Partha Mukhopadhdyaya is an expert on cities, having studied them in multiple countries including China and India. He also happens to serve on our scientific advisory board. Mint carried the first part of an interesting discussion with Partha on cities. When we talk about the insights from big data for cities, we naturally get slotted into the data for “planning” box. But I’ve always been wary about planning and also talk about experimentation using near-real-time and low-cost feedback. Looks like Partha is on the same track:
“The city and urban planning seemed to be earlier synonymous, but that is no longer the case. When things are changing rapidly, they are changing direction, not following old paths, and we cannot build cities of the past, if nothing else, then for climate reasons. We don’t really have a place to take the city to. So consequently, planning becomes a lot more difficult, because you don’t know what you are planning towards. Planning anyway has been a static exercise, and now we don’t even have a destination in mind,” says Mukhopadhyay. “Consequently, we need to be more open to different perspectives, because fundamentally, we need more experimentation happening, in the hope that some of it will succeed, because we don’t quite know what will work. That’s the first point.”
Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Politics/5dxg16axuqNPSDuXzor9hP/The-connection-between-economic-and-spatial-growth.html?utm_source=copy
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