3-5 Year Strategic Plan: Fill & Download for Free

Development on the urban fringes tend to be speculative by nature. Until recently developers were not require to implement land adjustment plans, as such there was no effective way to coordinate infrastructure rollout. Roads often don’t join up or align with the next roads.If you study the aerial photos, you’ll notice that many housing estates were supplanted over what was once farm lands. Developers tend to build to the maximum floor space permitted with little regard to public amenities like parks and open space. The houses are crammed into tiny allotments.Larger developers tend to be more strategic in their approach. They will assemble large tracts of land and wait until the market condition is ripe before progressing with the next stage of development. Many housing estates (Moobaan) comprise fewer than 100 dwellings. The estates will have number assigned to them (Moobaan Happyland 1, 2, 3 etc) like terrible movie sequels. And yes, there’s a housing estate called Happyland!When I was a kid, the urban fringes in the north and east were nothing more than rice paddies. Back then, Pathumthani and Bang Na were considered the city’s outskirts. Travelling to and from my grandparents’ orchards in Paed Rew (Chachoengsao) the only thing you could see were rice paddies. These areas have since been developed into industrial estates and golf courses, highways with dangling giant transmission lines, double decked expressways lined up with giant billboards. It’s a different experience.There’s also a satellite town north of Bangkok called Mueng Thong Thani, a masterplanned community for over 100,000 people. It was built by Bangkok Land and designed by Australian architects Bob Nation and Karl Fender. I remember walking through the streets of MTT in the mid 90’s after the financial crisis. It was like a ghost town. There were futuristic buildings which laid empty for many years.Fast forward twenty years later, this area is bustling with activities. There are several schools and a university. Government offices are located off Chaeng Wattana Road. There’s a huge indoor arena, IMPACT Convention & Exhibition Centre, a football stadium, home of SCG Muang Thong United, Cosmo Mall, hotel and an office park. A monorail branching off the Pink Line will be built in the next 4–5 years.Kasikorn Park, Muang Thong Thani. Photo © Land ProcessThe original suburbs like Phrakanong and Huay Kwang are now considered part of the inner city. Other places like Saphan Kwai and Ari have been gentrified. When talking about suburbs nowadays we’re talking about areas that extend far beyond the city’s limit, areas that were only incorporated into the Bangkok Metropolis not so long ago. Give it some time these areas will mature and develop into real communities.

It was not the Britishers per se but Lord Mountbatten who ensured that the partition of India went in India’s favor.To begin with, Lord Mountbatten was not a Britisher in the real sense but had German heritage. Both his parents had German lineage.The Mountbatten family is a European dynasty originating as a branch of the German princely Battenberg family, which anglicized their names to Mountbatten.The name change from Battenberg to Mountbatten was adopted, on the eve of World War I by all family members residing in the United Kingdom due to the widespread and boiling anti-German sentiment among the British public which forced his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg - to resign in disgrace as the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy.The British newspapers of the day had their screaming editorials titled:“Should we allow a Hun to Boss our Navy ?”Driven by public opinion, Churchill asked Prince Louis to resign as First Sea Lord on 27 October 1914.This incident was shocking to both father and son, and this slight, the son, wanted to avenge by rising in his career by his own merit.Increasing anti-German hysteria even threw suspicion upon the British monarchy and King George V was persuaded to change his German name of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and relinquish all German titles and styles on behalf of his relatives who were British subjects.Mountbatten had a love affair in India with his future wife Edwina during his visit in March 1921, when he accompanied the Prince of Wales on a Royal tour of India and Japan.Edwina and he had very fond memories of both the countries during their brief stay in 1921.He liked both countries immensely, but ended up fighting against Japan in World War II as Supreme Allied Commander in South Asia and presided over the surrender ceremony of the Imperial Japanese Army in Singapore where he and his wife developed a close friendship with future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who had arrived just in time to witness the surrender.Here is a photograph of Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia, riding with Jawaharlal Nehru in Singapore before attending the surrender ceremony of the Imperial Japanese Army.When he came to India in 1947 as the Viceroy who was supposed to bring down the curtains of the British Raj, he was specifically instructed