Cycling with the citizens, collaborating with the community

16th September 2020 by admin

Cover image source: Ahmedabad

India’s journey with the India Cycles4Change Challenge

The Smart Cities Mission, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) launched the India Cycles4Change Challenge in partnership with the Fit India Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission, and the ITDP India Programme to inspire cities to implement quick cycling-friendly interventions in the wake of COVID-19. The Challenge is gaining momentum with the 107 registered cities—including all 100 Smart Cities—pedalling their way forward in the first stage of the initiative. The ITDP India Programme, as the knowledge partner for the Challenge, successfully conducted three online workshops to give cities remote guidance on planning and implementation of cycling interventions, communications and outreach, and community engagement strategies.

Cycle rally *with citizens* *conducted by New Town Kolkata*

The India Cycles4Change Challenge encourages cities to use stakeholder engagement and community participation strategies to involve people in the decision-making process. Over 2000 citizens and civil society organisations (CSOs) have registered so far to support their cities in the Challenge. Local cycle groups, corporates, and NGOs have also joined hands with cities in this cycling transformation. The participating cities have shown great enthusiasm and organised a range of innovative events, initiated cycling-friendly interventions, and employed creative branding strategies to win people’s support and get cycles back on the streets.

Kick-starting the Cycle of Change

The ITDP India Programme is the knowledge partner for the India Cycles4Change Challenge, helping cities implement their vision of cycle-friendly streets by building capacity through regular interactive online workshops. The broad range of topics covered in the three online workshops thus far include ‘Planning Cycling Networks’, ‘Conducting Perception Surveys’, ‘Engaging with Citizens’, ‘Dos and Don’ts: Designing streets for cycling’, and ‘Building momentum for cycling’. Each workshop comprised expert discussions, technical presentations from the team at the ITDP India Programme, and peer learning sessions through panel discussions with representatives from various participating cities.

Speaking at the first workshop session conducted on 22 July 2020, Shreya Gadepalli, South Asia Programme Lead, ITDP, highlighted safety, continuity, comfort, personal security, and access to all as the key principles for creating cycling-friendly cities. She encouraged the cities to strive towards making these a reality through collaborative processes with citizens as partners.

*Principles for creating cycling-friendly cities*

Frontrunners such as Coimbatore, New Town (Kolkata), Chandigarh, Kohima, Surat, Bangalore, Aizawl, Nagpur, and Rajkot shared their experiences and learnings from implementing cycling initiatives in the past and the present. The diverse strategies used for citizen engagement shed light on the importance and possibilities of collaborative planning.

Consultations, Campaigns, Cycle camps and clinics, and more!

Several cities have conducted regular brainstorming and consultation sessions with diverse stakeholders with an objective to build a unified vision for communication, outreach, and planning. More than 40 cities have formed core working teams with participation from citizens, experts, CSOs, corporates, and non-governmental organisations among others. The cities have made attempts to prioritise inclusivity in decision-making by ensuring representation from women and other social groups in their teams.

The cities are actively conducting outreach using social media platforms to share information about their progress and connect with citizens for public consultations. These efforts are being complemented with regular interaction with the print media, the use of banners, and localised campaign drives.

*Social media posts from cities across the country*

Cities also launched a national ‘Cycle2Freedom’ campaign on 15 August 2020 to further deepen the partnership with their citizens vis-à-vis the challenge. Anchored to the nation-wide Independence Day celebrations, the campaign encouraged people to share stories on how cycles have empowered them, and given them freedom, along with their initial experiences with cycling. The ‘SheCycles4Change’ initiative was also launched as an integral part of the ‘Cycle2Freedom’ campaign to emphasise cycling as a safe and accessible option for women.

Stories from cities as part of the ‘Cycle2Freedom’ campaign

Cities also kick-started various cycling-friendly initiatives. In New Town (Kolkata), cycling training camps attracted commuters, especially women and children to pick up cycling as an independent mode of travel. Kohima launched free bike repair clinics to help citizens fix their cycles and get onto the streets. Faridabad tested out a pop-up cycle lane along one of its prime industrial corridors. Cities including Nagpur, Surat, Agartala, and Ahmedabad initiated active conversations with citizens through on-ground rallies and virtual consultations.

Cycling-friendly initiatives from cities

Cities across the country have displayed utmost creativity and contextual diversity with their events, interventions, and strategies. The ITDP India Programme is playing a pivotal role by sharing detailed guidance, resources, and templates for the successful realisation of the unified vision of creating cycling-friendly cities. The cities are well on the way to creating successful pilot interventions!

Are you a cycling enthusiast?

Fix your cycle and get on to the street! The cities are geared up to TEST-LEARN-SCALE!

If you are a civil society organisation, consultant, corporate or concerned citizen eager to support your city in the India Cycles4Change Challenge, register here – https://bit.ly/30L0vnd

This article is part of a series of articles on the India Cycles4Change Challenge.

