MIN(D)ING THE POTENTIAL by Aamir Ansari

MIN(D)ING THE POTENTIAL an attempt to placemaking

Min(d)ing the potenial

Placemakers India

CEPT UNIVERSITY

TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT PLACEMAKERS INDIA

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS PLACEMAKING?

HOW IS IT HELPFUL?

BACKGROUND

WHAT INSPIRED US TO TAKE UP THE INITIATIVE?

THE SITE SELECTION

THE PROCESS

THE PLACEGAME

THE SITE

PLACEGAME OUTPUT

THE INTERVENTION

THE FINAL PROPOSAL

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

THE INTERVENTION

CAPACITY BUILDING PROGRAMME

THE COMPLETED WORK

CITIZEN CONTROL

THE TEAM

ABOUT PLACEMAKERS INDIA

Organisation dedicated in creating importance of public life and public spaces through placemaking. Based on the ideology of Fred Kent, Jan Gehl and William H. Whyte Our strong point is we have been continuously studying urban life, urban lifestyle since our undergrad schools which led this social start-up of Placemakers India. We help citizen of the city to improvise the spaces and transform, create a better sustainable urban space. Lively and a healthy urban spaces places a key role in improvising a life of people in a city. We are already groomed with the challenges faced in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban spaces. The main focus of our group is to promote and create a better urban future for people, with better urban spaces in cities which are designed to live together. Our team has huge potential in dealing with crowded urban spaces as we understand these spaces the best since we are born and brought up in these spaces. With our inclusive approach and idea of citizen control, we aim to create better public life, better businesses and better cites.

Aamir Ansari Founder

@placemakersin

/placemakersindia

placemakersindia@gmail.com

Location: CEPT University Road, Ahmedabad

PREFACE The students of CEPT University are under-graduate Urban Planning students with keen interest in the process of community participation and development. The initiative was a self-driven initiative where the students were involved in every aspect of the entire public participation and community development process; right from the stage of identifying the stakeholders to preparing and implementing a plan for them. For the first phase of their initiative they were funded by the student body council of Faculty of Planning, CEPT University. Further, for the upcoming phases, other means of funding would be looked upon. The students plan to take up the initiative further and implement the second phase of Placemakers India with a different set of stakeholders and at the same time plan to keep improving their first phase. The team would also like to explore the idea of implementing this model at a city level with the involvement of other stakeholders. The students, with an educational background of Urban Planning, also tried to bring in their academic knowledge to tackle the issues that came up along the process and thus tried to incorporate their learning with their practical approach. Thus, the students used a combination of their academic learnings as well as some of the tactical field knowledge in the Placemaking process. With this initiative, not only the community was benefited but the students also gained insight into the daily struggles of the street vendors and other stakeholders.

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS PLACEMAKING? Placemaking inspires people for collectively reimaging and reinventing public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, Placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, it facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that deﬁne a place and support its ongoing evolution. With community-based participation at its centre, an eﬀective Placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, and it results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness, and well being.

HOW IS IT HELPFUL? Unfortunately, the Indian planning processes have become so institutionalized that community stakeholders rarely have the chance to voice their own ideas and aspirations about the places they inhabit. Placemaking can break down these silos by integrating the planners, designers, and engineers all together under one roof to realise the broad value of moving beyond the narrow focus of their own professions, disciplines, agendas.

PLACEMAKING is • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Community-driven Visionary Function before form Adaptable Inclusive Focused on creating destinations Context-speciﬁc Dynamic Trans-disciplinary Transformative Flexible Collaborative Sociable

is not • • • • • • • • • •

A blanket solution or quick fix Exclusionary Car-centric One-size-fits-all Static Discipline-driven One-dimensional Dependent on regulatory controls A cost/benefit analysis Project-focused

BACKGROUND

WHAT INSPIRED US TO TAKE UP THE INITIATIVE? As students of Urban Planning, it is important that we understand the importance of participatory and inclusive planning and the role of the local communities in the same. We have been listening to various discussions on inclusive planning and how all the stakeholders should be involved in the planning process, so what better way than taking up project with highlights the issues and concerns of a local community around us which directly-indirectly connects with us and helps us to involve the concerned stakeholders in a planning process which concerns them.

