FREEWAYFOLLIES

The formal announcement of the new 16 lane freeway proposed to slice through the city of Gurgaon aroused serious concerns with many of its residents. 60mins to 6mins is the USP for the freeway connecting two parts of the city which already has a wide enough road to deal with peak time traffic. While many worried about pedestrian access, cyclist routes, etc … some worried about the awkward disconnections that deepen as the city is fragmented further.

Freeways by definition are controlled-access highways designed exclusively for unhindered high speed vehicular traffic with no signals, at-grade crossings or property accesses. All pedestrian/vehicular crossovers are either over or under passes.

The predatory nature of freeways is manifested in a spatially and socially fragmented city. They do not connect with their sheer size and speed, they divide. They reject the very city they mean to bind because they knowingly relegate the quality of human life thriving in the neighbourhoods: they displace, divide and re-define.

We never learn, do we? There are innumerable instances of terrible things freeways have done to their cities and there are ample ‘been there, done it’ cities who have burnt their fingers only to reverse their own acts. The early 20^th century built freeways to counter rapid increase in traffic volumes and to reduce travel time. The fallouts in the past few decades led to widespread public opposition. Proposals were abandoned, significantly scaled back and freeway removal policies were adopted to rip off and reclaim taken spaces in the city. These cities gained both economic and environment revival and have become models for alternative planning thereafter.

Again, freeways are often self-defeating and they inevitably trigger what is called 'induced demand.' The phenomenon is consistent with the economic theory of supply and demand and is often used as an argument against freeways. They are known to generate more traffic over the years as the number of cars and trips go up and in turn clog the same freeway which was brought in to reduce travel time!

That is not all, various other negative externalities compound the same problem. Freeways bring change in land-use distribution patterns – urban sprawl which is directly proportional to higher energy consumption. They are seen to lower abutting property values because of their spatial disconnect topped with air and noise pollution which besides leading to urban blight, has been shown to cause autism in children. An increase in accident fatality rates comes built-in, as does an unaesthetic and inhospitable cityscape with crisscrossing tarred scars, cutting the city's fabric into smaller enclosed pockets of isolated land parcels.

Neighbourhoods remain detached even after bridging them with under and over passes, especially impoverished ones where residents are less likely to own cars or alter ways to improve their quality of life. Over-passes even with escalators are not popular pedestrian preferences over under-passes but the latter are dungeons by night fall unless they have physical/electronic surveillance. Finance limits the number of these passes and leave huge walking distances between them. Walking or cycling past zipping cars on one side and high boundary walls with thick tree buffered development (to cut noise and air pollution) on the other, can't be a pleasant experience by any standards. It can only be boring and yet more boring.

Pro-development governance with its vested interest has supported the freeway without considering local interests. Citizens need to question the very need of a freeway running through Gurgaon. It only adds value to a group of car users and in no way guarantees public convenience or mass utility. Effective traffic intersection engineering and management at the local level coupled with city level traffic planning should counter congestion issues of Gurgaon on the given route. Authorities should invest in building mass transit modes and attempt to implement smart growth policies which support transit-oriented mixed use development, walkable, cycle-friendly neighbourhoods, and encourage mass transit ridership.

Maybe years from now we will tear down these freeways and replace them with parks and boulevards, streets and squares, which truly connect and bind communities together, which make attractive, engaging and memorable public realm, which is pro-people. But must we learn the hard way in a resource-poor and congested country?

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RwiteeMandal is a practicing architect and urban designer. She is also a visiting faculty at the Post Graduate Urban Design Programme at her alma mater, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. Rwitee can be contacted at rwitee.mandal@gmail.com