by Churchill, to favor M. A.Jinnah - the leader of the All India Muslim League and agree to all his demands.Winston Churchill hated the Indian Congress leaders to the core and had developed a friendly rapport with All India Muslim League leader M. A. Jinnah, who collaborated completely with the British administration during the war years while the entire Congress leadership was in jail, owing to the British clamp down on the Quit-India movement, by providing a steady stream of Muslim soldiers from the Punjab, Northwest Frontier provinces and the United Provinces to augment the flagging British Army in North Africa during the Desert War against the Deutsches Afrika Korps (D A K) under General Erwin Rommel and his Italian allies.The British armies received a major drubbing on June 21st, 1942 with the fall of their fortress of Tobruk in North Africa after the battle of Ain-al- Gazala when more than 30,000 of them surrendered to the German (D A K) and Italian auxiliary armies and Winston Churchill desperately needed foot soldiers (Cannon Fodder) to clear the extensive German minefields and shore up their defenses of El-Alamein, Alexandria, Cairo, and the Suez Canal.Jinnah immediately came to Churchill’s rescue by organizing recruitment drives in the United Provinces, Punjab, and the northwest Frontier Provinces to recruit Muslim soldiers for this purpose.Churchill’s lively correspondence with Jinnah had started during the war years 1941–45, soon after he had heard about the Lahore declaration of March 23–24 1940 made by the Muslim league calling for a separate country for India’s Muslims in the subcontinent and he promised Jinnah - his pound of flesh and pail of blood - Pakistan - in 1944 itself and it was to be a substantial part of North India - All of Punjab, all of Bengal, all of Sindh and all of Assam in addition to all those areas in Northern India with Muslim majorities.This was Churchill’s way of thanking Jinnah for his unstinted help in supplying a lot of foot soldiers for the Allied North African campaign during the years 1942 and 43.This confidential correspondence between the two leaders, which reveals in full measure, Churchill’s dastardly bias against the Hindus can be still gleaned from the archives in London, continued till 1947 and beyond.In a letter dated June 20th, 1946, Churchill chides M. A. Jinnah for his political inactivity and advises him to “Stir the pot quite a bit” .. “if you want your Pakistan to become a reality”.In another letter to Jinnah dated August 3, 1946, Churchill wrote: “I am vehemently opposed to the handing over of India to Hindu caste rule, as seems very largely to be intended…”Historians have long been aware of a nexus of sorts between Jinnah and Churchill, but these letters, for the first time, bring the relationship into the public domain.The letters also reveal that Jinnah used the Direct Action Day on August 16th, 1946, as a strategic move to upstage both the Congress and the British.In a missive dated July 7, 1946, to Churchill, Jinnah hinted that blood would soon flow on the streets of Indian cities — and it did. Nearly 6,000 people were killed in the bloodiest-ever communal riots in Calcutta, instigated by Muslim League vigilantes over Jawaharlal Nehru’s rejection of the Cripps Commission report which had given the option for Muslim majority provinces to secede from the Indian Union.This was soon followed by the Noakhali massacres against the Hindus of Eastern Bengal.Retaliatory rioting happened in Bihar where the Muslims came worse off and rioting occurred in Western Punjab and the Northwest Frontier provinces where Hindus and Sikhs suffered massacres.India was literally in flames and needed a political solution urgently.On 20 February 1947, Lord Mountbatten was appointed India’s last viceroy.Soon after he landed in India, in March 1947, he did something unprecedented..He threw open the Viceregal mansion- today known as Rashtrapati Bhavan - to the Indian public, something no viceroy before him had done and for the first time, the common man in India could attend the tea party and sip tea a few meters away from the Viceroy while he chatted amicably with the leaders of the Indian Congress Party and All India Muslim League, while also going on a guided tour of the mansion and admiring the extensive rose garden in the backyard.Mountbatten was fond of Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru and his liberal outlook for the country. He felt differently about the Muslim leader Muhammed Ali Jinnah, but was aware of his power, stating "If it could be said that any single man held the future of India in the palm of his hand in 1947, that man was Mohammad Ali Jinnah."During his meeting with Jinnah on 5 April 1947, Mountbatten tried to persuade Jinnah of the express need of keeping India united, citing the difficult task of dividing the mixed states of Punjab and Bengal, but the Muslim leader was unyielding in his goal of establishing a separate Muslim state called Pakistan.Discussions began with both the Congress leaders who did not favor the partition of India and with whom he got along well and the Muslim League leader Jinnah who insisted on it and came across