New Town should have had wider footpaths to accommodate hawkers and also have enough room for pedestrians, Australian architect Peter Stutchbury, who was in town to deliver the Charles Correa Memorial Lecture, told Metro.
Stutchbury also rued how, despite having the Hooghly flowing along it, Calcutta has “completely turned its back on the river”. More and more people should be encouraged to go near or walk along the river, he said.
Stutchbury said cities in India were being modelled along western cities without taking into consideration the native traditions and realities.
Wider footpaths
“New Town should have had wider footpaths. The footpaths should be so wide that hawkers and pedestrians can co-exist and use them,” Stutchbury told Metro during an interaction on the sidelines of the lecture hosted by Ambuja Neotia.
The architect, who has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea, toured parts of Calcutta, including New Town.
In the West, cities were designed in a manner that there was ample room for sidewalks, and buildings came up next to them. The influence of the long British rule in India also gave rise to a similar mode of planning, he said. “Local realities and local traditions have to be taken into consideration while planning or designing a city,” he felt.
The service lanes along the main arterial road in New Town have pavements that are between 8ft and 10ft wide. The lanes and bylanes going into the blocks from the arterial road also have pavements. Though most pavements are still empty, the ones outside DLF building in Action Area I have been taken over by hawkers. A large section of people working in the offices go to the stalls for meals during office hours.
A senior state government official said that hawkers have overwhelmed the pavements to such an extent that urban planners and city governors do not want to have wider pavements.
“Normatively, we all agree that hawkers and pedestrians should co-exist. But the reality tells us a different story. Hawkers have overwhelmed the pavements so much that city governors now do not want wider footpaths,” said the official.
In the Calcutta municipal area, hawkers are omnipresent. They have reduced the width of pavements so much that there is hardly any space for pedestrians. At the Gariahat crossing, police have carved out space from the road for pedestrians as walking on the footpath was nearly impossible.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has started setting up small patches of green on pavements hitherto unencroached to deter hawkers from setting up stalls.
Neglected riverfront
One of Calcutta’s best assets is the Hooghly flowing along the city, said Stutchbury. But he was upset that the city did not value the river.
“There should be greater scope to walk along the river. The city needs to be more generous towards the river,” he said.
A 4.5km stretch of the riverbank, between Prinsep Ghat and Armenian Ghat, has a wide walkway open to the people.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) built the walkway, but plans to extend it further did not take off.
A KMC official felt that if the river was visible from the road or the pavements, more people would be drawn to the riverbank. “For that to happen, the shops and defunct structures along the riverbank have to be pulled down. The Hooghly should be visible from Strand Road,” he said.
The state government official said that one of the hurdles for the development of the riverbank was that the state government, the centre and the KMC needed to work together for any development of the riverfront. “Attempts to integrate their efforts remained elusive,” he said.