By Gerald Pde
Great cities are great for walking. That’s the best way to commute in a small town or compact city. Nothing substitutes the experience of walking and exploring a city on foot. Cities friendly to pedestrians evolve to provide great spaces where one can enjoy the outdoor, are less polluted and can attract tourism.
One might think that developed nations are very dependent on cars. Don’t get me wrong, they are. Vehicular access and the use of automobiles cannot be ruled out just yet as they are lifelines to a city- but so are vehicle free environments. Pedestrian walkways are also lifelines, but with a lot more life. A great city will always have footpaths or pedestrian walkways as wide as a vehicular road. If the road is 30 feet wide, the foot path on both sides of the road will also be close to 30 feet. There is research to show that the spending power of a person walking is a lot more than one driving to the city. This is because a lot more people walk about in the market and footpath per unit area and houses more people than the space for a single car. So these developed nations have now scientifically figured out that people walking can impact the economy better than the car.
It’s funny that one has to undertake all that research to figure this out. Isn’t it a simple thing to understand? Shillong for example can be one of the best walkable cities in India and our ancestors have walked about for most of our history. For example, I never get the end of how my parents would walk everyday for miles and miles to reach the main town or our grandmothers scaling hills and crossing rivers. Mythologically, Khasis are said to have walked ‘Khat-ar Snem Lynti’ or twelve years of walking before settling down in the Khasi hills! On a lighter note, hope that’s not the reason for lying on the couch all day!
But given that walking has been our way of life and we potentially have a walkable city, why do we have such a poor system of pedestrian access? Walking in Shillong is now such an obstacle course that one is better off sitting in a taxi even if it takes days to reach a particular destination! Realistically I can walk from Laitumkhrah to Iewduh in about 25 minutes. A bus or taxi on a normal day (if you are lucky) would take about the same time. But that’s taking all the obstacles and the fact that there are no real walkways; so in essence walking is faster. To get there I would have to cross heavy traffic a few times, not to mention getting my knees bumped by cars, negotiate some very narrow footpaths only meant for toddlers, and zigzag through rocks, drains, concrete, crater sized manholes, puddles the size of swimming pools, electric poles and street vendors squatting in the middle of the footpath.
Twenty five years ago I walked to school everyday which was 20 minutes away. Now children are driven to school even if they lived 10 minutes away. But I really don’t blame them. For some it’s security of walking, for others its access, and for some more its prestige while the rest just love their cars! But I honestly believe that if we have better walkways , a lot more people will be walking rather than driving. It a healthier option; besides you save on that precious fossil goo which now is close to Rs 80 per litre.
The real thing is that this is not a new concept. Cities need to house both cars and people but it can be done in a way where it really defines a city. New York City for instance is one of the most compact cities on the globe and one can walk from the northern most part of Manhattan to the southern most tip. There are so many activities along the way that one doesn’t even realize the distance walked. To encourage walking, one has to pay an exorbitant amount of money on parking and why not? Its a walking city so why drive? The lower side of Manhattan now has something called the Highline, which is an old rundown elevated railroad which was meant to transport goods from lower Manhattan to mid Manhattan. After being decommissioned for decades, it has now been transformed to an elevated walkway with trees and pavements and coffee shops. Great place to hangout and walk!
In Venice you can either walk or take a gondola ride. How fantastic is that! In Bogota, 70 kilometers of the main city road is closed for cars in the weekends. This is called Ciclovia and has been done to encourage people to bicycle, walk and run without the ranting traffic. Imagine walking in the middle of the road like the days when there is a bandh in Shillong. Isn’t it great? This concept of the Ciclovia has been going on for decades and has encouraged a very healthy environment for the people of Bogota and become a great tourist attraction. The point is that there are all these exquisite example of pedestrian friendly cities and we should really ask this question – what really drives them.
Shillong does not need a major transformation or technical advancements to become pedestrian friendly. It is just a matter of policy. Great policies that can help the city be walkable can cascade to a thousand more positive things ahead. It can enhance tourism, drive our economy, reduce pollution and make the city vibrant. Footpaths need be bigger with the least interruptions. Areas with difficulty in space can have elevated walkways. Public activities should line our walkways such as shops, kiosks, landscapes and eating joints. We don’t need a breakthrough concept like a Highline or a Ciclovia, but just a simple maneuver of something that already exists – a good walking environment. A visitor walking these paths and discovering the city should go back with stories about the experience because this is where real tourism happens.
A small glimpse we get of this is when one walks to Iewduh or Laitumkhrah. Imagine if that small experience could encapsulate the whole city, what would Shillong be like? Well no one really knows yet, but in the future it could transform Shillong to a major tourist destination. Our children can walk to school and I suspect they would thank us for handing them a city with a lot of character.
(The author is an Architect and an Environmental Designer)