The Loveable City
What makes a city livable?
I guess it’s a result of the nomad I am that the city-ashome tag arrived very late. It took a long long time. Moving from the day-to-day pre-geographical blurs of school and college, a long time away in a design school hostel, and then three years in the desert that is Dubai, for Bombay to finally become home. Life seemed conflicted in more ways than one, and the city pretty much tossed everything up into the air.
But Bombay embraces the schizophrenic.
We’re an increasingly schizophrenic tribe, and life itself seems bursting at the seams, seems that we have WAY too much to fill up our days. The immense flowering of our newfound music identity, the comingof-age of our formal art scene, and the popping up of, well, pop-ups, make us global-cool, and exporters of our own zeitgeist, reverse colonising with a vengeance. Yet our city remains impassive. It seems the only thing really stopping us is a felt distance from the city; we are audience, not users. The city as a format seems too old, too sacred, and too “governed” for us to feel like contributors. Bandra has always been home, and we set up our tiny studio here, operating out of a 120-year-old cottage in one of its oldest Pakhadis. The sense of kinship one feels here is extraordinary. A place where everyone says their Good mornings, and nobody really locks their main doors. For a while we were observers, but something small changed that.
It started with a tiny patch of land in Ranwar village.
We’d been passing this land for almost a year, and always grumbled about the fact that there were big rats running amok at night and the place was largely in shambles. Our studio is right around the corner; it got us thinking. We thought it’d be a fine place for a small community pop-up garden. One where you could rest under a shady tree. Have a smoke. Maybe a beer. And definitely a conversation. So, one bright Sunday morning, we called a dumpster over to clear the patch, to make way for our tiny Urban insert. It took just under 20 minutes for the local Bandra cops to come in, take in the contractors for questioning, and a long round of embarrassing explanations to get them to understand the initiative. It made no difference. The next time, assuming a whistle blowing neighbour had objected, we walked around ALL the houses, showing them the plan for the garden, extolling its virtues. They smiled and nodded.
This time it took the cops just 15minutes.
RANWAR PARK PROPOSAL : THE BUSRIDE DESIGN STUDIO
It seemed then that the village was heavily invested in keeping that shambles exactly untouched. It’s a strange comment on our sense of staticness and continuity. We redecorate our homes as often as we like, but we make little or no contribution to our immediate surroundings. I don’t think it’s out of apathy, or lack of concern. I think its because we don’t believe that we CAN. That’s the switch; I think we need to stop looking at the city as a juggernaut-like immovable unalterable entity.
The single biggest malaise with active city involvement is our limiting definitions of what a “city” really means. As soon as you question these definitions that surround the myth that are the cities of today, surprising avenues open up. I find the most compelling definition to be that of Banksy, the faceless graffiti artist whose bizarre art questions the very nature of the urban experience, and raises fundamental questions about our relation to cities and the media-mapped environment we inhabit. In his own words, he asks to “Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked.”
IMAGES : ST+ART FOUNDATION
“Were every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring.”
IMAGES : ST+ART FOUNDATION
“A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet.�
A seductive idea, but one that is intensely real once we start to imagine all the little urban experiences. What makes portions of the city instantly appeal, and some instantly repel? What makes a walk to the grocer inspiring? Recently, the city of Brussels paid tribute to Herge, the creator of the famous Tin-Tin comics, by commissioning a large set of mural and frescoes. I found them in amazingly surprising places, integrating fire escapes, building facades, and the immense unused sides of buildings. They were whimsical, eccentric, and put a smile onto everyone’s faces as they went about doing their own things.
Can art actually activate neighbourhoods?
Chicago’s Millennium Park, a project planned over parking lots and railway yards, now is a buzzing, throbbing cultural center. Families and picnic baskets, kids with cellphones and the occasional lunch happen where previously there was nothing. Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate reflects and warps the entire city skyline, a perfect backdrop.
Can’t the skywalk be an elevated Garden? Why can’t I watch theater on the skywalk? NewYork’s Highline project is now a popular culture destination and thoroughfare where there were only disused railway lines earlier.
I guess the point is to look at a parallel city. A schizophrenic city. That co-exists with the one in our collective imaginations. In this city, anything is possible. All walls are canvases; nobody has more or less claim to them. A disused public space belongs to everyone. This city, with a little initiative, can creep back into the Big Bad Bombay of yore, and reclaim a little soul. And we’re in a golden age. Inspiration is all around. Bandra’s chapel road, a home to many local artists has already created an inspiring, humour filled walk where earlier there was none. It’s people with paint brushes and cans that make you smile as you walk down it’s lanes. The asking and answering of many little questions really seems to be the road to creating inspiring city experiences.
The best part is that the questions already hold within them the answers.
The time for the lamenting reliance on a benevolent government who is actively involved with the upgradation of our lives is over. It’s time that we realize that the people running our neighborhoods are not the smartest people around,nor the most concerned. I say we take the burden off them. Create your own city experience. Go forth, declare sovereignty, and take what you want from the unending urban landscape. “A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.� Banksy