At the World Urban Forum workshop at Naples, a person from Senegal pronounced: “The street is a part of our culture. It is central to social relations in Senegal. It is the automobiles that are the intruders. We meet and greet people on the streets; they are places where street trade happens, important for the livelihood of our people. The street is much more than a place for running automobiles or for mobility alone.” Does this sound familiar? Ask a young, enthusiastic socialiser in Ahmedabad with a habit of gathering an impromptu adda near a paan shop or chai stall. Now that drinking chai is the flavour of the country ( chai pe charcha ), can one say that these youngsters cannot sit around on the streets to drink tea?
There are also gatherings on streets around eateries, many of which are night markets. In fact, they are such a draw that we go all the way to Bangkok to experience them. Wangfujing in Beijing has a famous night market. And then, there are Paris’ cafés. Street food is an important aspect of any city’s culture.
In Indian cities, politicians, using their local area development funds, have often put benches on the footpaths, where we find groups of people sitting after sunset and at all times of the day otherwise. Morning walkers assemble and catch up with friends around such benches. The street becomes a place for socialising.
In China, because of wide footpaths, the retired play mahjong sitting on their small foldable stools. Retired women sit there, chatting, along with their grandchildren. In many cities, groups of largely the middle-aged and the elderly use these footpaths for collective exercise routines. The socialising and what one would call ‘whiling away time’ is easy on streets, and actually helps us connect with people around and slows down the rushed pace of life.
To restore the roads to people, many cities now have walking streets, lined with shops where one can walk and window-shop without the fear of vehicular traffic. These days we call it 'rahagiri', experimented with on Sundays.
In most Indian cities though, what have we done with our streets? They are either littered with garbage or crammed with parked or discarded vehicles. The central parts of the streets are reserved for only running vehicles. They are, in technical terms, the Right of Way. Bicyclists jostle with the BMWs.
My first time on a Washington DC street on a Sunday morning scared me. Cars zipped around and there was not a soul walking on the street. As an Indian, the people on the street, the hustle-bustle, the selling of wares , with shops on both sides, up my comfort level.
The best cities in the world are the ones where one can walk limitlessly; only the body tells one that one is tired, one is not mentally tired. Walking down Oxford Street in London, Manhattan in New York, Champs-Élysées in Paris, MG Road in Bengaluru, Chandni Chowk in Delhi, Anna Salai in Chennai, are the ways one experiences cities. As Jane Jacobs, the writer on urban issues, said: Those cities are alive that welcome visitors and migrants. The first welcoming experience is on the streets of a city.
A city for automobiles is one of flyovers, a dead infrastructure that creates negativity with crime-inviting and garbage-inviting spaces below. Once you climb over it, you are cut off from the city, her culture, her people. What is different on a flyover or the elevated expressways in say Mumbai or New York? Nothing but variation in façades, which also now are uniform across the world. On such a flyover, sitting in a chauffer-driven car, with a mobile with internet in hand, one may not know where one is — alienated from the real space, alienated from real life.
Let us reclaim our streets as expressions of our culture. Let us reclaim them for the year, and not just for one day in a week or a few days in a year. Can we not expect this from those who proclaim to be the ambassadors, protectors and promoters of our culture?
Darshini Mahadevia is Professor, Faculty of Planning; Director, Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University, Ahmedabad