THE SITE SELECTION The meaning of a street and a road is quite diﬀerent from one another, yet is used interchangeably. According to Oxford dictionary, a street is ‘a public road in a city, town, or village, typically with houses and buildings on one or both sides’, whereas a road is, ‘A wide way leading from one place to another, especially one with a specially prepared surface which vehicles can use’. Three streets outside CEPT University campus were chosen for out pilot exercise out which one street was to be ﬁnalised as the street of intervention. These three streets have varied character throughout the day, changing as the day progresses. Street 1, is a mix of activities with food, books and clothes stalls throughout the day, street 2 is an exclusive food street whereas street3 is yet again a mix of clothes and food stalls but gets functional only during late evenings and night (owing to the presence of a school behind it). All the three streets form an important part of the University area of Ahmedabad city, not only because it connects some of the major institutions (schools, high schools as well universities), but also because it is a source of major economic generation of over hundreds of people.

University Road

AG High School 1

CEPT University

Ahmedabad University

Location: CEPT University Road, Ahmedabad

THE PROCESS

THE PLACEGAME Placegame is a unique and interesting method of capturing and understanding a place through the perspective of its various stakeholders. This method is devised by the organisation Projects for Public Spaces (PSS), New York. This game tries to capture the views, expectations and perception of the people about a particular place mainly under four categories: • Comfort and image of the place (aesthetics) • Accessibility and linkages • The level of sociability that the place oﬀers • The kind of use or activities that the place has All the above four broad categories have four sub-questions, which the stakeholders have to rate on a four-pointer scale, 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest. It then helps one to analyze what the stakeholders themselves expect of that place and what are the areas that can be intervened at by us. For our survey, the placegame was carried out at all the three streets, which helped us to narrow down at one street for our intervention. The survey was conducted at three diﬀerent times of the day; morning, evening and night and was spread across various stakeholders like the customers and the street vendors themselves. This helped us to gauge the views of both sides of the bargain and not just one.

Volunteers conducting Placegame

SOURCE: www.pps.org

THE SITE Based on the ﬁndings of the placegame, street 1 was chosen as the ﬁnal street for the interventions to be done at.

This is a 24m wide street, but the effective right of way becomes way less than 18m. This is so because, most of the ROW is taken up by the street vendors throughout the day. This situation is aggrieved by the lack of parking spaces for the vehicles in which people visit these stalls. They park their vehicles in front of the stalls itself, covering a significant portion of the street. The street itself undergoes a transformation through the day. It is just a food street for most of the morning time, where the book stall gets added along the day. By the evening it becomes a mix street of food, books as well as clothes, and becomes the “hang-out” place for most of the youngsters. The Informal street vendors are the gap builders between the customers and the formal food vendors; they offer more choices for the customers at much modulated rates. This street is characterised by a total of nineteen (19) stalls, which attract over 500 customers every day. The placegame gave us an insight to the aspects that had to be intervened at for this street from the producer as well as the user point of view. The placegame reviled that the street lacked in cleanliness, places to sit and clarity of signages. So, these three became our major intervention sectors. Now as a team it was our responsibility to offer the people some possible solutions to their concerns. This was again to happen on a model by PPS of ‘lighter, quicker and cheaper’ solutions which can sustainable over a period of time.

PLACEGAME OUTPUT COMFORT AND IMAGE

USES AND ACTIVITIES

Overall Attractiveness 4

Mix of services/stalls 4

2 Comfort of places to sit

Feeling of Safety

Cleanliness/Quality Of Maintenance

Frequency of community events/activities

Overall Busyness of area

ACCESS AND LINKAGES

SOCIABILITY

Visibility from a distance 4

Number of people in groups 4

Clarity of information/si gnage

1 0

Ease in Walking

Presence of children and seniors

1 0

Evidence of volunteerism

Sense of pride and ownership

Transit Access

Existing Scenario

THE INTERVENTION With the identified sectors of intervention, the team together came up with various alternative solutions to offer the stakeholders. For example, the overall aesthetics of the place, which indirectly involved the cleanliness aspect, the team proposed the use of more plants, specifically the climbers along the fencing behind the vendors and planted pots near the stalls. It was also proposed to provide more dustbins, so as to help the ease the already overflowing bins. More of such solutions were presented to the consumers and the vendors and a final call was taken based on their feedback as to what to provide and what not to provide at the street. During the proposal and feedback stage, the vendors requested us to not provide any sitting arrangement as it causes issues to not to them but also the flowing traffic which is indirectly blamed at them. They say that some of the people at having an opportunity to sit there and eat, keep sitting there even long after they are finished with their food which adds to the already crowded streets and that they would want to change that trend. All such suggestions were considered and evaluated by the team and a final proposal was prepared and again shown to the stakeholders, which they approved and agreed to be a part of.

