Designing better pedestrian infrastructure ? A participatory approach

Implementation Meeting: In this meeting, the residents take the centre stage by creating a step-by-step action plan that helps the government to improve the pedestrian infrastructure within a limited time frame. The residents? participation on the implementation of their ideas puts pressure on the councillor to take the issue seriously. The action plan report helps the councillor to know the needs of the residents better and prioritise projects based on their needs. This also creates more government accountability and a better community-government partnership. The implementation plan includes formulating the quantum of work, specifications based on the design suggestions provided and costing. TC?s role is to help the residents in creating this and suggesting low cost interventions to resolve problems.

Follow up and accountability: As the community plays a significant role in formulating the project, it monitors the progress and scrutinises the relevant authorities if there is lack of action. The hope is that TC does not have to intervene any further unless requested by the community as the enforcement of the design becomes the residents? responsibility. The residents also safeguard and maintain their footpaths after their construction, as they have been involved with the design. This level of community participation helps in creating a dialogue between the government and people. It also gives the people the power to hold the government accountable for their welfare.

The Transparent Chennai team is involved in a number of other neighbourhoods as well for the walk-ability study. However, the strategies in different neighbourhoods have varied slightly based on the response from residents and the initiatives taken by the Corporation of Chennai. In the recent past the Corporation of Chennai had announced that they would restructure 71 bus route roads while prioritising pedestrian infrastructure and streamlining the carriageway width based on the surrounding land-use and the vehicular traffic intensity.

This herculean task of restructuring is already underway on many roads and requires co-ordination between different agencies like the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, the Chennai Traffic Police, the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, and the various departments within the Corporation itself. The Corporation has entrusted Chennai City Connect, an NGO funded by the Chennai branch of the Council for Indian Industries, and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, an international NGO with a Chennai office, to co-ordinate the ideal re-design of these roads by engaging local architects who volunteer their time to redesign the roads.

The walk-ability team at TC had volunteered to design the 2.2km stretch of 4th Avenue road in Annanagar as it was already working with the residents of this area. But as the digitised map of the road was prepared by the corporation, its job was reduced to verifying the survey and creating design solutions based on the feedback from the residents and daily commuters. While this was fairly easy as the residents were not involved with the tedious process of data collection, elsewhere it is not as simple.

Mobilising people to participate in community meetings to discuss about demanding better pedestrian infrastructure is quite challenging. If the RWAs and CBOs are organised and influential like in Nanganallur, it is easier to get the ideas implemented. But in a well planned neighbourhood like KK Nagar, it has been a hard task convincing people to participate in the community meetings as fewer people care about the issue of walk-ability. Most of them have personal vehicles and complain about lack of road space. Also it has been observed that most participants in these meetings are senior citizens and school children as the youth seldom finds time to engage in advocating for a better future. Some residents have been very supportive of TC?s work and have been forthcoming to help us in reaching out to the community and organise the public meetings. It is time people realise that their responsibilities do not end with voting.

 

 

 

 

Roshan Toshniwal

Roshan Toshniwal is an architect and urban planner. He is a consultant with Transparent Chennai (NGO) and Centre for Development Finance, a wing of Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), Chennai. He also teaches at the Measi Academy of Architecture in Chennai. He has been researching road accidents and safety in Chennai for the last 2 years.