Gurugram needs spaces to walk, cycle, meet friends

A great city has to have great public spaces, writes Kalpana Viswanath.

A great city has to have great public spaces. Think of the streets of London, Central Park in NY, Champs Elysee in Paris and closer home, Marine Drive in Mumbai and India Gate in Delhi. Residents of the city flock to these public spaces. Even the Raahgiri days clearly demonstrate that city residents will use public spaces if provided. Our streets are the greatest public space that we have. I have lived in cities all my life and enjoyed the public space as a common good. Good public spaces are also great equalisers – people from all classes, ages and genders carving out their own use and enjoyment, while at the same coexisting with strangers and creating that public which defines a city. I love walking around cities, exploring its nooks and crannies, engaging in activities and in fact, even sit at a roadside café and watch the city go by.

The skyline view of Cyber City in Gurgaon. (Parveen Kumar/ HT Photo)

But unfortunately, we have very few such spaces in Gurugram. A city is a space which is occupied by a diversity of people and this must be nurtured and promoted. Cultural and socio-economic diversity have always been a feature of Indian cities historically. Gurugram needs to embrace this rather than continue to create islands of exclusion and privilege. Unless the city is envisaged as a collective space for a diversity of people including the people in urban villages, in the industrial area, office goers, students and the elderly, it will only be a collection of buildings and not a city.

Improving and creating public spaces helps the economy of a city. Gurugram is a fast-growing economy with migrants from all over the country. The city must respond to the needs of all its residents. Along with those living in gated communities are also the working class who continue to walk and cycle and use the streets, but also face many exclusions. Further there is growing evidence of the health consequences of our modern Indian lifestyles where obesity is growing at an alarming rate, even among children. Due to various factors such as poor roads, fast moving traffic and lack of safety, many children cannot walk around the city anymore. The plight of the elderly is even more dire, where they are unable to move around the city due to these very same factors which restricts their mobility.

(Kalpana Viswanath is the co-founder and CEO of Safetipin, a social enterprise which uses data and technology to help make cities safer.)