Read Part 1 in the series on the Launch of the India Cycles4Change Challenge

Read Part 2 in the series on 10 ways you can make India a cycling nation

Written by Balanagendran
Edited by Avishek Jha and Aditi Subramanian

Chennai’s Streets for People initiative wins the Ashden Awards

22nd August 2020 by admin

Over the last five years, Chennai’s Streets for People initiative has been instrumental in transforming over hundred kilometres of the city’s streets for more accessible and equitable mobility. An initiative of the Greater Chennai Corporation with technical support from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) India Programme, the Streets for People initiative has been selected as the winner of the acclaimed international Ashden Awards 2020 in the Sustainable Mobility (International) category.

Rethinking Urban Mobility

With citywide lockdowns and the suspension of public transport systems, COVID-19 has forced cities to rethink urban mobility. The pandemic has illustrated what streets without cars could look like, and people around the world have reclaimed their street spaces for mobility or access to essentials and services among others. More importantly, the lockdown has amplified the importance of walking and cycling as affordable, equitable, and sustainable modes of transport for a large section of the urban population.

The Streets for People initiative in Chennai was aimed at improving walking and cycling infrastructure and enables people to move safely through the city. In Chennai, these streets proved extremely effective during the lockdown, enabling physical distancing and safe movement in neighbourhoods. As cities reopen and physical distancing becomes the new normal, the importance of such people-friendly initiatives for pedestrians and cyclists grows manifold.

The Ashden Award celebrates the city and its citizens for accomplishing such an amazing feat. In essence, the award recognises ITDP India Programme’s objectives to improve the quality of life in cities so that future generations inherit urban spaces that are liveable, equitable, and sustainable. The awards highlight sustainable solutions that tackle global issues such as climate change and create equitable societies. Chennai’s Streets for People initiative is among the 11 winners at the annual Ashden Awards, which was held on July 2nd 2020 in a virtual ceremony. The winners were chosen from over 200 applicants working on creating resilience, green growth, and fairer societies.

**The Chennai Streets for People Initiative**

Since 2013, Chennai has been transforming its streets for safety, comfort, and inclusivity. In 2014, the city adopted the Non-Motorised Transport (NMT) Policy, to dedicate 60 percent of its budget towards NMT. Chennai was the first Indian city to adopt a policy of this kind. Since then, with the support of the ITDP India Programme, the city has –

inaugurated the Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza as a model ‘people-friendly’ public space.
built the capacity of municipal engineers through study tours, workshops and formal training programmes.
launched a city-wide Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) system and a progressive on-street parking management system.
adopted the Complete Street Guidelines to inform all future street design projects.
launched a “Car-Free Sundays” programme to promote the idea of celebrating streets as public spaces.
engaged the public for a participatory planning process through several tactical urbanism initiatives and stakeholder consultations.

Before The Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza After
Before The Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza After
Before The Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza After
Before The Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza After

Impact of the work

Lauded as making Chennai the “walking capital of the country” by L. Nandakumar, Chief Engineer, Greater Chennai Corporation, these interventions have led to wider footpaths, cycle-sharing systems, and last-mile connectivity in the city of Chennai. The initiative has helped in transforming over 120 kilometres of streets to be safe and accessible for pedestrians across the city. The project has improved access to roughly 300 bus stops and over 60 schools. Moreover, it has also helped in the effective implementation of parking management systems in approximately 500 kilometres of streets.

Before The transformation of Chennai's streets After
Before The transformation of Chennai's streets After
Before The transformation of Chennai's streets After
Before The transformation of Chennai's streets After

Globally, cities like Paris, Milan, and London have allocated significant portions of their budgets towards creating walking and cycling-friendly infrastructure. Chennai has taken similar action through the Mega Streets programme, to create a city-wide network of streets with a lifespan of at least 30 years thereby prioritising ‘Liveability, Mobility, and Utility’. Launched earlier this year, the project aims to transform 1000 kilometres of streets in the city. The Government of Tamil Nadu, in its annual budget speech in February 2020, has expressed its intent to invest over USD $500M to replicate Chennai’s success in ten other cities, which will transform over 1600 kilometres of streets across the state.

A shining example for Indian cities

Chennai’s Streets for People initiative is a gamechanger in terms of transforming India’s cities into more equitable and people-friendly urban spaces. Moreover, the government’s intention to expand the project represents its potential to transform streets across Tamil Nadu for future generations. The Ashden award recognises and celebrates the success of Chennai’s Streets for People project done by the Greater Chennai Corporation supported by ITDP India Programme as not just the first step in scaling up across Tamil Nadu, but also as a lighthouse for urban development across the country.

Written by Avishek Jha

Edited by Keshav Suryanarayanan

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

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