Urban space design

Consider the horror when the fire ambulance is not able to reach the burning site or When a medical ambulance is stuck in traffic and fails to make it to the hospital on time or children are not left with any park and open spaces to play and practice. Indian urban space has become a rotten ship. Given the congestion, overcrowding and resource crunch, Indian cities have become unsustainable and unmanageable. Part of the reason lies in poor designing, lack of vision and forethinking in building our urban space. Time has come to rethink and redesign Indian urban landscape design and overall life ecosystem.  This blog identifies five such actionable doable low hanging fruits.

1. The first step could be to redevelop all the parks and roads to create underground parking. For example, the Cannaught place circle was redeveloped to host a railway transit point and metro junction. The same could be done to all the parks in all the colonies of Delhi and major cities. It will help in solving the problem of parking and decongest our cities immensely. The park redevelopment could happen as a public-private-people partnership project. The private player can work on a boot operate transfer model and earn a good amount of definite revenue from the park and the parking. Some underground space could also be used as an indoor sports club to help the whole project become sustainable.  

2. Every 5 kilometers there should be a street food karkhana. It could be a multi-story building with fast lifts where all the rediwalah, sabjiwalah, and every other street-side shop could be rented space. The model of street food and roadside vendors should be ended and instead, a home delivery based street food model should take its place. The government can engage in PPPP (Public-private people partnership) to build such karkhanas and rent out fixed-size "thela" space.  Space inside would only be used for food preparation. One section would be sitting space to eat like food courts. But the real salesman would be the delivery guys. Call based or app-based booking of order could be provided by the government. And private delivery service guys can deliver things to the home of the individual or in the food court sitting area. The regulation of the building lies with the government. Various wings like quality assurance officer, food safety officer could be permanently hosted in the space. The permanent fixtures on the roadside selling food items, grocery and fruits would not be allowed anymore in such setup. Rather a close-knit network of government regulatory agencies, karkhana committee (private agency and people of the area), street food maker,  delivery service providers, application provider, and end customer would ensure easy, quality assured access to cheap food. It would decongest our roads, ensure better quality and help in maintaining hygiene and cleanliness. Some rediwalah can operate from home as well and just take the help of ecosystem services of the karkhana. This will make the entire value chain more organized and streamlined. In the context of Delhi, one section of low-income housing buildings can be remodified and used for providing such services within a 5-7 km radius.

3. All the school parks should be compulsorily open to common public for playing outdoor sports. This will provide huge playing space in the community. Delhi has already implemented this scheme with great success.

4. A bidding system should be opened where whoever wishes to sell the land, the government must have the first right to buy. Only if a competing bidder offers more than 15% than the government offer then the other person should be allowed to buy the land piece else government should buy the land. This way the government can create a huge repository of land. This land space would be scattered and fragmented. However, this would be very useful in the event of a large scale mega projects where the government wishes to rehabilitate and resettle people. The government can exchange land and relocate people using this. It would be extremely useful given the fact it is nearly impossible to find a contiguous landscape for development. 

5. All the major markets should be vehicle-free zone except two-wheelers and regulated battery rickshaws (managed by market committee). Three-wheelers and above should be allowed to play only after the closure of market and only for a specific duration. Parking space as mentioned in the first point should be developed beneath the road or beneath the nearby park in order to decongest the market and ease the mobility for the public.

A lot more could be done and there are numerous small actions with high returns but all hinges on the local leadership, public participation and governments focus. Covid-19 has given us an opportunity to think about our public spaces and the problem of crowding. Let us take it seriously and make the best of this opportunity.