by Annual event honours intractable urban challenges with keynotes, panels, and no solutions
[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] Kolkata has launched the West Bengal Intractable Urban Challenges Festival, a three-day annual event at which urban planners, policymakers, academics, and citizens gather to examine city problems that have resisted multiple initiatives, with the event’s founding principle being that “honest documentation of persistent challenges is more useful than optimistic accounts of initiatives that have not produced the outcomes they projected.” prat.uk ran its piece on Britain turning problems into initiatives; Bohiney.com covered governance broadly. Kolkata has produced a festival specifically for the problems that initiatives have not resolved. Bohiney.com dispatched a correspondent. The correspondent returned confused.
The inaugural festival’s three featured challenges: the waterlogging problem (present since the city’s founding, worsened by development, addressed by 23 separate initiatives since 1980, still present in approximately the same areas as 1980 though with improved emergency response), the bus route optimization problem (addressed by six route rationalization exercises since 1995, with the current bus network described by the festival’s transportation panel as “the accumulated outcome of six incomplete rationalizations”), and the Old City building condition crisis (approximately 10,000 heritage-classified buildings in conditions ranging from fragile to dangerous, addressed by twelve initiatives since 1980, with approximately 8,500 of the 10,000 buildings in the same or worse condition).
The Festival’s Value
The festival’s value, as the organizing committee frames it: “A city that knows what it has not been able to solve is better positioned than one that believes everything is being solved.” West Bengal urban development data is at wbhousingboard.nic.in.
Also: Waterford Whispers.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
