Category Archives: Public Space Lab

Public Space Lab, Spotlight

Placemaking as a Winning Real Estate Development Strategy

” A Great Public Space the new Anchor tenant” : Ethan Kent , PPS, NYC

In today’s competitive real estate market, the key factor that affects people’s real-estate choice is the quality of life & amenities of a place. The place one lives in can impact you in simple, positive ways from being able to enjoy a walk in the neighbourhood park or having access to a great school or place of culture.
All of us have experienced places in our cities that we love and adore. What makes these places loved? These are places where people want to hang out and relax and not just walk through.
Developments around the world are zealously attempting to create such places which are special , where people want to come to live, to work, to play and to learn. The practice of placemaking is one methods used to achieve this. The goal here is to create places which we cherish where people want to go and linger.
Placemaking is a multi-disciplinary tactic to shape market demand and livability by enhancing the social, physical, cultural and economic qualities of a place. Placemaking can be employed to craft a special liveable places; increasing footfalls; creating a unique identity & buzz around the place as well as building community goodwill.

Public Space Lab, Spotlight

Revival of the Public Realm: A Strategy to Transform Indian Cities

Legendary Urbanist Enrique Penalosa once said “Quality of life distribution is more important than income distribution”. We must invest in infrastructure that creates better quality of life for all citizens of the city. For example, 55% of the city of Mumbai walks as their primary mode of transit. Imagine the impact on daily life of citizens if the city invested into better public spaces and walkability.
While the master plans & vision plans are much needed .The idea that action should only be taken after all the solutions have been found is a sure recipe for paralysis. Tactics like placemaking / DIY urbanism is an important idea for such livability goals of a city. This cannot be achieved with a top down approach. We need to create frameworks so that we can realize this at the block / neighbourhood level whether in partnership with the local communities or businesses .Tactical Urbanism is a complimentary tool to a master planning process and quickly ensures liveability in your neighbourhood.
Building a Coalition for a better city

The space of city building & urban development is a much contested space with tense relationships between different actors like civil society, community, private sector & government. While this can be a sign of a well-functioning democracy; In India it really has reached a level which is highly unhealthy for the entire system. The placemaking approach to improving public realm is fundamentally built on a wide-ranging diverse collaboration between various stakeholders like creative groups, businesses , citizens, experts and academic groups in the city who are coming together to implement an action oriented project .
It emphasizes the point that it is in everyone’s interest to invest into the public realm to improve a place whether one is from the private sector, government, civil society or a local citizen. From our experience , The private sector patrons understand the importance of investing into the commons.
We have already started a movement of Privately owned Public spaces in India. Imagine the fabulous opportunities if we got the Market forces invest into what is often thought to be non-market interests in coalition with the large community – We could transform our Neighborhoods block by block.


Above: Case study of our Placemaking Program

Public Space Lab

We invite you to be an artist, painter, …

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We invite you to be an artist, painter, gardener, c0arpenter & mason to co-create and co-build our public spaces.


What : Join renown artists, architects and urban planners in a fun Series of DIY workshops to ReMAKE  two dull open spaces  into special public spaces full of magical art and lounging spaces.

In this DIY Urbanism  project , we will work with local talents (e.g. citizens, developers, and  Artists) to implement “tactical urbanism interventions”: “simple, relatively inexpensive and quick” urban fixes & art–design Interventions towards creating better public spaces. The “Makathon” : DIY Urban Interventions is planned with the expert group Artists /community group to action the ideas to transform public spaces.

Some of the things we will build include a wall full of urban visions; an open street art museum; A 3D Street Art & Arty Seating built with trash.


How : Earlier this year we hosted a ReIMAGINE our  Public spaces Civic Hackathon with experts, the artists & citizens to sketch  up ideas for livable & fun public spaces with two pilot open spaces. We are now implementing some of the ideas developed in a fun DIY Workshop.

When : 24th – 27th November.

Where : The sites are in Powai & Borivili in Mumbai..

Register Here : www.bit.ly/ReMAKINGPublicspaces

Participate :

> Co-create and  Co-build our public spaces RSVP www.bit.ly/ReMAKINGPublicspaces

> Share your wish for a dream city with hashtag #ReMakeBBY @TheUrbanVision .We will imprint your ideas in Mumbai’s new “Wish Plaza”

> We will have Guerilla wayfinding with ReMAKE Mascots close to both sites. We  invite the citizens to find as many of these  Mascots close to the site as possible.  Dates of the Game: 21- 27th November

Supporting Partners

Public Space Lab

A Civic Hackathon to Reimagine Mumbai’s Public Spaces

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Reimagine Public Spaces: Civic Hackathon- Tecnopride
Citizens of Mumbai had a fun evening dreaming up revival of our Public Spaces at the “Reimagining Mumbai’s Public Spaces: Civic Hackathon” that took place on August 2nd at Studio X Mumbai. The participants ranged from 11 Year old city enthusiast to leading artists like Haribabu Natesan, Architects & Urban Planners. The participation included renowned people from the city like Developer Surendra Hiranandani; Banker turned politician Meera H Sanyal ; Dean of JJ School of architecture Rajiv Mishra; Rajeev Thakker , Director of Studio X Mumbai ;  Harjith Bubber , Director of CCI Projects who encouraged the participants and gave them feedback on the design ideas.

