Date: Wednesday , November 18, 2009
Time: 9:00 pm – 12:00 pm
Location: Four Seasons, Mumbai
Enrique Peñalosa, a visionary urban thinker, who is in the league of the world’s greatest urbanist’ s met with a small group of leaders in Mumbai today. The meeting organized by “The Urban Vision” in association with ITDP and the Choksey Group saw a diverse set of leaders from the political and business sphere including the likes of Priya Dutt, Member of Parliament; Neel Raheja ,Group President , K Raheja; Surendra Hiranandani ,MD, Hiranandani Group; Avnish Bajaj, MD, Matrix Partners ; Prashant Choksey , MD , Choksey Group ; Mayank Gandhi , Remaking of Mumbia Federation; Prof .Rajeev Mishra – Dean , JJ School of Architecture among others.
Penalosa asked the leaders to envision a society that is egalitarian and emphasized that quality-of-life distribution is more important than income distribution. ” In developing-world cities, most of people don’t have cars, so I will say, when you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality.” He explained. “Every detail in the city should show respect for human dignity and reflect that everything human is sacred. People behave the way they are treated. And if the city treats them with more respect, they also behave differently. “ Penalosa added.
Priya Dutt shared the details of the successful car-free day initiative in her constituency area of Bandra in Mumbai. The initiative targets one Sunday every two months when people can walk on the streets without choking on pollution or getting stuck in chaotic traffic jams. The movement was led by the citizens of the community she explained.Prof .Rajeev Mishra remarked on the need for Indian cities to empower their institutional structures to be able to make transformational changes in our cities.Surendra Hiranandani concurred with Penalosa when he suggested the need to drastically reduce the number of private cars in our city.” When every other global city is trying to reduce the amount of parking in their buildings; our regulations needs us to increase car parking. There needs to be a mindset shift towards mass transit driven walkable cities and we need to stop thinking about private cars as a way to solve our mobility problems” He said. The Urban Vision’s Founder, Prathima Manohar said that it was important to learn from Penalosa’s work “India is still defining its Urban Agenda and our success in the 21st century is going to be largely defined by the success of our cities. Penalosa ideas are an inspiration in ensuring cities which are not only socially inclusive but also have a lower ecological footprint. ” She said.
