[sustran] Re: Second Master Plan for Chennai. - request for comments

[Jonathan E. D. Richmond]

I am in Chennai right now. I would be amazed if anything close to planning 
were ever to be possible here.

The city is a disgusting dump -- in fact, the whole place appears to be 
one big public urinal as far as I can see! The city cannot even plan 
public toilets: the few that exist are so sickening that people piss on 
the outsides of them as well as in the street everywhere.

Almost everything in this city is a mass of unplanned ugliness. I don't 
know if there is a city bus system, as no information is available (as is 
usual in Indian cities, nothing is done for the consumer). There is a 
small rail system, served by filthy trains whose doors stay open at all 
times. I got off one such train last night to be landed in a deserted 
station with no information and filled with people sleeping rough in 
the middle of piles of garbage: the smell was so bad that I could hardly 
walk to the main road to have the opportunity of being ripped off by one 
of the many rickshaw wallahs who refuse to use their meters.

So, how does one plan in this environment?

My answer is that there is no point in planning at all, because the plans 
will not come to reality until institutions have changed. The existing 
house must be put in order before anything new can be realized -- and that 
is a very hard job amidst the mismanagement, corruption, and dirt that 
constitutes Chennai today.

                                --Jonathan

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Jonathan Richmond

1 (617) 395-4360

e-mail: richmond at alum.mit.edu
http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/