As a transport planner, I think that the way we design our cities, how we understand what is happening in them, actually gets reflected in our transport systems. In both China and India, the two fast-growing mega-economies of the future, the spread of urbanisation is taking place along the growth of the informal sector. When we talk about the transport sector or the kind of transport systems we design we really have to be very, very aware of this fact: the multiple cities and the multiple needs that we are designing for. In India, over the past 50 years since independence, we have been doing a lot of planning and making grand master plans but we have ended up building roads where there is nothing designed for pedestrians, really nothing designed for bicycles. We have standard six lane highways with standards copied from American or British highway capacity manuals, but if you notice how the road is being used, the reality is very different. The pedestrians and bicycles that occupy the road are captive users, people without choices whether we design a physical environment that is safe for them or not. We, as designers, may keep blaming people who do not know how to be on the road, but their reality remains the same.
Geetam Tiwari, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
posted by ikergil 
7 months ago
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7 months ago
