A consciously designed 'space', attracts more people, interaction occurs, activity lasts making it a vibrant 'place' through which a city breathes..
Image source: Clicked by Author. A contrasting illustration highlighting view of Worli seaface, Mumbai with and without people.
Have you every imagined a city without its people? What do people offer to the space and city? How can one design for livelier, safer, healthier and more sustainable cities?
"A growing number of cities are taking a 'human-centric' approach to urban planning and central to that strategy is making a city pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly - Jan Gehl and Birgitte Bundesen Svarre.”
We never see a city as an alone entity, it's through people and their attitude towards using spaces, cultural practices, social interactions that creates an image in our mind about the city. For instance, if we visit cities like Jaipur, Udaipur, etc. the cacophony of ethnic crowds, their language, vibrant dye costumes, the pink - yellow sandstone monumental and ornate structures gives a treat to one's eyes in creating a notion of a vibrant city. We can never imagine a city without its people.
When every designer considers people, their aspirations and needs in creating a socio-culturally responsive built environment, the city lives to its fullest potential. Kim Morgan and Martha Radice express through their sensory workshop that "Sensing the City through Touch and Taste builds a relationship between human and urban spaces that unfolds the activities, meanings and social relations in them". Representing people's cognitive expressions, behavioral and sensorial patterns in urban spaces offers city uniqueness, identity and a sense of 'place'.
Jan Gehl is Founding Partner of Gehl Architects and former Professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. In one of his presentations while explaining the 'human-centric urbanism' in Copenhagen, he expressed that learning about urban space led him to spend months documenting where and how people walked, stood, sat, and talked in places defining what attributes (social-cultural-physical) about the spaces prompted this activity. These observations were later recorded into his book 'Life between buildings' in 1971.
The question arises why people-centric approach is becoming so famous in last few decades? Does people-centric approach apply to India? Historically, The urban planning in post world war American and European cities led to industrial cities with suburban nature (Montgomery,1999) highlighting haphazard living conditions, less or no open spaces and automobilization at its peak. Hence the need for inclusive and 'people-centric' approach to urban design was felt by various urban patrons like Jane Jacobs, Henry Lefebvre, Jan Gehl and many others.
In Indian context, where the footprints of every builtform is densely spaced, social and domestic experiences are expressed in spaces like otla, nukkad, chowk, Maidan, bazaars, etc. that become a part of everyday routine and urban form. The life in these spaces demonstrate the domestic ecosystem - ladies dressed in sarees sharing their daily chores narratives in local language with the vendors crossing by on otla (verandah) with the exchange of social and economic exchange in one single location. These traditional ways of socializing were able to read the city as a vibrant and unique 'sense of place'. These spaces were an inherent quality of Indian cities. In today’s era, these social spaces are hampered due to immense urbanization stress and redevelopment regulations where buildform is looked as a ‘real estate’ land resource rather than a social opportunity. Moreover, newer planning paradigms lack strategy provisions for bridging the gap between socio-cultural and economic exchanges within the same place making spaces look banal, dead and isolated. Hence the 'people-centric' approach which was an inherent quality of our Indian cities is relooked and aimed at democratizing planning approaches - by the people, for the people and of the people.
Read more about sensory cities and 'human-centric urbanism' on https://www.academia.edu/3552769/The_Sensory_City_Workshop_Sensing_the_City_through_Touch_and_Taste?email_work_card=abstract-read-more
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