Urban Design – Civil Engineering Projects

Planning Committee Meeting | Analysis of a Planning Application in the UK

August 25, 2014 by Designer

Abstract

This report outlines the process in which a planning application is analysed at the planning committee meeting. It discusses the role of different members present in the meeting in the planning application process. Different stages of planning application process have been studied, which include pre-application advice, application submission, role of validation team, role of development control officer and planning committee involvement. Different types of applications have been mentioned. The planning application selected for analysis has been described. The planning officer’s report contents have been briefly summarised. The stages in the process of planning application assessment have been explained in detail. Lastly, the planning application process has been critically analysed.

Background study of Planning Application Process

Planning takes places within the context of a system which is defined by Legislation, Regulations and Orders, Case Law, National policy and advice (NPPF), local plans (Neighbourhood plans), appeals and enforcement.

Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) evaluate planning applications. This will be either District/Borough/City/Unitary/County/London/Borough/Metropolitan/National Park.

The applicant has an option to get free “Pre-application advice”. The applicant can discuss the documents with the council in presence of planning officers and get advice on the list of required documents for application approval. This is an optional service and depends on the applicant’s desire to use it. Instead, the applicant can directly submit the application to Local authority.

The application is then passed on to the Validation team who is responsible for checking all the documents against the local list (where all the policies relating to the application are considered) in order to validate if relevant. The application is then forwarded to the Development manager or Development control Officer (DC).

DC stage has two options.

It is delegated by the officer. In this case, if the planning application is straightforward, the consent is given by the DC officer alone.
Sometimes, there is a need for the planning committee to intervene and decide if the application is to be approved or refused. The DC officer sends his comments to the committee regarding his thoughts and analysis of the application.

Role of Planning Committee

Major and contentious applications are dealt with by Planning Committees. They also inspect the sites before coming to a conclusion. The Planning Committee includes Councillors from all political parties and areas of the City. Officers of the Council also attend to answer questions about the reports.

Urban Redesign Proposals

May 14, 2014 by Designer

Urban redesign proposals

Traffic Issue

Around 60% of the traffic uses the main road of the shopping street as a bypass route. The road connects places such as LB nagar, Saroor nagar, Vanasthalipuram, Charminar, Dilsukhnagar etc. There is lot of traffic of the buses which is creating lot of chaos and congestion on the main street.

Proposal for a one-way flyover (40’ wide)

As an attempt to solve the problem of the traffic movement, we are suggesting the proposal of a Flyover for one-way traffic which will take around 80% of the bus traffic.

Traffic and Parking problems identified | Urban Design

May 8, 2014 by Designer

Traffic issues at Abids | Urban Design

Permanent traffic

Permanent traffic of the stretch considered (SBH-GPO) is the traffic of the shop owners and the employees. This is like a fixed percentage of traffic.

Flowing Traffic – Major Bus Traffic

Apart from this stretch being a major shopping Street in Abids, it also serves as a bypass route for going to Vanasthalipuram, Saroornagar, LBnagar, Dilsukhnagar and Charminar areas.

The movement of buses on this route is intense and causes lot of chaos which is not even relevant to Abids. There is a heavy percentage of Flowing Traffic on this stretch.

Staggered Traffic

Staggered traffic is usually found on the junctions. There are two major junctions on this stretch. The roads connecting the main street are two way roads. They can also be termed as “feeder roads”.

Floating traffic

50% of the traffic here on this main shopping street is the floating traffic. People park their vehicles wherever they find it easier and closer to get access to get their stuff and leave. The most chaos and cause of inconvenience is caused by floating traffic because they do not have an organized parking pattern.

Parking problems identified

On Street Parking

Main Shopping Street

The Parking of the vehicles especially two wheelers is done on the pavements or on the streets. This has led to the wrong practice of parking by the people. People go for On-street Parking because of the lack of Parking space.

Building and Cellar Parking

There is a very little percentage of Parking facility provided by the respective shop owners for their customers.

