The Streets4People Challenge is an initiative of the Smart Cities Mission, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India, to support cities to create walking-friendly. The challenge is structured as a two-stage program, Stage 1 - co-creating solutions with the community and through tactical urbanism, testing them out and Stage 2 involves converting these temporary interventions into permanent infrastructure and scale-up the methodology across the city.
Sehreeti Developmental Practices Foundation, won the challenge for City of Gurugram which is supported by WRI India, to make the 'School Zone', located in bustling Sadar Bazar, to be safer and pedestrian friendly. City of Gurugram.
Government Girls Senior Secondary School has two buildings, opposite each other on Jacobpura road that feeds into the Sadar Bazar. This street was ridden by two-wheelers and rickshaws, and also saw permanent parking, leaving no space for school children to even access their school compound with ease. Girl students found it also unsafe to be in this space and cross the road to access their own school buildings.
Sehreeti worked with school children, their teachers, and the informal vendors that currently occupied the school zone, to develop a design that created a space for a "pause."
In March 2021 through the tools of community-led placemaking and tactical urbanism, this school zone was pedestrianised, urban furniture was placed with help of municipality, traffic was re-routed, new parking spaces were created as per proposal, a play zone was created, students painted their school wall on the theme of 'metamorphosis', an open library with repurposed elements was created, Raahigiri activities were held, activities around Swachh Bharat, wilderness in our city, storytelling, a co-creating space where students and residents could share their vision for self and Sadar Bazaar was installed, and various games, music and dance activities were held in this newly created public space.
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