Humanizing Urban Space: Social Production and speculative design of neighborhood place

There is a loss of quality and character in current Indian urban space. There is a failure to respond to community life which is often purely reduced to quantitative definitions and enclosed by a dead urban edge. To humanize urban spaces, the production of qualitative aspects needs to be derived from social and cultural patterns of community life and its integration with a more interactive urban edge. The studio used the place-making theories of Christian Norberg-Schulz and Jan Gehl to construct character of the place. The students decoded everyday life and events, as manifested in a neighborhood level existing urban space in the new urban developments of Ahmedabad city. The students then defined strategies to construct a speculative design intervention plan for the urban space and contemporary interactive urban edge exploiting the potential of land. The current urban policy on residential redevelopment of old existing neighborhoods provided opportunities for the studio exploration around the critical issue of humanizing urban space. The intervention attempted to create an ideal place to enhance the new human experience in neighborhood public place, while retaining the existing community and exploring potential densification.