City Creative Redevelopment Part 3 – Concrete Actions
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. -Benjamin Franklin
Indian cities consisting of individual and free styles seem chaotic to the modern eye trained to a mechanical order, however, there is an underlying order in the chaos. As we noted earlier, this is called chaordic. Making the chaordic orderly is a key goal of creative redevelopment of cities. This requires drilling down to get under the skin of the city. Some ways include:
Pay attention to buildings in localities, their relationship with neighbouring buildings, streets in the front and open spaces in the neighbourhood. Promote streetscape by (1) building houses close to the lot line so that people can easily interact with people walking, (2) moving away from conventions of building narrower streets, thus creating a slower traffic pattern and more neighbourly interaction across the street, and (3) visually de-emphasizing parking by placing it behind, instead of in front of, buildings and houses.
Improvise localities for walking. Give priority to rearranging the artifacts and activities on the streets, as opposed to forming new grids of forty feet streets through congested localities.
Identify streets where motor vehicles are disallowed or restricted to specific times during the day. Similarly, identify parking spots and levy appropriate charges to be used only for local improvement and maintenance.
Transmute local streets into social zones. Unlike traffic zones, social zones combine car and pedestrian movement, children’s play areas, social activities and idea of shared space is applied to transform busy traffic intersections, not only for automobiles. Obstacles, such as fast highway approaches and access ramps, are reduced. Furthermore, several areas have centers, and these are renovated with cafes, interesting shops and window displays to promote pedestrian traffic.
Make locality-level plans to recycle water using eco-friendly technology; establish solar panels on top of all houses and not fit for use spaces; organize small facilities for local separation of solid waste - its recycling and reuse; and collect and reuse rainwater as much as possible.
Develop open spaces as parks or as playgrounds and prepare conscious plans to plant and protect trees.
The above requires a paradigm shift in the way we have conceived and planned our cities up to now.
