A café on the terrace of a prominent hospital in Maharashtra’s Pimpri Chinchwad, an Anganwadi under a flyover in Vadodara and a children’s park in place of a waste dump yard in a slum colony in Greater Warangal.
India’s growing urban population is fuelling the need for open spaces in cities and communities are reclaiming urban spaces lying vacant, unused or underused through “placemaking”.
Take the example of the “8 to 80” park in Pimpri Chinchwad. Hitherto a concrete stretch covering a four-lane sub-way, the ‘Sudharshan Chowk’ was used mostly as a haphazard unauthorised car park. The area of 2,200 sq m was turned into an open space dedicated to the elderly and the young in a mere 75 hours all with community participation.
