Truth is, outdoors in Indian cities are stretches you have to negotiate and dodge rather than spaces you’d prefer spending time in. While there is money to upgrade them, there is a severe lack of imagination. This is unfortunate, as there are many brilliant ideas out there to draw from about reimagining our cities.
A great podcast to delve into such ideas is The Urbanist. In the episode, Start with Children summit, host Andrew Tuck travels to Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, where its mayor is making the city more welcoming for future generations.
‘A city that’s friendly toward children is friendly toward everyone,’ said mayor MatuS Vallo. He also spoke of Bratislava’s child-friendly adaptations: pedestrian-friendly street and crosswalk redesigns, public spaces that are better protected from traffic, and – the best one – a rotating roster of ‘play streets’ that allow children to temporarily appropriate parts of the city usually reserved for cars. Take a leaf out of this podcast, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Pune….
