Streets play a crucial role in shaping cities. Academicians discussed how at a seminar on "streets"

Streets- the image that comes to mind is of narrow lanes and by lanes- a ubiquitous presence in the urban landscape. But the street is not just a stage or set for urban life.

It impacts the physical, social, economic, and political environment of the city. As a note given out at a workshop on streets at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in early January stated, “how people move, make choices, do business, negotiate with authority and make claims to urban space are all impacted by the street”.

The Alternative came away from the day long session with many thoughts that we hope to link together through this piece. The main idea we carried back from the many academic discussions was that the human element in urban planning was not adequately addressed. And the changing dynamics of the street as an entity is often not acknowledged.

Streets are largely seen through the lens of public space, said Prasad Shetty, executive member of the Collective Research Initiatives Trust, Mumbai in a session on ‘boundaries and grids’. He showed through specific cases the disjunction between definitions of property on the street and the cartographic map.

He argued that the ‘publicness’ associated with streets is a result of cartographic methods used in agriculture and planning. In defining and recognising property, polygons with clear boundaries are used along with a record of the rights that connects each polygon with a name of the owner. Any change can take place only through elaborate administrative and legal processes. Property defined through cartography, as epitomized by GIS, needs clear polygons and stable edges. The street is typically defined as the space between polygons. The state is generally the owner of this space. Notions of ‘publicness’ associated with entities owned by the State is extended to the street.

However, relatively few streets remain the way they are laid down by cartography. Cartography has an inherent inability to deal with instabilities of positions, edges and spaces. It takes years to change the polygons of property on the cartographic map. On the street, it happens every hour. The problem becomes acute when cartographic definition of public extends to interventions made in the urban space, he said.

Similar questions were raised by Curt Gambetta, architect and writer, when he said it was a tragedy that urban mapping was done by cartographers and engineers, and did not involve geographers. Technology has social ramifications, he said.

Shweta Sarda’s talk on “confronting the survey: Negotiating spaces and blurred boundaries”, dealt with the bureaucratic problems of a survey conducted in LNJP Colony in Delhi. The survey was conducted in February 2009. To find a mention in the survey ledger, residents of the colony were required to have a red card given out during V.P.Singh’s time, a ration card given in 1996 or after which is presently in use, and an election voting ID card. There was also need for cross referencing the documents to ensure residents have stayed in the same plot on the same structure for the past twenty years. These parameters are problematic as they are dismissive of vertical growth that may have occurred over the years.

The classification between residence and workshops was problematic too, as many had set up work places within the same structures. But it was only residences that would find mention in the survey. Through individual instances, the effect that such procedures had on the lives of people living in the colony was brought to the fore. Ms. Sarda, a writer and translator working with Cybermohalla (Sarai-CSDS) also brought out the deep solidarity within the community, when she spoke of how people stood up for each other while interacting with the authorities conducting the survey. Protracted negotiation by inhabitants of the settlement slowed down the survey process and led to various degrees of dilution of the columns of the ledger, she said.

It was in a presentation on ‘street dwelling’ that Jonathan Anjaria, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Bard College, USA spoke of how the hard urban environment was domesticated by those living on the street. Through the image of a man who has used a clock on a makeshift structure, and other symbols of domestication, Mr. Anjaria, showed how street dwelling involves infusion of an area with an affective sense.
He spoke of how street dwelling relates to the politics of space. It was those who did not have prior access to property who use public spaces to dwell in. Spatial practices are linked to livelihood issues, he said.

The street is distinct from the road, as a speaker at the seminar pointed out. But the distinction is hazy. What is clear is just that streets are integral to the urban landscape, and they develop distinctive characteristics through the people who dwell in them.