streets

While there have been attempts to formally plan the growth of a city, this has not proved to be successful in many parts of the world. Informality does play a significant role in several cities, especially those that are in the emerging economies. For those working in the informal sector, access to capital is limited and resources are not plentiful. The informal worker or the street vendor therefore borrows from the public spaces of the city where no price or a small price can reduce or eliminate the overheads related to rent or ownership of a space. In a study…

On Sunday morning, we did a walk in the Basavanagudi neighbourhood. It was not an “early morning walk” but a walk that started only at 9am after breakfast was done. Just to make it a little easier for everyone. It was a walk conducted for my students in a course I'm teaching this semester on the Everyday City at the Azim Premji University. The open courses at APU are elective courses offered once a week over the semester for students in the Masters Programs in Development / Education / Public Policy & Governance. The focus of the Everyday City course…

The Samosa Mela at Shivajinagar is a study conducted as part of a CEPT-CPP Summer school on The Everyday City that was held in June 2016 at the IIM Bangalore campus. It was a collaborative effort between CEPT University, Ahmedabad and the Center for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore. As part of the two-week workshop, the participants worked in groups to identify & analyse the everyday activities on the streets in different locations in the city. The Samosa mela project was done by Drashti Amin, (Anant Institute of Architecture, Ahmedabad), Akshata Bhandiwad (CEPT University, Ahmedabad) & Suyash Bhardwaj (NIT, Surat). The…

One of the trees that flowers profusely right now is "akasha mallige" or the Indian Cork Tree. I collect a few flowers each morning while on my morning walk, and put them in a small bowl or glass of water... the sweet, heady scent fills the home and keeps me in touch with the outdoors even when I am not outside! Here is the Wiki entry about the Indian Cork Tree. 

There seem to be no rules governing how we use our valuable resources... our avenue trees. When the city is becoming increasingly wireless, why don't we follow suit with our trees, too, instead of subjecting them to this?  Wires wound up around a gorgeous tree Pic: Deepa Mohan

The Registrations for the CEPT Winter School in Ahmedabad are now open! There's a wide variety of courses and one of these is 'The Everyday City'. Sharing the details of this course below. Dates: 1st to 17th Dec 2015 Location: School of Architecture & Planning, CEPT University, Ahmedabad In India, as in other parts of the world, some of the physical development of the city is influenced by the everyday practices of its people. The urban spaces are continually transformed by social, cultural, religious, political, economic and other practices. Currently, these practices intermingle with each other and with the streets…

Christmas is over...spare a thought for those who sell knick-knacks like these cheap Santa caps, have so many of them left over...unsold, not putting even the meagre money in their pockets that they were hoping for. Street vendors are not like beggars; they are trying to make money honestly, and it is extremely hard at the bottom of the selling pyramid.

Placemaking is an approach to the design and management of public spaces that draws upon the strengths and aspirations of the local community. Whereas ‘space’ is a physical entity, a ‘place’ is imbued with memories and evolves as people interact with each other socially and culturally in the public realm. It is a term that Architects and Urban Planners in the western countries began to use in the 1970s to describe the process of creating parks, plazas and streets that could attract people. In India, the street was already a vibrant place with a family celebrating a wedding; the temple deities…

It is really the small changes, the ones that you see everyday, but don’t quite remember seeing, that seem to change a Street. As one street changes from being a quiet street to being a busy street, somewhere else another street begins its transformation. Every changing street changes its neighbourhood, and every changing neighbourhood changes the city. The small changes are seen everywhere, in almost every city in India. In Bangalore, it’s the Adiga’s lane off Bannerghatta road, in Mumbai, it’s the Hill road in Bandra - streets that are “not the same anymore”. Here, in Bangalore, we have been…

In India, as in other emerging economies, the physical development of the city is influenced by the everyday practices of its people. The Urban spaces are continually transformed by social, cultural, religious, political, economic and other practices. Currently, these practices intermingle with each other and with the streets of the city in a random manner. The formal plan of the city finds it difficult to account for these everyday practices due to their changing nature and because they have not been sufficiently documented or analysed. To understand this phenomenon, a series of workshops with architecture students comprising of both conceptual…