Anagha Speaks

The Planning Studio in Goa happened mid February and since then my brain is processing two important pieces of information. One, is the Communidade Code of Land management in Goa's villages and Second, the Tragedy of Commons. The Tragedy of Commons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons, for more information ), is a dilemma arising from a situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally, in their own self interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen. In the Tragedy of Commons however, there is an anomaly that 'common' property, is no one's property, while everyone uses it. But this is often mistaken for 'everyone's property (contradicting the theory of common property) and hence abused, competing with each other for a larger share of the resources. The Communidade Land Management system also has the concept of '...

In January 2011, the new year began with an amazing three day interaction with Philippe Vandenbroeck, from Belgium, who conducted a workshop on Building Scenarios . He introduced to us the wonderful tool in which we, as Planners, can start envisioning what our cities, our neighborhoods can be, say 20 years from now! Of course, the envisioning happens in a structured and logical manner, where we look at current existing issues, policies, political and governance frameworks to understand and evolve the possibilities of "where will we be in 2030". The Scenario Methodology, in the past 2-3 decades, has emerged to address the growing 'uncertainty' in knowing what the future can be. It is a way to address the realities of people and people behaviors in projecting a 'future', which cannot be accurately derived from data crunching. The process is participative, where citizens become a part of the envisioning process for their own cities. Unlike the 'non people ori...

Beginning in January 2011, the students of M.Arch Environmental Architecture, BNCA, Pune will embark on their Planning Studio in Goa. For this purpose, I visited Goa last week to understand the environmental pressures confronting Goa and meet with the various stakeholders who are directly and indirectly participating in the Goa Regional Plan. At this time of the year, Goa was lush and vibrantly green, the raindrops making a continuous patter on the river Mandovi. Panjim was sleepy, with very few tourists and the beaches were serene while the sea was stormy. Once again, after 13 years, I experienced a laid back Goa that I had encountered when I had interned with Ar Dean D'Cruz in 1997. But this time the urban pressures were evident and threatning. The urban forces and the rural borders seemed intermingled and I felt a pang of regret that the charming, sleepy villages of Goa may soon be gone, replaced by the urbane tourist infrastructure demanded by the Urban Global Tourist. The Goan...