For example, Big Bazaar

Big Bazaar has a provision for cellar Parking and Parking in the setbacks. Cellar Parking is very unsuccessful in Big Bazaar. People have an issue with easy access to the Parking area and hence they rather prefer parking it on the streets.

Permanent Parking

The shop owners and the employees of the respective shop owners park their vehicles as close to their shops or showrooms as possible. This Parking percentage does not vary with increasing traffic or parking.

Studying Formal and Informal Activities | Urban Design

May 5, 2014 by Designer

Co relation of formal and Informal Activities | Urban Design

Studying the co-relation of formal and informal activities is very important. Abids as mentioned earlier in one of the oldest commercial neighbourhood of the city of Hyderabad. It has established formal and informal activities. They relate to each other and surprisingly there are different types of informal sellers that we call hawkers.

Types of Commodities

Books
Belts
Clothes
Cellphone Accessories such as Mobile covers, headphones etc.
Goggles
Watches
Eateries

Relationship between formal and informal shopping areas

The informal shopping areas evolved because of the influence of the existing formal shops.

Factors that influence the existence of the informal shops:

Type of formal shops
Crowd (people)

Types of formal shops

Some percentage of informal shops evolved because of a strong influence of the type of formal sector. The informal shopping development generally include the accessories of the major commodity sold in the formal shops/showrooms.

For example:

Hawkers around Hollywood

Hollywood is a footwear showroom. All the accessories related to footwear are available in the informal shopping area adjacent to Hollywood. Also, the accessories such as watched, goggles etc have been seen to exist around.

The informal sector around Hollywood is very popular.

Parking facility

The area between Hollywood ad Kamal Watch is their setback area.

Two wheeler paid parking is prevalent here. The funds collected by paid parking are distributed between the two showrooms Hollywood and Kamal Watch respectively.

Emphasis of Crowd on the informal Activities

The informal activity gets a boost in their business because of the following two reasons:

Kind of Crowd
Volume of Crowd

Kind of Crowd

People who prefer shopping on streets from the informal shop owners are in encouraging number.

Volume of Crowd

Wherever there is a huge of volume of crowd, the informal activities are larger in number.

Economic Status of the Hawkers

Types of Hawkers

As per our casestudy, the types of Hawkers can be classified into three major categories:

Senior Hawkers
Rental Hawkers
Hawkers permitted by formal shops

Senior Hawkers and their economic status

These hawkers have existed at a particular place for a minimum of 35 years. Some of these senior hawkers have been there even before the major formal showrooms came up. The formal shop owners cannot shoo them off from their place.

Rental Hawkers

Rental Hawkers are dependent on Senior Hawkers. If any newer hawker wants to establish his informal activity at a particular place where senior hawker once sold his goods; they have to pay rentals to the Senior for carrying out their sales activity.

For example

The hawker selling belts on the footpath paid 10,000/- to the senior hawker to carry out his sales activity.

The rental network does not stop here.

Rentals paid by the Hawkers:

Economically stable Hawkers

Turnover	Senior	MCH	Police	Buying New Materials	Income split into two partners
90,000/-	10,000/-	5000/-	5000/-	20,000/-	25000 each

Economically Backward Hawkers

Turnover	Senior	MCH	Police	Buying New Materials	Income
20,000/-	5,000/-	300/-	5000/- or commodities	3,000/-	6700

The amount collected by police depends on the income of the Hawker.

Hawkers permitted by Formal Shop owners

Formal shop owners use these hawkers to their advantage.

When shop owners keep their shops shut for a long time because of a certain reason, they permit these hawkers to practice their hawking activity until they open their shops again. They do this for two reasons:

Security Purpose

Prevention from dirtying of the surrounding area of the shop.

Sunday Bazaar

Evolution of Market – 35 years ago

Type of Market – Informal type of Market laid on footpaths and roads.

Commodities sold : Books and Clothes

Timing : 10am to 6pm

Peak Shopping hours : 4pm to 6pm

History of Sunday Bazaar

The informal activity in Koti has given a boost to the development of weekly informal activity which is today known as Sunday Bazaar.

