PUBLIC ENCROACHMENT; HERE COMES THE HEART ATTACK

Sameer Chadha
Aug 25, 2017 · 5 min read

Today, we the citizens are blatantly encroaching on our public lands, with seemingly harmless actions such as staking out parking spaces, threatening the very life-support systems that sustain a society.

India has one-third the land area of the U.S. and four times its population. This makes it 12 times more crowded, hosting metropolises with one of the highest population-densities in the world. Land in India is a valuable resource. While private land supports important uses such as living, growing food, education and work, public land or the public realm supports society via mass-benefit uses such as rivers, forests, open spaces, and transportation.

The life of a community depends and unfolds on the pubic realm- engaging with rivers for drinking water, irrigation, drainage and transportation; relying on forests for fresh air, wood, preventing soil erosion, and maintaining habitats; interacting with people, culture, and nature in its parks and “chowks”; and riding on city-streets to work, schools, hospitals or religious places. In addition to supporting such vital needs, the public realm of a city ties it together, providing joy, inspiration and nurturing to a community. Today, we the citizens are blatantly encroaching and squatting on the public realm, threatening the very life support systems that sustain our society.

Encroachment of the public realm is like plaque that can quickly add up to a heart attack. Residences, shops and vendors encroach onto streets, slowing down movement of people/ traffic, and jamming up a city’s arteries. Many apartment-dwellers park on the streets, militantly squatting on and defending space that does not belong to them. Some double-park out of convenience, stop abruptly before flyovers and on highways to let off passengers, overcrowd turn-lanes thereby spilling over to through-lanes, and drive against one-way traffic, causing area-wide traffic slowdowns and even fatalities. To save a little money, many cars and Taxis park on highways outside airports, reducing highway capacity and posing a safety hazard. Cattle are made to roam about and squat in streets and parks, blocking traffic and people. Considerable land is lost from our historical monuments and defense lands. Slums encroach on airports, city open spaces, and streets/flyovers. The elite outdo slum-dwellers in encroaching on and situating real-estate development on river and lake floodplains, causing devastating floods- as seen recently in Chennai, Kedarnath, Srinagar, and Guwahati. Large projects encroach on historic “raastas” or routes that run through, compromising historic connections and accessibility.

Parking is a single big offender in the encroachment of the public realm. There are a mere 20 cars for every 1000 people in India- as compared to a whopping 77 cars in hilly Hong Kong, 83 in China, 206 in Thailand, 459 in Japan and 797 in the US; India has low car ownership compared to many other countries. Still, crowded Delhi has 6 million 2-wheelers and 3 million cars out of a total of 10 million vehicles, numbers that can expand dramatically undeterred, like the Tribbles in Star Trek. A typical car, even though parked for 90–95% of the time, has 3 parking spaces in a city in places such as homes, offices and malls. At 25sqm/ car, that adds up to 75sqm of parking space per car in a country that barely has enough living space. As a comparison, a family of 5 occupies 25sqm in an Economically Weaker Section apartment, and occupies 50sqm in a Low Income Group apartment; together, both categories account for 95% of India’s housing demand. Even with the existing low car ownership, Mumbai offers a meager 1.1sqm of open space per person, with Bangalore at 6sqm and Delhi at 15sqm. Our markets, streets, pedestrian-courtyards, setbacks, and ground floors of buildings are all taken up by parking. Illegal overnight parking is rampant with buses, tempos, taxis, and auto-rickshaws sprawled all over cities, turning it into a giant parking lot.

Excessive parking takes up valuable space, wiping out life from the ground plane of our streets and open spaces. Illegal/ overnight parking is an unintended government subsidy and a considerable loss of revenue, which could act as a deterrent to excessive vehicle ownership or be spent on improving mobility and local area development. Reclaimed space can be activated with more important uses such as housing and open space.

Stealing from public lands is not only stealing from society but conspiring against it. Little do we realize that a small encroachment by a single person, be it double-parking in a market or a mechanic shop taking up streets and sidewalks, chokes a city’s arteries, thereby creating even more pollution and preventing movement of people and vehicles. The incremental encroachment of urbanization on open space, floodplains, and wetlands- illegal or unplanned- does result in floods. Individual convenience and benefit are established at the high cost of compromising a city and a community; both the encroacher and the encroached lose in the process.

There are essentially 2 causes for this. In the case of slums and illegal parking, it is a failure of the government to provide or enable appropriate facilities, which creates a free for all and corrupt environment. Parking also needs to be provided for non-motorized vehicles like bicycles, rickshaws and hand trolleys. Property and space encroachment happens simply because of a default or wilful lack of enforcement. This can be carried out by grass-root groups like neighbourhood associations, in addition to the authorities. Beyond enforcement, authorities and people need to be educated on the big picture on how seemingly small actions negatively impact the whole city. In cases of urban flooding, solutions need to be sought beyond traditional city drainage systems, such as restoring local percolation areas and creating water holding capacities at different scales.

The recent Draft Parking Policy for Delhi is a step in the right direction, recommending that parking charges reflect the true cost of land it occupies. DPP also recommends an increase in the current meager fines for traffic violations like blocking travel lanes and sidewalks. Systemic checks are of course key. Cars need to be discouraged and public transport encouraged for a significant connected public realm and smooth functioning of our cities, as also recommended by JNNURM. Car owners need to be made responsible for the real costs of owning cars such as of highway infrastructure, pollution, greater use of public space, and time lost in increasing delays. India is blessed as a nation in terms of its historic cities and the culture they sustain. For its cities to function and evolve in a healthy manner, for cities to have a sustainable quality of life, public encroachment must be checked via education, planning, and deterrents.

— Sameer Chadha is an Urban Designer and Architect. He has consulted on city development projects in India, North America, Korea, and the UAE.

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Urban Designer. Artist. Activist. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sameerc/

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