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Rethinking decision making through collaborative community planning

1st July 2019 by admin

The French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre interpreted space as an entity that is not static, but one that is alive and dynamically shaped through the interaction of people with it. He stressed on the importance of the production of space through these social relations over merely treating space as an object. We, however, live in a world which largely follows the technocratic planning principles for managing these spaces, rather than  embracing the relations that form them. 

Through understanding the relationship between people and their surrounding environment inherent to every space, the cities can ensure a demand-driven approach to solution making, where decisions are largely tailor-made than mass produced to the context. This will ensure a multidisciplinary approach to solution making, where there is open knowledge sharing and a collaborative work of different stakeholders. An intervention will thus have more credibility when it is shaped through a participatory approach involving all participants who have a stake in it. 

The case of transformation along Sringeri Mutt Road

An interesting example of how the participatory deliberation of the people can shape spaces they live in was observed in the case of the tactical urbanism intervention along the Sringeri Mutt Road, facilitated  by ITDP India Programme in Chennai. The quick and cost-effective initiative that was largely community driven, was aimed at enhancing the road and personal safety of the neighborhood, primarily women and children.

  • Before-Sringer Mutt Road
    After-Sringer Mutt Road
    Before Sringer Mutt Road After

Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance by A. Fung and O. Wright  highlights three key principles of Empowered Deliberative Democracy which seem to be strongly embraced in this case.

The first principle speaks of ‘practical orientation’ of having a specific focus on tangible problems, which helps solve it through the next two principles. With abandoned vehicles and unauthorized parking lining the stretch along the canal, the dead spaces had become a breeding hub for anti-social activities.   The tangible problems in this case were identified as the need to enhance road and personal safety for the street users in the neighborhood.

The second principle is about ‘bottom up participation’ which calls for including people directly affected by the problems, to serve as a channel for experts and citizens to work together. The direct involvement helps in increasing efficiency, trust, and accountability. The ITDP India Programme was able to measure the root cause of the concerns through initiating dialogues with the different stakeholders in the neighborhood. Those who faced the brunt were frequent users of the street, which were the local residents and the students and teachers of the neighboring school. The different layers of the problem were gradually unwrapped through site visits and discussions with these users

The third principle on ‘deliberative solution generation’ involves joint planning and problem solving through a process of deliberation. The participants hear out each other’s concerns and work together towards developing a solution through discussions than heated arguments.The fresh lease of life that the space witnessed was due to the efforts of the Chennai Traffic Police, Greater Chennai Corporation, civic action groups like Thiruveedhi Amman Koil Street Residents Association (TAKSRA) and Karam Korpom, Chennai High School (Mandaveli) and the ITDP India Programme.


Sketch by the author on the case of Sringeri Mutt Road based on the principles of Empowered Deliberative Democracy

This case showed alternate approaches to transformations that a city can witness, where deciphering the needs and solutions is a joint process with the people involved, than a top-down approach.

Moving towards a systemic change

The intervention on the ground, its success and the interest it has lit amongst the city officials to scale- up, draws parallels to stage model of social innovation discussed by Robin Murray, Geoff Mulgan and Julie Grice.

Source: Stages of Social Innovation from ‘Social Innovation Regimes An Exploratory Framework to measure Social Innovation’ Castro Spila, Javier & Luna, Álvaro & Unceta, Alfonso (2016)

The tactical urbanism solution as a prototype addressed the poor social conditions that prevailed. The smiles that it achieved in bringing to the faces of the children and other users have reflected the triumph of the approach and the city is pushing towards scaling up these quick, low cost and community driven interventions to other areas. 

Pugalis and Giddings in their work on ‘The renewed right to urban life’ extends on the Lefebvrian philosophy which values the coproduction of space. They bring up the concept and importance of ‘little victories’, small wins that add up to create strong ripples capable of bringing a systemic change.  A systemic change involves the gradual reshaping of mindsets that have been accustomed to a set machinery and distribution of power. These steps to scale up the interventions, however reflect the possibility of bringing a systemic change that values the collaborative approach to decision making, by prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable users. The interest of the city to facilitate this decentralized approach, indirectly shapes this into a coordinated decentralized system, taking the best of both systems.

As a country that has shaped through over seventy years of democratic politics, there is an inherent need to see citizenship as something that is as dynamic as a space itself. Urbanist Luigi Maza speaks of the dual nature of citizenship, one that is not just a bundle of rights and obligations, but a dynamic social process of the citizens contributing to the production of spaces, redesigning its rules and obligations. As the city  adopts new ways of decision making, the citizens also have to start thinking outside the walls of the homes they have built and see the entire city as their home and contribute towards improving it. After all, as Jane Jacobs rightly put it, ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody’.

Written by AV Venugopal

Edited by Kashmira Dubash


Filed Under: Chennai, featured, Featured News #1, Uncategorised, Walking and cycling Tagged With: Chennai, Community engagement, Complete Streets, sringeri mutt, Tactical Urbanism, tami, Tamil Nadu

Cars take a back seat, People of Chennai coming through

31st May 2019 by admin

Designed By: Aishwarya Soni
Conceptualized By: Nashwa Naushad, A V Venugopal, Aishwarya Soni

Filed Under: Chennai, featured, Walking and cycling Tagged With: Chennai, Complete Streets, ITDP India, MasterPlan, NMT, Walking and Cycling

Chennai’s journey to reclaim city streets for its people

8th June 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Chennai, a thriving South Indian metropolis and the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, is at the cusp of turning into one of the world’s megacities. While it historically had the image of being somewhat insular, the Chennai of today is a cosmopolitan hub where the old meets the new.