as a cold and distant schemer.He was rather irritated by Jinnah’s logic when Jinnah demanded that the whole of the Punjab and Bengal which had large Hindu majority regions and all of Assam, be made part of Pakistan.Lord Mountbatten had an independent mind and knew right from wrong because of his German heritage. He was not going to follow anybody’s advice.. even if that advice and directive came from Winston Churchill himself.He knew from personal experience, how horrible a person wronged by prejudice, felt, by looking back with remorse at the career of his own German father which had been cut short abruptly on the eve on World War I.He did not share the withering, contemptuous and nauseating hatred the English upper classes had developed during the closing years of the RAJ towards India’s Hindu people who they felt were the majority in India’s anti-colonial struggle having allowed themselves to be lead by that “Half Naked Charlatan” - Gandhi to wrest the “Jewel in the Crown” from them.He first reasoned with Jinnah against partition and pointed out to him the humongous human and material cost of such an undertaking and the bloodshed and misery it would cause and also the lasting ill effects it would bring to the entire subcontinent for decades to come.When Jinnah with Churchill’s backing, was adamant and insisted on partitioning the country, he pointed out to Jinnah the flaws in his own theory.His conversations with Jinnah in May 1947 went like this.Jinnah:Your Excellency doesn't understand that the Punjab is a region. Bengal is a region.A man is a Punjabi or a Bengali first before he is a Hindu or a Muslim. If you give us those provinces you must, under no condition, partition them. You will destroy their viability and cause endless bloodshed and trouble. We want the whole of Punjab and Bengal to be awarded to Pakistan.Mountbatten replied:Yes, of course. A man is not only a Punjabi or a Bengali before he is a Muslim or Hindu, but he is an Indian before all else. What you're saying is the perfect, absolute answer I've been looking for. You've presented me with the most sound arguments to keep India united and never partition this country.Mr. Jinnah, if you insist on partitioning India and state that Muslims cannot live with Hindus as minorities in this land, then how do you suppose that it is alright for the large Hindu populations of Eastern Punjab and Western Bengal to be under Muslim majority Pakistan?Sorry, you cannot have it both ways. If you insist on partitioning India based on religious demography, then the Hindu majority regions of Eastern Punjab and Western Bengal, including the city of Calcutta will have to become part of India and cannot be part of Pakistan.Bengal and Punjab will have to be partitioned based on demographic realities.I also need to remind you that all of Assam cannot be part of Pakistan because there is clearly no Muslim majority in that region.Jinnah was clearly taken aback by this and began to complain loudly about getting a “moth-eaten” Pakistan, but Mountbatten told him to sit down quietly and accept what was going to be been granted by the boundary commission which drew the borders between the two states.Here is a picture of the final meeting where everybody was on board.Mountbatten had verbally belabored Jinnah the previous day behind closed doors and ordered him to express his assent to the arrangement with a mere nod of his head.He threatened Jinnah, telling him in a very candid and stern manner that if he made any more unreasonable demands, then the whole “Pakistan affair” would be “Off” and consigned to the dustbin of history.In some ways, Mountbatten may have been under a lot of pressure from Churchill and others in the British government who desperately wanted to create a “client state” in India’s Northwest to check Soviet expansionism towards the Arabian sea.Since the city of Lahore in Punjab was given to Pakistan by the boundary commission, Mountbatten compensated India by awarding the city of Amritsar and the district of Gurdaspur to India at the last minute to assuage the feelings of the aggrieved Sikhs, who hated to see all of Western Punjab which had been their homeland and holy land for close to five centuries, being awarded to Pakistan.Jinnah avenged these decisions which were very unpalatable to him, by not allowing Mountbatten to be Governor-General of Pakistan in 1947 and appointed himself Governor-General of that newly formed dominion instead.Mountbatten remembered this slight and paid him in kind when it came to the Kashmir issue.Churchill wanted the princely states to declare their independence from India.He was always fond of uttering loudly the following sentence :Pakistan, Princestan and whatever remains of that mess will be called Hindustan and that … will be the final fate of our Indian empire.Lord Mountbatten overruled Churchill, torpedoed this atrocious plan that would have Balkanized India and told the princes that their fate was left entirely to their final decisions and they had to decide whether to join India or Pakistan.Remaining independent was not an option for them.Soon Hindu and Sikh ruled princely states in the subcontinent joined India after being