Incorporating the views of the vendors

THE FINAL PROPOSAL The ﬁnal intervention proposal included the ﬁndings of the placegame and the suggestions of the stakeholders. The following things were proposed: • Provision of more dustbins • Plantation of climbers along the fence behind the vendors • Provision of potted plants along the stalls • Demarcation of stall and vehicle parking • Painting of interactive zebra crossing to encourage the people to cross over it • Painting of wall across the street vendors to enhance the overall imageability of the street.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

THE INTERVENTION For implementing the proposal, apart from the team, a number of other volunteers joined in which really helped the implantation process. These volunteers ranged from students to the street vendors to even some of the customers. We had decided to work late at night so that the traffic so as to not affect the traffic along the street. Since, the street remains open to the vendors till mid-night, the help of the vendors and some of the customers was more than welcome and appreciated. The background work for this implementation had started off during the day itself with the arrival of the pre-ordered planters and the pots. At night, these planters were potted and placed at the desired sports with the help of carts. The gardeners of the University helped us with plantation process of these pots as well as the climbers. The second task included the cleaning of the street before the painting process could be started. This was carried out once all the vendors had left. The students themselves cleaned the entire stretch and started with the painting of the zebra crossing as well as the demarcation lines. While all these activities were oing on one side of the street, some of the volunteers started off with the cleaning and painting of the wall across the street. The cleaning process included removing any material stuck on the wall and then levelling it to have an effective painting. It took two nights for the team to complete the entire process, and all the processes were repeated on both nights. During the implementation, the enthusiasm of the vendors was commendable. They felt a part of the entire process and were more than willing to extend us any help needed. Even the student volunteers who stayed up all night with the team on site and helped them complete the work was incredible and worth appreciating. The vendors also made sure that no nuisance was created and the people working there were not mishandled, which was taken over by the University’s security guards once the vendors left.

CAPACITY BUILDING PROGRAMME Once the implementation process was completed, it was necessary to carry out a capacity building programme for the vendors and the customers alike, telling them more about the initiative and the way the things were supposed to function (the demarcations). They were also to be sensitised towards the cleanliness of the place and the usage of the space. For this the volunteers went around the streets talking to the people and telling them about Placemakers India and their initiative and requesting them to follow discipline while parking their vehicles according to the demarcated lanes and to encourage them to use the dustbins.

THE COMPLETED WORK After two nights of continuous work, the team was able to complete and achieve the desired results. The entire stretch was demarcated for the separate lanes of stall and vehicular parking, the zebra crossing was done as was the painting across the street. All the planters had been planted and the new dustbins had been provided. To provide an edge to the street, it was named as â&#x20AC;&#x153;KHAOGALI CEPTâ&#x20AC;?, which means the food street. It was also created into a hash-tag and has been trending on twitter.

CITIZEN CONTROL It becomes important that after implementing some interventions, we take up the feedback of the stakeholders and try and improve anything that might have been missed in our ďŹ rst attempt. To do so, few stick notes were provided at each stall to enable the customers to voice their views anonymously. Also, a separate feedback poster had been put up across the street along with the details of out interventions. it was to help people understand the entire process of Placemaking and ask them about their views about it. The team also went about talking to the people face-to face to ask them about the views or any further suggestions regarding the intervention. All the suggestions received would be considered while implementing our next phase of Placemakers India.

THE TEAM

Aamir Ansari

Anshita Aggarwal

Anushti Tiwari

Dhruvi Kothari

Janki Joshi

Himadri Panchal

Konica Udhani

Nikhita Rodheja

Priyanshu Sharma

Ridhhi Parikh

Yogeshkumar Parmar

Priyangi Panchal

Ria Thomas

Shruti Punjabi

Sneh Salot

Yash Jhaveri

Gaurav Sharma

Krunal Gajjar

Vaidhehi Gohil

Placemakers India