Art Deco Mumbai – Hawkers are being removed from streets across India. This can be counterproductive on many fronts. “With activities [like hawkers], there’s vigilance that is not [related to] police presence,” explains Vidya Tongbram, an architect from New Delhi, who worked on the Chandni Chowk redevelopment project.

“It actually makes the environment safer rather than having a sterile space. ” In the search for clean aesthetics, infrastructure development in India is stripping cities of their unique identities, and their masses. “The way we design these modern, monstrous cities… is clearly drawn through lines of who belongs and who doesn’t,” says journalist and writer Sameera Khan.

“The marginalised and working class are kept away from them. ” One way for citizens to reclaim their city is to occupy as much of it as possible.

Whether it is with purpose (commuting, grocery shopping) or leisure (going to a park, reading on a bench). A big hurdle: lack of access. Everyday struggles Sushmita Sundaram, 39, a communications consultant from Bengaluru’s hip neighbourhood Koramangala, says she would prefer to walk to the kirana store at the corner instead of ordering from quick-commerce platforms such as Swiggy Instamart or Blinkit.

“If you’re lucky enough to find a pavement with no loose stones or other obstructions, it is difficult to access them especially if you are elderly or disabled,” she says. Sundaram has a knee injury.

“Ironically, [as her doctor advises] the best thing for my knee is to walk, to build resilience,” she says. “But that would mean having access to a walkable city. These days, it is assumed that anyone navigating a city will have access to private vehicles.

” Walkability, as she puts it, is a privilege now. Virali Modi, 34, is a wheelchair user who recently moved from a “horribly dug-up” Mumbai to Bengaluru. Things didn’t improve much.

“The biggest adjustment was not venturing out, not living life,” she says. “The world is not built to accommodate someone like me. I have the same rights as anybody else, yet my accessibility is not being taken care of.

” According to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016, all public spaces, transportation systems and government services are legally required to be universally accessible, emphasising equality, dignity, and accessibility across all sectors. It’s implementation, however, is uneven. Earlier this year, Modi was keen to visit Bengaluru’s famous Lalbagh Flower Show.

“But as soon as I saw pictures of how crowded it was, how inaccessible [with unpaved trails, elevated rocky terrain], I decided to stay home and watch videos of it,” she says. “I shouldn’t have to make these concessions. ” Walk at your own risk When cities focus on vehicular traffic and not pedestrian activity, citizens find themselves shrinking to the peripheries.

In the last five years alone, India has reportedly built more than 50,000 km of expressways and national highways. These include ring roads, elevated corridors and flyovers across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. But they come at the cost of pedestrian movement.

“How do we show citizenship in this country if we can’t hang out, be there for social demonstrations, to voice protest, or simply for leisure? These are important aspects of citizenship. If you don’t really access your city and its public spaces, you don’t access your country. ”Sameera KhanCo-author of Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets “India’s vision seems to be to reach the No.

1 position in global automobile manufacturing and not to create people centric cities,” says A. V.

Venugopal, programme manager for Healthy Streets & Partnerships at ITDP (Institute for Transportation and Development Policy), a global organisation that promotes sustainable urban transport solutions. “Naturally, there is an economic angle to it — setting up industries brings in investments, jobs and an ecosystem of money flow.

” The drawback is that roads are built prioritising vehicular movement. Pedestrian movement is unaccounted for.

Not only does that make walking inadvisable but also dangerous. Venugopal leads ITDP India’s work on street design and travel demand management across Tamil Nadu, while helping scale insights from this work nationally.

He has played a central role in conceptualising and operationalising the Complete Streets Project with the World Bank and Greater Chennai Corporation. In 2019, he worked with the Pune Municipal Corporation, focusing on child-friendly approaches to city planning — think parks, anganwadis, and street improvement. In the last five years alone, India has reportedly built more than 50,000 km of expressways and national highways.

These include ring roads, elevated corridors and flyovers across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. But they come at the cost of pedestrian movement. Community surcharge When there is no access to parks or other commons, meeting friends and hanging out can become an expensive endeavour.

Prachi Pendurkar, a Bengaluru resident who runs Snugbub, a mothers’ support group, organises monthly meet-ups for parents. The ideal location for gathering would be a park or a playground, but since most are shut — or have rules such as “no playing” and “no eating” — she has to look at semi-private spaces such as cafes, restaurants and game rooms. “I wish there were more spaces for parents to be able to step out with their children and spend time in nature without having to pay for it,” says Pendurkar.

Community support that should come free, now comes with a bill for an espresso and a pastry. When she has managed to meet in parks, she has had to bribe unfriendly guards with ₹500 to bargain for more time.

Apps to the rescue People are now stepping up, too. In Bengaluru, the city’s footpaths have long been in disarray — broken, uneven, littered with garbage and debris, and encroached by shops.

They recently went viral when a Canadian man shared a reel on social media about how he “attempted to use the footpath from Domlur to Indiranagar” unsuccessfully navigating broken portions and encroachments. It put pressure on the authorities, and within a week, the footpath was repaired.

Citizens realised they should find new ways to hold the government accountable, and a slew of apps was launched. Just last month, a 14-year-old developer launched a civic-tech app called Rasthe, which allows people to flag damaged footpaths, construction-related disruptions, and traffic snarls to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Around the same time, in Juhu, Mumbai, citizens created the ‘Keep Juhu Clean’ platform, where residents can geo-tag their location and register civic issues such as illegal pavement encroachments, tree cutting, sanitation issues and the like.

And in Gurugram, May saw the launch of MCG Haryana — to report sanitation issues and more. “More than a million people transit between Chhatrapati Shivaji and Churchgate every day.

But the access routes to the stations are disrupted. Pavements are dug up haphazardly or are encroached.

More than a million people have to tackle dangerous hurdles to get to work”Atul KumarFounder-trustee, Art Deco Mumbai Trust Citizen participation is key if Indians want things to change. Atul Kumar, founder-trustee of the non-profit Art Deco Mumbai Trust, who is a part of several NGOs that actively engage in protecting open spaces and heritage regulations, says that if community groups are absent, the deterioration of spaces would be far more significant.

“Citizen participation is a lifeline that keeps some checks and balances in place between what planners and administrators want to do and how citizens question their motivations and outcomes. ” The writer is a features journalist exploring culture, people, and urban life.