Bangalore – Growing in all directions
Am sure most of us Bangaloreans are aware of the tunnelling work for the Namma Metro project is underway below Vidhana Soudha and Majestic and this makes us a city that is growing even underground like many of the international cities. While this growth is welcome the civic amenities need to keep up with this rapid growth as well and Bangalore needs to harness its citizens and corporates if they want to keep up with this growth. Let us see how we as residents can help:
Garbage: It is interesting to note that Bangalore is struggling with plenty of garbage while Sweden is struggling with the lack of garbage to power their power plants and are looking to import garbage from other countries to use as fuel to generate power. Sweden has achieved the impossible of having zero garbage. What can Bangalore learn from Sweden, outsource garbage management to the experts and use the ground force to implement the solutions. Like in Nederlands have a prefixed amount of garbage per household and anything beyond that gets taxed.
Electricity: The state buys power from Maharastra and needs to lower its dependency by generating more power or educating citizens in optimized use of power and also subsidize use of solar power and encourage citizens to switch over to solar power. Even if Bangalore does not have too much sun most parts of Karnataka can switch to solar and reduce the dependency of hydel and other sources of power. Most US cities have already mandated that all street lights must be changed to LED lights by 2017 and this helps in lower maintenance and a big savings on the power bills. While there are promises to make Bangalore an international city small changes like these are the big steps towards achieving that.
Traffic Management: Bangalore has a unique problem of its citizens not using public transport as much as the other cities like Mumbai and Chennai where public transport is the lifeline of these cities. Although we boast of a Metro train and the largest fleet of Volvo city buses we obviously dont boast of the largest number of commuters by public transport. Roads are clogged and maybe the London example of having a toll for private vehicles entering CBD may go a long way in encouraging use of public transport and also ape London’s use of automated traffic lights that use sensors on the roads to gauge the volume of traffic and the lights are automated accordingly.
Community Spaces: Bangalore has many lung spaces in the form of Parks and gardens and community building can happen in these spaces and the authorities should partner with private bodies and put these spaces to good use. Bangalore Habba was a perfect example of the community of Bangalore coming together for 15 days and celebrating arts and culture of the city and for no reason it made a quite exit. Dubai is marketed by its shopping festival and most other cities have their highlight annual event and Bangalore too needs an highlight event to bring communities together.
Sustainability: The challenge is in creating infrastructure that can be used well beyond what its meant for. Most of the stadiums that were built when Bangalore hosted the National Games are all exhibition venues now and thats not what they were built for. London hosted the Olympics with its existing infrastructure and took most of the events outdoors to the roads and lakes and parks that they already had. The spaces around the Metro station around MG Road are not being put to good use as a walkway and exhibition space.
Most of Bangalores problems have solutions around us and its for the authorities to have the vision to collaborate and co exsist with citizens and the world.
Shivram, Chairman, Concorde Group
The views expressed in this article are author´s own.