Transportation is the focus of many pressing issues facing Chennai today—decisions about whether to build highways or bus corridors have a great impact on our health and our environment.

ITDP India Programme initiated collaboration with Chennai City Connect in 2009 to improve cycling and walking conditions across the city. Change isn’t easy in cities where the car is a symbol for status.

But within five years of ITDP’s engagement with the city, Chennai took the bold move of adopting the Non Motorised Transport (NMT) Policy—first in India. The policy mandates that a minimum of 60 percent of of transport funding to create and maintain walking and cycling infrastructure in the city.

Having retrofitted over 50 km of walkable streets over the years, Chennai has initiated the next phase of redesigning an additional 50 km of street network. Chennai’s policy has inspired many national and international cities—from Chandigarh to Nairobi—to adopt similar policies. The comprehensive approach undertaken by Chennai, was awarded the Sustainia Award in 2015.

Watch how ITDP India has supported, and continues to support Chennai transform its streets for a better city, and better lives.

 

Filed Under: Chennai, news Tagged With: 20@20 Series, Chennai, Complete Streets, Sustainable Transport, Walking and Cycling

On-Street Parking Management: Pune and Chennai to join the bandwagon

3rd June 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

“I bought an AC, now the government has to give me a free house to install it in!” If this is an absurd demand, so is free parking – “I bought a car, now the government has to give me a free place to park it!” Cities across the world including India, are gradually beginning to realise that parking is not a right; it is a commodity and should come at a price. In keeping with this revelation, Indian cities such as Ranchi have started implementing on-street parking management, with a parking fee.

Pune and Chennai are the latest cities striving to join the bandwagon. Pune will soon adopt a parking policy to guide parking management in the city. Pune and Chennai both aim to put a smart parking management system in place. There is now an urgent need to learn more about global best practices, especially challenges faced during implementation and solutions. In order to initiate this learning process, Pune and Chennai will host discussions and workshops internally and for the public in the following weeks, led by internationally acclaimed parking expert Dr.Paul Barter.

Today, unorganised on-street parking and invasion of pedestrian footpaths by parked cars is common of most Indian cities. On-street parking is mostly free, and even when charged, the rates are too low and fee collection is carried out by private operators with little monitoring or oversight by the government.

In Pune, open spaces have been converted into parking lots – including a mechanised structure – to meet the ‘demand’. However, prior to providing off-street solutions, on-street parking has to be addressed as it comes free of cost and is more easily accessible, hence is more sought after.

Realising this, Pune has tried to employ certain strategies to ensure that rampant parking doesn’t hinder movement of vehicles as well as people. The age-old “P1/P2” scheme has been incorporated in several streets where parking is allowed only on one side of the road depending on odd/even dates. Traffic cops have tried to ban parking on mobility corridors during peak hours.

A manually-operated “Pay and Park” system in Pune charges 4-wheelers Rs.5-10 for 2-4 hours

Pune has also implemented a manually-operated “Pay and Park” system on some streets with parking charges of the order Rs 5-10 for four-wheelers for 2-4 hours. While this is the on-street scenario, many private establishments like hospitals and cinema halls charge upto Rs 50 for 4 hours of car-parking. All these measures have had mixed successes.

In Chennai on the other hand, parking rules and fees are administered on an ad-hoc basis, leading to a lack of clarity for users, inconsistent enforcement, and significant revenue leakage. The city experiences localised shortages despite overall availability of parking space.

The two cities are thus trying to solve the parking problem by better on-street parking management. The Pune Municipal Corporation has proposed a policy to manage parking in the city. The policy suggests slabs of parking charges, using the fundamental economic principle of supply and demand to determine the cost. It prioritises road space for other users – especially pedestrians, by dissuading the usage of any available public space (both off- and on-street) for parking.

The revenue from parking management only on bus-route roads in Chennai could itself be over half a crore rupees per year.

Chennai has initiated the process of implementing a smart parking management system. Key features of the proposed system are parking guidance for users and real-time information of parking slot availability on mobile platform, an online digital payment portal to improve revenue collection and enhance transparency and an electronic enforcement system, among other things.

For parking charges, a zone-based system will be followed wherein streets are categorised into paid parking (medium to high demand), free parking (low demand) and no parking (since parking restricts movement) zones. Parking fee and fine will be determined by the Greater Chennai Corporation and Chennai Smart City Ltd. It is estimated that the revenue from the system only from bus-route roads could itself be well over half a crore rupees per year.*

Dr. Paul Barter at a parking management workshop in Kathmandu. Image Courtesy: Clean Energy Nepal

In order to assist the two cities’ commendable efforts to deal with parking, Dr.Paul Barter will be visiting and leading discussions in both Pune and Chennai. Dr. Barter has offered his expertise along with necessary training in several parking-management projects across the world including Beijing, Kathmandu, Jakarta, Singapore, Mumbai, etc. He has published an on-street parking management toolkit as a guide for government staff in low-income and middle-income countries. His expert opinion and knowledge will add greatly to the parking management plan of the two cities.

Through their actions to tackle parking, Pune and Chennai are surely setting a great example for other cities that intend to create an urban environment focused on people rather than vehicles!

*This estimate is based on a parking fee rate of Rs. 40 per ECS per hour for bus-route roads.

 

Read the draft of Pune’s parking policy here: Suruvath: Public Parking Policy 2016.

Discover the basics of parking management and regulation in ITDP’s publication, Parking Basics.

Filed Under: Chennai, Parking Management, Pune Tagged With: Chennai, Parking, Pune, Pune-Pimpri Chinchwad, Traffic reduction

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