[Urbanstudy] We Need Sensitive, Not Smart, Cities

[Vinay Baindur]

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/We-Need-Sensitive-Not-Smart-Cities/2015/10/22/article3091472.ece



We Need Sensitive, Not Smart, Cities

By Reema Moudgil

Published: 22nd October 2015 04:14 AM


   - [image: Indian cities are developing unimaginatively and in isolation
   from their own ethos, says Mehta]
   Indian cities are developing unimaginatively and in isolation from their
   own ethos, says Mehta

QUEEN’S ROAD:Kaiwan Mehta is a lifelong student of architecture,
literature, Indian aesthetics and cultural studies. He is a theorist and
critic in the field of visual culture, architecture and city studies,
authored Alice in Bhuleshwar: Navigating a Mumbai Neighbourhood and, among
many other distinctions, was elected as the jury chairman for the
international artists’ residency programme across 11 disciplines at the
Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. This week, he was in Bengaluru to
present a talk on ‘Making sense of architecture: as knowledge, as practice’
at the InCITE Gallery as part of the closing of the exhibition ‘Think
Global, Build Social - Architectures for a Better World’.

The exhibition, organised in association with the Goethe-Institut/ Max
Mueller Bhavan, showcased 15 examples of an alternative approach to
architecture.

In an interview with City Express, Mehta talks about how Indian cities are
developing unimaginatively and in complete isolation from their own ethos.
Excerpts:

*On designating certain landmark areas, like the Vidhana Soudha corridor,
as public spaces*

Cities are complex entities and it is not useful to point out a few
landmark spaces and places where the city enjoys itself. It is the broader
outlook of the entire city towards its many neighbourhoods that is
important. Neighbourhoods as in not enclaves isolated from one another but
as areas interconnected and networked. They are important for a city to
live a healthy and intelligent life. Cities need to be sensitive and
intelligent, rather than smart. Bengaluru became a global city from a
regional metropolis overnight, and that shift of scale was so sudden that
the city did not have time to understand its own growth. It took refuge in
smart systems and infrastructure, imagining that was the solution, but it
only created a chaotic mess for a good decade in this once beautiful city.

As for the re-imagining of Vidhana Soudha as a public space, why fixate on
one or a few landmarks? Why not see how we can create public access across
the city, through different scales, varying neighbourhoods and changing
geography? We should mix public and private scales rather than create
exclusive zones, either economically or culturally.

*On what is wrong with the Bengaluru urbanscape*

Why Bengaluru? Most cities in India today are creating zones and enclaves
of exclusivity and producing an imagined aura of security. People are most
secure when they live in shared spaces, not when isolated within layers of
security rings. We are living in times when architecture is very
interior-focused. There is a kind of denial of the shared public space. We
talk about public spaces but do not really let them breathe or nurture them.

*On the idea of ‘Think Global, Build Social’*

Architecture can be a catalyst of change and this exhibition had that as
its central premise. Architecture is the crucible within which human life
takes shape and it is grown over years of cultural and political exchanges
and dilemmas. Architecture is about brick and mortar but it is also the
site for making meaning out of our private and public lives. Design is the
key process through which we understand how architecture can and does
connect with everyday life! Any city when it is not stuck in geography but
thinks beyond its region, borrowing lessons from multiple cultures across
the world, is truly a city of some worth and value. A metropolitan
experience has to essentially be cosmopolitan! When we force cities to act,
behave and think in one language or through a particular cultural lens,
then we are slowly murdering our cities. Cities are by nature global and
transcultural.

*On how can Bengaluru become more habitable*

To be global is not to ape architectural models. It is not imitating
slavishly in the hope that the image will bless you with the prosperity we
associate with globalisation. Globalisation should mean a furthering of our
cosmopolitan values. Architecture is best enjoyed collectively, not through
swish buildings where people hardly share the sun or the breeze with those
walking on the streets.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup_mail.sarai.net/attachments/20151022/853fe646/attachment.html>