Woman and the City

A lone woman.Walking down a deserted, dark street at night.With broken pavements. By now you're primed to hear about a crime or attempt at one, right? Let's try another one. A lone woman.Walking down a well-lit, populated street at night, with broad sidewalks.The image it conjures is totally different. Whether or not we make a conscious connection between the two, the fact remains that there is a very close link between our urban environment and the manner in which urban spaces are utilised and safety. Gender safety, in fact, is a great entry point to study this, since women are particularly vulnerable to acid attacks, kidnapping and sexual assault in large Indian cities, particularly in the Delhi NCR. A recent study in Kerala reported here also busts the common myth that women are treated better in public spaces "down South".
Simple things make a huge difference. For instance, in a safety audit conducted by several groups in Gurgaon a couple of months ago, it was discovered that there were no operational street lights on MG Road for a nearly 3km stretch, dubbed the "Mall Mile". Few of the pavements were usable, denying an escape to relative safety for a woman on foot, forcing her to use the same road from which she can be dragged into a passing car. And so on.
A simple fix: usable pavements of the correct width and height and operational streetlights, can create a far larger measure of safety for women frequenting this stretch. There are, of course, other issues to be dealt with, chief amongst which is the difference between private security and public safety. Indians who can afford it, tend to concentrate on the former and don't bother about the latter. It is the already marginalised who are left to bear the burden of increasing privatisation of security – particularly in cities like Gurgaon where the private security guards outnumber the police force by as much as five times – which translates into reduced public safety. This interesting piece by RakaChoudhury throws more light on the paradox.
Apart from fixing the obvious, like streetlights and pavements, we need to call for a conscious rethinking of our cities from the perspective of all, rather than the privileged few who feel that "good walls make good neighbours" and build them ever higher.
Encouraging beginnings have been made in transportation at least. Admittedly, though only for the privileged, Sakha Cabs offers the services of women for women and was featured in Aamir Khan's popular TV show on social issues in the episode on violence against women. In various parts of the NCR groups like Jagori, Gurgaon Girlcott, IUDI, Let's Walk Gurgaon, Saksham Gurgaon and others are campaigning for a safer city through public spaces.
We wish them all the very best 

Niiti consulting partners with Gurgaon Girlcott and Jagori for its Gender in the City campaign and is in the process of formalising an MoU with Jagori. Richa Dubey works with niiti consulting and started the Gurgaon Girlcott campaign
A history graduate from Delhi University who believes in "more is less". Richa loves writing on a wide spectrum of topics from textiles to Sufism to technology. She has anchored web communications at Cisco India, led public affairs for a prospective national innovation university on urbanization, and is presently building an advocacy strategy for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative’s India office. In her 16 year career in communications, she also has dabbled as a content specialist for print, new media and television. Richa is also a self-confessed textile lover and a voracious reader.

Surfing the Urban Chaos

I think about our cities often these days. And it’s not just because we are associated with the India Urban Conference. It’s because it’s become difficult not to. Living in Delhi for a good part of my life, I have seen its deterioration unfolding in front of me. The supposedly newly laid sidewalks across the city remain somehow unfinished lending it a somewhat unkempt look despite the seemingly new exterior. The subways are dark and stinking forcing one to brave the traffic to cross roads. One continues to pray for shorter powercuts and longer duration of water supply and the only ones who seem be benefitting with these prayers are inverter and bore well manufacturers in the city. People fight with each other over petty issues exposing the stress that seems to govern our everyday existence.

The recent New York Times story seemed to capture it rather well. Just that this isn’t the state of just Gurgaon, but all Indian cities, large and small. The story ends with a baffling comment by Mr. K. P. Singh, the chairman of DLF, one of India’s largest real estate players- 'If Gurgaon had not happened, the rest of India's development would not have happened, either. Gurgaon became a pacesetter.'

I am sure Mr. Singh didn’t quite mean what he said….for if he did, I am deeply distressed by what the captains of our infrastructure business deem as “development”. Roads where one doesn’t have sidewalks to stroll, or 3 km long malls, entirely run on diesel-powered generators, and electricity (unavailable most times) at a staggering price per unit that is four times the price its available in adjacent Delhi surely can’t be a model for our cities and towns in the country to emulate.

Last week, I also attended a workshop on “Inclusive cities” organized by SEWA, The World Bank, DFID and IIHS, and came out stumped unable to comprehend the magnitude of the urban problem we are facing in our country and its complex hues. On one hand, India is increasingly getting urbanized- in the next few decades, more than half of our population will be in “cities”, adding roughly 100 mn people to her urban areas every decade. Within the next decade, 3 of the world’s 10 biggest mega cities will be in India. And our allocation of funds is the lowest for urban development as a nation.

Should we be surprised that this NYT story written about yet another town after 5 years, would have the same content? We need to redefine development, not blindly emulate urbanization in other countries and find a roadmap for us that works for us.

I am deeply concerned and I definitely don’t want to be a silent spectator to this chaos around me. Addressing how we can make our cities livable now may not change how we live our lives overnight, but it may perhaps make it a better, safer and healthier place to live in for my son who turns 10 next week. And I can’t help thinking I owe it to him to be the change.

If you have ideas for bringing about a change to make our cities more livable, comment on this or on our facebook page / twitter with the hashtag #transformurbanindia.