Author: thisisurbanblog

Nitin Bathla is an architect, urban practitioner and researcher. He holds a MAS Urban Design degree from ETH Zurich and a five year Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Institute of Environmental Design in Vallabh Vidyanagar, India. His interests lie in finding new forms of design practice and intervention that are rooted in social frameworks and complexities; in this regard he has been experimenting with forms of global and local knowledge exchange. His experience spans across a variety of domains which include advocacy and activism, urban research, urban design, urban and transport planning and architecture design. Prior to joining the Future Cities Laboratory, he was helping develop a programme of support for the Indian government, to make city development more inclusive through enhanced citizen participation, as a part of an initiative by Bloomberg philanthropies. Nitin was the curator for the Urban Age award platform in Delhi in the year 2014, through which he researched on grassroots community based initiatives in Delhi and helped translate this into spatial mapping; the project has since morphed into a global knowledge exchange platform, with teams of urban practitioners and community initiatives from the previous award cities cross-collaborating. He continues to actively collaborate with social initiatives in India to develop and test new tools for social action through design. Currently he works as a independent researcher on issues related with extended and planetary urbanisation. His latest projects include developing platforms for grassroots and planner interface.

The Big-Gig at Landour

So finally today I finished the map I had been working on for the Big-Gig Festival. I am really looking forward to this festival in the hills of Uttaranchal between the 14th and 15th of May, majorly because it will help me escape the heat of Delhi. I visited Landour a couple of weeks back for a weekend hiking trip. I was really impressed by the beauty of this laid-back, small and cozy hill station, especially if you are in the tourist hell hole of Mussorie before this. I don’t want to talk about Mussorie in this blog post but will delve more into the tourism hell it is in one of my next ones.

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I found this amusing billboard on the trek which read – “There is no wifi in this forest, but I promise you will find a better connection”

In the two days I was there I terkked around 50kms, including Jabarkhet nature reserve which is a must go. It has been beutifully preserved by Mrs. Wohra, who I learned is also the head of WWF in India. http://www.jabarkhetnature.com/

Anyways finally below is the map I created for the Big-gig festival ( I am such a mapping and GIS enthusiast). The map is A3 size and will be helpful for people to orient themselves as it is a multi-venue event. The great thing about this event is that it supports the local economy and is organised by locals, thus this helps my long term goals of supporting such causes. TheBigGigMap8.jpg

I am including some details below form the map. I have used the almost terracotta red tone of the roofs that I found there to illustrate the houses. I used Arcmap to create the initial map on GIS and then did post processing and illustration in Illustrator.

I have created a good GIS database on Landour now and will upload this on Open street maps soon. Hopefully this will help in disaster relief that Himalyan towns are so prone to.

Getting back to the map, below is a 1:1 scale view of a selected area on the map. I have illustrated facades of some of the landmarks in the town, so it can help people orient themselves better.

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I added the flags to demarcate plazas that will be created around the events.

I am so excited to visit Big-gig soon. I will most probably be taking my bicycle along and taking the Shatabdi Express train from Delhi till Dehradun and then be cycling uphill for about 30kms to reach Landour. I hope to crash on the couch of Sayan, Mary Ann whom I had met along with Thomas while trekking there.

I hope to see you there. Including a small photograph below to tempt you!!!

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A sunset view from Landour