The participants were divided into six teams with each team consisting of an Artist, Urban designers, Architects and City Enthusiasts. There were two sites selected for an intervention – one was a street front on the western express highway at Borivali and the other one was a open space located at Powai.

Out of six, three teams worked on Borivali Streetfront site and other three on Powai Plaza. The teams had to brainstorm their ideas which could be realised on ground within 48 hours and also provide an approximate estimate for their intervention. The main idea for the design was to make it ‘Quicker, Lighter and Cheaper.’

The teams came up with vibrant ideas of doing interactive walls, moveable seating’s along with bicycle stands, use of trees as temporary library and sit out spots, spice gardens and spaces with nothingness as an agenda in a city like Mumbai where there is a genuine need for peace of mind. Ideas varied from installations of outdoor art and seating along with the ideas to crete spaces with use of floor art and other art forms.


The creative energy of the city was inspiring and multi-disciplinary collaboration was highly rewarding

The Urban Vision will plan a weekend of “Makathon” : DIY Urban Interventions with the expert group /community group to action the ideas developed in the Civic Hackathon.
Below are the ideas from Participating teams.
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Reimagine Public Spaces: Civic Hackathon- Space for all

SPACE FOR ALL : Space to recreate Space to perform SPACE FOR ALL Team C : Shilpa Vivekanand, Harsh Mistry, Nitesh Johar, Gavrav Kotak, Suprateek Chatterjee, Deepti Dutt, Deepti Shukla
Reimagine Public Spaces: Civic Hackathon- Space to connect

NOTHING NESS AS AGENDA : The uptight formal fabric of Powai needs a punctuation of a personalized space – a pause space- a place to connect – a place to drop in with no agenda – a place created by the people – a place where a tree house can be planted – a place where one can paint the floor !
Reimagine Public Spaces: Civic Hackathon- wanna hang out

LETS HANG OUT : All we want at the end of the day is to Hangout somewhere. Its time to reclaim space for people just to have some fun. Our project aims to create a walkthrough through a parking lot. A walkthrough that will have swings, color, a place to hang wishes and art created by children, or just shade for you to relax. An important component of this design is to be able to use this space in the night till 11:30 pm. In the night it can become a destination to celebrate food, street theatre, outside movies just by creating an atmosphere that will have a lot of light. These lights will also act as a place for kids to come and study in the night. Sooooo Lets Hangout POWAI 🙂
Reimagine Mumbai’s Public Spaces :Cyclewala vision

CYCLE WALA :
Reimagine public space. Reimagine commute. Reimagine Mumbai. A quick set of thoughts for a cyclist friendly park in Borivali!
Reimagine Mumbai’s Public Spaces : Tecnopride

Tecno-Pride” (or “Techno-Sight” or “Techno-Jewel” – Let the community take their pick!)
for a Parking Lot in Hiranandani Gardens, Powai . Parking lots typically are not the most pleasant sights to behold. We may love our individual cars but collectively, cars, when parked in lots, are almost universally eschewed. Our team thus took this design assignment as a simple challenge to mitigate the obtrusive character of parking lots. Given that the thrust of each team’s effort was to incorporate the main ideas of the artist on team, and the fact the design solutions had to be built/installed in two days flat by the volunteer “armies” from the HG community, we struck upon an imminently simple idea to buffer the parking lot even as it was kept in use for parking. Our main idea was to divide up the streetscape by creating a visual buffer between the parking lot and the adjoining streets/sidewalks. And, not just any buffer, but a be-jeweled buffer that could provide a visual sparkle and become a remarkable point of community conversation. All we would need to create such a jewel-like buffer would be throw-away electronic parts from the community residents and businesses, some earth donated by the Hiranandanis and a few short wooden planks. As illustrated in our plans, the earth would be used by the community volunteers on the two specified days to create earthen berm of heights ranging from two to three feet. Within this earthen berms around the two sides of the parking lot that adjoin the streets, the same volunteers from the community would install “Electronic Parts Art” as directed by the team Artist, Haribaabu Naatesan. The exact number of pieces that could be built is anybody’s guess as that would depend on the amount to recyclable parts that were collected from the community. If the not the quantity, what would be certain, however, is the quality of artwork that would be produced. The example of artwork completed by Mr. Naatesan amply attests to the highly creative endeavor the community could take part in and thus create a community masterpiece that they could be proud of. That’s how we titled our project “Tecno-Pride!”We believe a simple idea such as be-jeweled berms around parking lots would enhance not just the one parking lot in Powai but could easily be built around several parking areas across the city of Mumbai. This, in addition, would also address the concern about how to recycle electronic waste in the city. Our solution thus will not just achieve visual enhancement of areas such as parking lots but also address a key societal concern with increasing use of electronic items in our daily lives. Besides, it would be a really low-cost way to achieve high-end goal of improving the quality of life of people in Mumbai.Talking about the cost of implementation for this particular project, with most materials donated or given by the community as well as the sweat equity of the volunteers from the community, the costs involved would be minimal. As such a project is considered to be semi-permanent in nature (with a life span of maybe two years) our solution would be just appropriate to last that long without any significant maintenance work required.In conclusion, our team, Team 1, was delighted to be part of this design charrette (rapid designing). We believe we worked within the scope of the project brief and in the right spirit for a project installation that could be easily built in the prescribed two days with the potential of becoming a real community asset and pride to be enjoyed by all.
Reimagine Public Spaces: Civic Hackathon- Team a hue and you