Contribution of Tactical Urbanism at Street Edge and Building Edge in Indian Cities

Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India

^* Corresponding author: prachi.patel@nirmauni.ac.in

Abstract

Cities have grown rapidly, and this growth will continue to accelerate in the years ahead. Every city provides a unique experience with different kind of people and culture it inhabits. Instead, cities are the result of interactions between people, objects, and ideas, where density and proximity becomes the factors, which activate the life in the space. In the country like India where the population density and scarcity of the land is always a major issue, it is difficult to carve out spaces that act as public realms. To address this issue and to optimize cities’ function, needs a dense city structure, high degree of mixed-use, distinguished architecture, and carefully designed details that generate active ground floors at a human scale. One of the sustainable use of spaces is to identify multiple ways to engage the edge of the street as a public realm. Hence it is important to identify and strengthen the functions of meeting places between building edge and street edge that contribute toward socially sustainable living in a democratic society. Common characteristic of life in Indian Cities are its adaptability and complexity of the activities, which are informal in nature. Tactical Urbanism provides permanency to these informal activates and supports in place making.