Lessons from adaptaation of local knowledge an traditional practices for urban public spaces as an effective tool for urban devleopment in hot cities

Abstract

Historically, Hot cities around India have always relied on urban public spaces for its sociocultural as well as economic activities. They showed a greater capacity to adopt and sustain over time. The reason seems to be lying under its tendency to evolve and accommodate temporality and sustain with its constancy. These urban public spaces were strongly bonded with religions and customs rooted in nature and inbuilt into societal norms, there by emphasizing greater ecological consciousness and protection. But in the last century, globalization brought aesthetic & grand spectacle as deciding criteria for planning and designing of the urban public spaces. The result is, energy consuming, deserted, inaccessible and underutilized public spaces over a longer period as opposed to its short-lived fame. Urbanization has given rise to the new narrative for these urban public spaces which evolved in to hybrid versions conceptualized from global practices. This pose a threat in terms of loss of civic life and decreasing social cultural flows in the city. Cities with the highest temperature seems to be getting the worst of it, essentially due to two main reasons. First are the adopted global models being not responsive to the local context, failing to stay active over longer periods of time and second due to failure to reconceptualize our traditional practices and local knowledge associated with development of cities in to ongoing practices. Previous study of historic Indian public spaces in hot cities, highlights their nature as being symbolic, functionalist, political, performative, and cultural and hence proving to be contextually sensitive. These urban public spaces were designed to be a platform extension of their everyday outdoor life. This everyday outdoor life in hot cities have taken a shape in to various manifestation of forms. And emphasized more on organic development of public spaces. Now, the current system in India that is responsible for generating our urban public spaces are regulated and mandated by state and local guidelines such as, URDPFI guidelines etc. which only mentions about open spaces to be left per area per person or in terms of percentage or buildable area. Little to no consideration has been given to how that open space should be treated. The solution can be found in adaptation and reconceptualizing of these local knowledge and traditional practices suitable to today's spatial context. But a greater consideration needs to be given to the modern-day applicability and checking its suitability. With that consideration, the paper will try to analysis selective samples of urban public spaces before the industrialization in the hot cities depending upon the generic public places i.e., Access and linkage, Purpose and activities, comfort and image, sociability, (Project for public spaces), adaptability, Thermal comfort, User responsiveness. The results then will be tested to check its adaptability in present day context with the help of case study.