Architects, urban design students to help Pune civic body to beautify roads

Architects, urban design students and practitioners will help the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) beautify the city’s roads.

Recently, the civic body held a competition on innovative design solutions and received responses from at least 50 participants.

Dinkar Gojare, superintendent engineer, PMC road department, said, “The purpose of the initiative is to provide better solutions to road design. We are developing roads under the urban street design guidelines.”

“Under the Smart Cities Mission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs wants to collaborate with designers to develop proposals, engage citizens for feedback and build public support for walking and cycling initiatives,” he said.

“We have received responses from 50 architects. Besides that, we are in a discussion with Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalaya to participate in the design competition and give us new ideas for better road design,” he said.

Over the years, the civic body has engaged experienced urban designers through the Pune street design programme to transform nearly 100 kilometres of the city’s streets.

Pune’s street design initiative

The Pashan-Sus road and its neighbouring residential streets are being beautified under the design initiative. Architecture and urban design students and practitioners in the city can participate in the initiative. An expert jury panel will select three best designs and award ₹25,000, ₹15,000 and ₹10,000 respectively.

The best solution or design will be tried and tested through collaboration with PMC for permanent implementation in the future.

The city would integrate the design solutions through the process of tactical urbanism as well.

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