coerced by Sardar Patel and VP Menon and Muslim majority princely states like Bahawalpur and Khairpur, joined Pakistan.When Jinnah pushed his luck and tried to annex the princely state of Kashmir by force, then Mountbatten who was Governor-General of India clearly sided with Nehru after advising Nehru to FIRST secure in a legal manner, the instrument of accession to the Indian Union, from the vacillating Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir and then allowed the Indian army and airforce to airlift troops to the vale of Kashmir and defeat and drive out the armed Lashkars Jinnah had sent to take over the valley.Douglas Gracey, a general of the former British Indian Army who was Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army from 1947 to 1948, reported directly to Lord Mountbatten who had ordered him to stand down and do nothing when the Kashmir crisis unfolded.Gracey overruled and openly disobeyed an exasperated Jinnah who repeatedly ordered him to send the newly formed Pakistan army to intervene with full force in Kashmir.Gracey’s aide-de-camp later recollected that he would bang the phone down as soon as he heard Jinnah’s voice at the other end of the line pleading with him to do something.The Pakistan Army stayed put in its barracks and consequently Jinnah had to rely on irregular Pathan Lashkars who were not a professional fighting force at all and were no match for the seasoned and professional Indian ArmyNehru very naively did not push matters too far, although he was advised by his astute Home Minister - Sardar Patel to wait till the Indian army had overrun all of Kashmir and not approach the United Nations Security Council, knowing fully well that a cease-fire would be immediately ordered by the UN Body.This blunder of Himalayan proportions allowed Kashmir’s Northern areas: Gilgit Baltistan and a small portion of Kashmir which is today known as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir to remain under Pakistan’s control.Kashmir did not see much rioting between Hindus and Muslims in 1947 or 1948 and the populace led by Sheikh Abdullah, a personal friend of Nehru, was at peace after their state was given a special status in the Indian Union.Before Mountbatten returned home, in 1948, he made a startling and accurate prediction one day before his departure to England.He said that this abnormal dominion of Pakistan will not last more than a quarter-century before it breaks apart into two separate nations.His prescient observation came true, a mere twenty-four years later on Dec 16th, 1971, when Jinnah’s Pakistan was sundered forever, following a humiliating surrender, when the East Pakistan Army surrendered to a joint command of the Indian Army and the Bangladesh Resistance Army at the Ramna Race Course garden, heralding the birth a new Nation - Bangladesh in the subcontinent.East Pakistan became Bangladesh.——————————————————————————After the final settlement in 1948, Winston Churchill, in London, looked testily at the new borders of India and Pakistan, fuming and fretting over what had transpired there under Mountbatten’s watch.He flew into paroxysms of screaming rage whenever anyone mentioned India or Mountbatten to him.The last meeting between Churchill and Mountbatten is retold here to help readers understand the situation caused by the British partition of India.After Mountbatten had returned home, accomplishing his task of 'quitting and splitting' India in less than half the time allotted, August 1947 instead of June 1948.He was given a hero's welcome.Anthony Eden hosted a Tory party dinner and invited Churchill also.When Mountbatten spotted Churchill, he made a beeline for him and advanced with his arms open and a smile lighting up his face.Churchill halted him with an upheld arresting hand with a pointing, accusing finger. He used Lord Louis's pet name to scream at the top of his voice,'Dickie, stand right there!' which caused the taller gentleman to halt in his tracks immediately with a look of complete surprise on his face and the audience all around to be shocked into silence as well.“What you did in India was like whipping your riding crop against my face!'The way you partitioned India was contrary to what I had imagined the final frontiers of the two countries to be.You gave to those lowly, mangy and accursed Hindus a lot more land than to our friends - the Mussalmans of India - who stood by us during the war and you betrayed in the foulest manner, the Maharajahs of our Indian Empire by depriving them of their birthright to secede from India to form their own Independent Dominions “The room had already fallen silent and everyone could hear each word clearly.Churchill next turned on his heel and walked out of the room.He never spoke to Mountbatten for the next seven years.Source: Wikipedia articles.Mountbatten and Jinnah’s negotiations on Pakistan April-July 1947 - CabinetMissionPlanChurchill, Jinnah letters: Churchill encouraged Hindu and Muslim divideWhy did Winston Churchill hate the Hindus and prefer the Muslims?Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston ChurchillHow Patel, Mountbatten and Nehru warded off India’s power grabbing princely states.

