being panned by the NURM on this. and what about things like mono, bidadi, PRR, nandagudi... and the million $$ question what happens to BMIC? :)

Bangalore and Ribbon Development

silkboard - 7-OCT-2007

Bangalore's peripheral areas all messed up? Blame it on Ribbon Development. Let me introduce you to a term very relevant to the congested sprawl that our city is witnessing. Simply put, Ribbon Development means building shops and houses along the roads radiating from a town. If you were to look at Bangalore from the skies and track recently laid or widened major arterial roads leading out of the city, you would notice that almost all big ticket construction/development happens solely along (rather right on top of) these roads.

Do me another favor. When on the periphery of Bangalore, try take a left or right out of any big radial road. This is most likely what you would see [pictures below]. Pathetic roads, poor quality of construction and even narrower streets if you were to venture into a "layout".

Who is it - city government or us?

silkboard - 12-SEP-2007

How interesting to see different media houses use varying headlines to describe one same PriceWaterhouseCooper (PWC) survey on Bangalore city and governance.

- "We're to blame for city's woes" says Times of India Bangalore

- "Bangaloreans rue city governance" goes NDTV

- "B'lore citizens seek better urban governance" went the source at PTI

Here are some interesting notings from this PWC survey:

Date: whats the point?

silkboard - 23-AUG-2007

What is that? A board proudly displaying information about a public project at Marathahalli. [flickr-photo:id=1210640454,size=m] Work detail says: "construction of approaches to road over bridge". Does that include the bridge work as well, or only the approach roads? Where does the approach road start, and end?