Key Urban Design Principles: India Perspective

Urban Design Principles is the first step, the time for which is now. Time and time again we have seen executions falter. Mostly when there are no clear-cut directions to take and when there is confusion about the universal appeal of a direction being taken.

A city is defined by its culture, traditions, landmarks, story, diversity, mix and infrastructure. To design a smart city is one where data and its applications sit at the centre of bringing in new possibilities.

The Indian move of ‘Smart Cities’ is a nascent step in the right direction. However, there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome still.

Challenges in Metropolitan Cities in India: 2020 Update

• No homogeneity in essential services in colonies and communities
• Sanitation Infrastructure and the Execution Gap
• Unending Influx of People
• Planning of Public Infrastructure Development Lacking Pedestrian and Cyclist First Strategies
• Consideration of Public Health in Designing of Cities is missing
• Internet for all and 100% digitization of all services is a distant dream.
• In-efficiencies in delivering of public services
• Enable Energy Saving and Energy Generation
• Designing to build an identity of a city is lacking in many aspects
• Unsustainable materials used in building public infrastructure
• Lack of strict public infrastructure defacement law execution
• Signage Design and Location Mapping for Execution.
• Bring Order to Public Transport
• Lack of Critical Infrastructure for Health and Safety
• Lack of Density Planning and Collaboration between Different Divisions
• Redundancy in Data Collection across ministries and departments.
• Lack of timely availability healthcare services

Framework of principles to drive Design for Smart Cities

An Integrated City Management Authority

To drive sustainable change through sustainable Design Strategy, first and foremost, the planning for design interventions and and control needs to be done on one platform rather than being done at multiple levels in disparate conversations. The government of Singapore has a city management division to drive cohesive and consistent urban design executions through one enabler authority.

Placemaking-for giving local ecosystem its Identity

The identity of a city is defined by the cumulative identities of its communities. Each community is defined by its location, ethnography, terrain, culture and traditions. Place-making is the strategy of considering a space a value for its majority users and designing it to enhance cultural meaning and creation of a distinct identity.

Resilient cities and neighborhoods focus energy and resources on conserving, enhancing, and creating strong, vibrant places, which are a significant component of the neighborhood’s structure and of the community’s identity.

Accessibility of Services and Infrastructure is Paramount

Design for accessibility involves planning the citizen touch-points in such a way that all community cohorts have ease of access to all public services and infrastructure. Equality in access of services and infrastructure is another aspect to plan for for inclusive design strategies.

Attention to detail is one of the key traits of ‘Design for Universal Audience’

Attention to detail is paramount to ensure positive growth of a community and overall well-being of the community. Sustainability and universal design principles need to be applied at all levels of implementing design for adoption of a community and the sustaned usage of that service ensuring least friction.

Emphasis on Public Transport and Use of Technology to bring in Process

Un-organised public transport causes a lot of stress on allied infrastructure as a lack of proper management is the key cause of friction. Some strategies for managing it better is to learn from the design of the bus system in the United States. All buses are tracked on a route map for zone in the local bus station based control rooms. The buses are managed by bus station manager responsible for maintaining accuracy and efficiency of managing the fleet. The buses are equipped with a camera and wireless communication and automatic payment machines. There is no conductors only one driver that manages the whole bus.

Design for Pedestrians and Cyclists First

Majority Indian cities are designed on the strategy ‘Buildings-First’ or ‘Transit-First’, however to design a city in the most sustainable way is to design for pedestrians and cyclists. In this way the main focus becomes the largest cohort of the population and supports the roads infrastructure in general.

Design to enable a shift to Public Transit

The success of any city’s transit system is characterized by its ability to pull citizens away from their own means of transport to its public transit system. A robust, well-designed, effective and efficient public transit system is able to pull people to itself and sustainably deliver value. To achieve this city management needs to design the user experience of the public transit system to reduce wastage, friction and a design that inspires affinity. (Read about Six Sigma in this article)

Designing for Self-Sustaining Communities

All essential and primary needs should be designed and located in a way to be available and accessible easily by a community. A community that is self-sustaining can compete and contribute to the growth of a city with little or no pressure on the allied infrastructure. Services ranging from essential commodities market to entertainment avenues need to be designed in the vicinity of a community.

Open and Accessible Nature Zones

The age old visions of the architects of building Garden Cities and Urban Forests were right. They segregated the treelines, the hedges, the playgrounds and the urban forests to provide a respite to the city dwellers.

Oxygen chambers like gardens and urban forests keep the pollution levels in check and help in making cities carbon neutral.

Another big movement is designing carbon negative homes and buildings. These building produce net negative carbon emissions and in some cases add oxygen to the environment. Such movements need a structured impetus by the state and city government agencies.

Engaging Community via Reward Systems

Gamifying ‘Good Citizenship’ via digital platforms in order to reward positive contribution to the development of the Smart Cities is another way to foster engagement.

Removing Redundancy Where Detrimental

Why should every department in the city government ask for all the documents again and again to verify the identity of the citizen? If we already have an Aadhar Card, we can make it more robust so as to be the universal Identity Card to gather relevant data of a citizen.

The system can be firewalled and encrypted to the highest standards to maintain confidentiality of the citizen details. This can greatly reduce the operational cost of government and increase the speed of delivery of any public service.

Capitalizing on the Mass Exodus

The mass-exodus across major metropolitans is the biggest opportunity to clean up high density areas. Often the breeding grounds of diseases at scale, these areas can now be reclaimed for environment friendly solutions to get executed.

Density, Diversity and Mix

Resilient Cities and neighbourhoods will need to embrace density, diversity and mix of uses, users, building types, and public spaces.

Integrated Technical and Industrial Systems

Resilient Cities and neighbourhoods will enhance the effectiveness, efficiency and safety of their technical and industrial systems and processes, including their manufacturing, transportation, communications and construction infrastructure and systems to increase their energy efficiency, and reduce their environmental footprint.

Redundant and Durable Life Safety and Critical Infrastructure Systems

Resilient Cities and neighbourhoods will plan and design for redundancy and durability of their life safety and critical infrastructure systems. Planning and design of these systems will aim for levels of redundancy and durability that are commensurate with the increasing environmental, social, and economic stresses associated with the impacts of climate change and peak oil.

Execution with a clear purpose and path is what can actually be achieved. Design without a universally acceptable Framework of Design Principles cannot sustain and evolve.