Initially, market for books was a trend only in Koti which later spread to Abids.

Informal market for clothes gradually developed.

Identity of Hawkers

Basically Sunday Bazaar Hawkers are people who work in either private shops or municipal offices on week days.

To make extra money on weekends, they sell clothes or books in Sunday Bazaar.They follow a system of “FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BASIS”.

Economic Status

They are employees from private shops or government offices.

On an average, they make 2000/- on Sunday.

Relation between Formal and Informal Activity

Sunday Bazaar influenced some of the formal shop owners to keep their shops open on Sundays. But the existence of Sunday Bazaar is not influenced by the formal Sector.

Stepwise approach to redesign of Abids | Urban Renewal

May 1, 2014 by Designer

Case study of Abids | Urban Renewal

Stage One

Understanding the concept of Urban Design and the reason for selecting the topic

Stage Two

Selection of a Zone in the area for detailed study and analysis (10,00000 sqm approx.)

Stage Three

Division of the major study zone into smaller zones for detailed study

Stage Four

After division of zones, study was conducted in a systematic way as follows:

Study to be done for every zone:

Identification and Classification of Buildings

Residential buildings
Commercial buildings
Amenities
Utilities
Heritage structures if any
Religious structures

Identification of land use pattern depending on the type of building
Influence of various land use activities on the commercial activities
Identification of the types of commercial activities in every zone
Identification of the type of road

Studying the history of Abids | Urban Regeneration

April 28, 2014 by Designer

Introduction to Abids – Past and the Present Conditions | Urban Regeneration

Abids is a major commercial hub of the city of Hyderabad, India. It is the oldest and famous business area which developed after the development of Old City and Secunderabad. Major number of government buildings are located in this area. For example, the state government building APSFC, and President Plaza etc.

This place has a mixture of Anglican Architecture, Persian Architecture and the modern Architectural style. This place has heritage structures which have been preserved from the past 200 years. The city of Hyderabad was not much developed. The two hotspots of the city were Secunderbad and Old City. Secunderabad is the twin city of Hyderabad. Old City and Secunderabad were the only areas where businesses were set up and gradually got overcrowded.

Evolution of the name of the Area – ABIDS | Urban Regeneration

After 1908 floods in Hyderabad, King Koti Developed. The Nizamshahis went shopping in the horse carriages to Abids. The area had a shop belonging to Albert Abid, a Jewish valet of Nizam VI of Hyderabad state, hence the area came to be known as Abid shop and the main road abutting the shop was known as Abid road. Later on, this area became popular as Abids. But this was just a small stretch which developed.

During British rule in India in the year 1844 AD, St. George’s Church was constructed. Along with it came Grammar School for boys. This gave a boost to the construction of new schools in Abids. This area has many schools and educational institutions.

The development of schools and educational institutions gave rise to the development of commercial activity related to the necessities of the School going children.

Design of Commercial Neighbourhood | Urban Design

April 23, 2014 by Designer

Commercial Neighbourhood Design | Abids, Hyderabad

The commercial hub in Hyderabad selected for Redesign and Restructuring is “Abids” which was popularly known as the “Commercial District of Hyderabad”.

The study has been carried out in the following way:

Research Focus

Various issues regarding the Urban structure has been addressed. It includes commercial spots, residential communities, Amenities, Utilities, religious structures etc. The influence of each on the commercial activities has been addressed in the case study.

Research Methods | Urban Design

The research Methods include:

Detailed Case study of the Abids Zone
Collection of data regarding History of Abids from the Conservation books
Findings of the case study

The issues addressed in the case study have been classified into two categories:

Need for Redesign
Need for Restructuring

The design process for the design of commercial neighbourhood has been discussed in one of our previous articles. This will help you give you an insight of the design process in Urban Design.

The issues include various Urban Design factors to be reconsidered for restructuring and redesign that will help revive the ambience of the Commercial hub which existed 50 years ago.

The project “Design of Commercial Neighbourhood” needs critical study of area selected for redesign. Abids has been chosen as the commercial hub for the Urban Design Project.