8/15/2016

Headline August 16, 2016/ ''' T H E *U R B A N* G A M E '''


''' T H E *U R B A N* G A M E '''




SO THIS THEN,  -SIR,   -is the beautiful, and over hundred years old hill station, ABBOTTABAD,  -of the province of KPK, Pakistan?

But are you. sure, good, Sir?  For all I see, this is now a wretched shanty town.

That's me,  -and having a smart conversation with Student Tanveer Iqbal Querishi, Germany/ Abbottabad  As the deeply anguished, Engineer Imran Basit, [MS China'] looked on.

Only a few days earlier, this brainy engineer, ex-LUMS, and a very proud recipient of Pakistan's *Pride of Performance*  medal, had given me a detailed over view of Islamabad's rising, ugly sprawl

Urban and national officials should begin by admitting  two things their cities are going to become very much larger; and this growth will be too quick to be controlled by comprehensive urban plans.

Officials in poor countries often spend many years drawing up detailed plans; by the time they are finished, the city has changed so much that their designs cannot possibly be implemented.

It is just so wiser to keep things simple. At a minimum, workout where the main thorughfares and parks will go as the city expands. Again, New York is one great model.

In 1881, when the city was still confined to the southern tip of Manhattan, it planned for   *sevenfold expansion*  and laid out a street grid.

As`Pakistan learned the real hard way, acquiring the rights of way for future roads and amenities can be both costly and politically difficult  [though not nearly as much as waiting until it is too late].    

Almost  all fast-growing  cities are in countries where landholdings are small, and and small farmers do not take kindly to being booted of their land. But a few countries have developed a promising technique known as *land readjustment*

Instead of evicting farmers in the path of a new road, officials offer to recognise the whole district. Everybody looses some land, and the biggest winners   -those closest to the new road  -compensate those who fare less well.

Japanese cities used this technique when they were growing quickly. Today, the Indian state of Gujarat makes it work.

Homes in Xioshan are a mixture of grubby apartment blocks and grandiose four - and  -five storey homes decorated in joyous combinations of pastel colours.
Locals call these  ''villas''  and many feature  European gabled fronts to Chinese pagoda roofs for both. They are connected to the electricity grid, the sewer system and the road network.

Roads account for fully  29%  of land area in the newly developed suburbs of Hangzhou, according to Mr Angel. The western age of Xiaoshan even has a subway line.

For the past two decades Zhejiang's  economic performance has been among the best in China. Hangzhou's  GDP  per-person reached  $12,000 last year  -more than double the national average.

Local people who abandoned farm work for city jobs have grown richer, as have migrants from elsewhere in China. Yuan Huang, one of the many people who migrated to Xiaoshan from Anhui province, north-west of the city, came to open a small electronic factory in 2004.

His pot belly and the gold chain around his neck testify to its success, as does his  four-storey  house with an exterior of baby blue tile.

Xiaoshan looks fairly orderly. Most roads follow a grid pattern, and buildings line the roads. Close to the urban core it has sprouted factories, car dealerships and the odd high-end apartment block.

[''Money and cars,'' says one shopkeeper. ''That's what we have here.'']

On the fringes, though, Xiaoshan is taking on a deeply strange form. Behind the lines of tightly packed houses and apartments blocks are large fields divided into stripes. A lattice of urbanity has been overlaid on an agricultural landscape. 

Xiaoshan is hardly a farming titan: vendors at a nearby market say their produce is trucked in from elsewhere. The fields remain because government policy makes it hard to convert farmland into housing.

So residents build their home as large as they can and rent rooms to city workers for extra income.Although it would have been roundly roundly condemned as ideological heresy in the days of Chairman Mao-

Mr Yuan chuckles at this suggestion that peasants have become landlords.''Yes,'' he says, ''I suppose you could put it that way.''

The Honour and Serving of the latest  ''Operational Research on Life and Living''  continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward and see you all on the following one.

With respectful dedication to the  City-Planners, Architects, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and !E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:


''' Passive Panic '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

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