I was a long time city person (Toronto, Seattle, Montreal, Seoul) but moved to Burlington last year. My GF has lived in Burlington for over five years and has a 5 year old daughter. We both commute to jobs in downtown Toronto via the Go train.The Go offers reliability, predictability: The Go train takes a bit longer than, say, a ride on the subway, but it offers a far more predictable ride. With the GO, I know exactly when my train will come. I know exactly where to stand. I know exactly what seat I will get. It is far more reliable than the TTC, especially during the winter. The TTC utterly collapses during any day with a snow storm. The Go keeps chugging along. I'm the type who is willing to trade time for predictability.It's also on the Lakeshore West line that moves the bankers, lawyers, and politicians into the city. I can guarantee you if services on this line decline, the people "who matter" will have something to say very, very quickly. Because of the demographic it serves, it's no surprise it's the first line slated for electrification. One sees constant service improvements as well. We have non rush hour every thirty minute service. And that will increase to 15 minutes in the not too distant future. And because this is a pure Ontario government thing, changes and improvements are just, you know, done. There's not the insane Toronto thing where they debate plans for a decade, change plans mid stream, stop work while petty city councilors squabble, beg for more money for their 3 or 1 stop subway extension plan...Oh, and they have this wonderful thing called "the quiet zone". No idiots yapping up a storm during your morning and PM commute. Sleep. Read. Listen to podcasts. Peace and quiet.Oh, and they have this wonderful thing called a "money back service guarantee".The down side is during rare service problems alternate routes are, well, minimal. It might involve a hellish streetcar ride out to Long Branch. But those are rare and the Go bends over backwards to make sure everyone gets the hell home. And sometimes the best thing to do is simply fire up twitter and discover where the "we're going to wait it out" party is forming. Drop in for a beer. Meet your fellow passengers. I guess that's another thing with the Go train. People tend to be a bit more polite. There are a lot of interesting customs and conventions that have developed to help people enter/exit trains, get down stairs, and exit Union station.A peaceful shopping experience: I went by the LCBO in Burlington on New Years eve late afternoon. There were two people in line. I was at the Burlington WalMart and Canadian Tire late Saturday morning. There were two people in line. I go to any no frills type grocery store late Sunday afternoon and, yes, you guessed it. There are two people in line. I can go to a Starbucks and actually get a table. Tables are not perma-occupied by students and other campers nursing a single coffee for hours. Although I'll say I avoid Costco on weekends. But a Monday or Tuesday night after work Costco is quiet and wonderful. The Burlington Ikea does kind of suck, however.Also you find a lot of good retail here. I suspect because Burlington is strategically located between Hamilton and Oakville/Mississauga. You have better land prices, highway access, and two large population centers on either side you can draw from.Great for kids: You might have heard horror stories of Toronto parents lining up all night to secure spots for their kids in after school programs or daycare. In Burlington, you want to get your child in swimming lessons or a great daycare, it's as simple as a phone call. My GF's daughter's daycare is right in the school she attends. And that school is a 3 minute walk from our place.A city that is pro-active about the future and urbanization: Burlington is not content to be a bedroom community. It is planning for walkable living hubs around its three Go train stations and for streets along the Go lines. Burlington is currently trying to figure out a rational, balanced food truck bylaw, trying to avoid the half assed food truck bylaw recently enacted by Toronto.In transition: I don't know if Burlington ever got the "white flight" that Oakville did but for a long time it was a kind of bastion for British and Dutch "old stocks". Burlington, however, is starting to change. Sure we lack a Chinese/Asian grocery store but the ethnic mix is becoming more multi cultural.Need to Go West? If your extended family lives west of the GTA (mine lives in Windsor) and you need to drive home for Christmas, you can get out of the megalopolis a lot quicker by taking the 403 to where it connects with the 401. You connect with the 401 well after bumper-to-bumper traffic that extends out to Kitchener these days. Also coming back, you jump on the 403 and avoid the traffic that builds to a crawl 24/7 on the 401 these days.Halifax Donairs: Burlington also plays host to a large "down east" community. Hence you'll find their greatest contribution to Western Civilization: the Halifax donair. I'll add they also make an excellent pizza, the best pizza I've had outside of Windsor.Hamilton, Niagara Falls, Buffalo: You're a decent drive to Hamilton (a city that's rapidly becoming Canada's Brooklyn), Niagara Falls, and Buffalo for shopping (when the dollar is better, of course). We've yet to avail ourselves of the Buffalo airport but that's an intriguing option for US domestic flights.Big Cyclist Community: I like riding a bike but it's not a lifestyle. However, there are a huge number of hardcore cyclists in this city. Despite seeming to be a car culture city, you will find dedicated bike lanes on most major streets. And they're, like, non-controversial. You don't have some crack addicted blowhard making it his religious duty to tear them out or prevent them from being put in.Classic Car Heaven: Being close to Ford in Oakville and various industries in Hamilton and being home to some moneyed retired people, you see all kinds of classic cars plying the streets. It's great in summer to sit on a patio and see all the cars from the 50s, 60s, and 70s tool by.Festivals that don't make you want to put a gun in your mouth: Ever try to attend a Toronto food fest and give up after an hour in line for a slice or stick of anything? Well, Burlington runs some great festivals like a huge rib fest where you can actually park within walking distance, spend only ten minutes in line to get your food, and find all kinds of clean tables to sit and eat. The Sound of Music festival is another great (mostly) free festival that's well run and has a sane level of crowds.Free parking: Weekends and after 6 pm downtown parking is free.