STREETS FOR ALL (THESIS PROJECT)

AYUSHI AGARWAL PGDP-BRIDGE-PSD

INTRODUCTION

Streets are intended as public spaces serving the needs of different types of users across all levels, and not just vehicles. But what we see in reality are the technical and design flaws, over emphasis on motorised modes of transport, lack of universally accessible roads and public spaces, broken footpaths with no cycle tracks leading to zero infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.

Through our thesis project we are looking at the streets of Bengaluru to understand “whether our streets are for all or not?” Do people feel safe on it? Are they inclusive? Do we have community participation on streets?

To understand it better, we need to select an area and a vulnerable group to study about their behaviour, challenges, culture, lifestyle, relationship with space to determine issues that makes them feel vulnerable and to design an intervention for the same.

DESIGN BRIEF What do i mean by streets navigating to the nearest public toilets?

For my thesis project, I’m looking at the streets in Yelahanka new town, where for my vulnerable group I chose migrant workers who are selling products by either standing, sitting and walking. Those are fruits vendors, pani puri sellers and people selling balloons, brooms etc. I observed their relationship with streets in terms of space, community involvement and safety. To understand what problems they face on streets it was important to do interviews and surveys. I was looking at how do they manage their work in different climates, where do they sit and get shade. As they are migrant people, so what challenges they faced while coming to a new city? How did they come to new city? I also looked at how do they carry out their commercial activities on streets and where do they go for toilet? I looked at to all these aspects but what really caught my attention was that they didn’t knew where are the public toilets? They either used to wait to go back home or go in some restaurants which is not easy to approach as they don’t allow outsiders to use their toilets. So this occurred to me a very serious issue as it can result in serve health problems. Then I looked at the public toilets near the area and found that the public toilet is very near to them which is decent to use but people don’t know about it. There were numerous reasons why people didn’t know. Some of them were, lack of sign boards or broken sign boards, disinterest in using public toilets and the misinterpretation of whether there would be a public toilet or not? Being unware of the service which is solely provided for them can cause serve issues. From my survey I got to know that 80% of the people found it difficult to locate public toilets and 50% of the people don’t like to walk for public toilets more than 5 minutes. Next step was to how can I make people know about the nearest public toilets then they can make a choice whether they want to use it or not but at least they should know where is it so that they should not tangle themselves in problems. For making them aware I took the inspiration from the navigation style of migrant people. They travel from different cities without using any google map. They ask people about the place and they tell them some landmarks and that’s how they navigate. People remember places with landmarks and experience that help them to remember a place for a longer period. For e.g. memory of having a best chai on a particular street, or famous stores and shops. So I tried to use the same pattern for making people remember the public toilets for long run. I designed a sign board which is in the form of human structure to depict community participation in helping others to find a way. To make it attractive and interactive, I decided to make that person performs an action of going to the loo. Sign boards consists of the landmark name in English and Kannada to make it inclusive. For e.g. Go straight from royal mart. My motive is just not to make them reach the place but to make them know the streets and remember it for longer period and that’s how they share this information to others. The boards will be placed within 500 meters from the public toilets.