Indian cities are not walkable. And the way they are evolving does not accommodate a thought for public spaces. The rise of megacities is driven by commercial aspirations allowing a lifestyle dedicated to indoor spaces only. Any activity assumes shape of a commercial business enclosed within concrete walls. This is specially true in case of fitness.
Walking is an activity I have heavily relied upon regardless of where I lived.
My lifestyle interlaced with cityscapes in a way that walking and running became the most common ways for me to explore neighborhoods. During my time roving in Asia, I kept myself fit with street workouts in public spaces and running through city alleys.I used to work on my laptop in public parks and street side cafes. For me, the concept of ‘home’ or indoor space got reduced to a place where I could sleep overnight and wash up before leaving the next morning.
When I set out cycling the island of Taiwan in 2014, I spent almost all my time outdoors - cycling in the day and sleeping in the night in school or temple foyers, or just in the middle of nowhere. I have the most delightful and profound memories of that time. I had become an extremely outdoorsy person, to an extent that I began to feel low-spirited when at home. During my time in Taipei, I’d go hiking almost every weekend. That was an ideal lifestyle for me - it had richness of challenging myself physically and mentally, and balance of spending time in urban spaces and nature.
All these tiny interactions that involved physical movement in city spaces came down crashing when I began to live and work in Mumbai. And then Bangalore. Any venture into outdoor space would be met by overwhelming traffic. It was surprising to see so few people walk in cities where vehicular mobility was so crippled.
Fitness, something that I have always associated with outdoors, became associated with indoor spaces (gyms and studios).
The proportion between space to sleep and space to move should stay more or less constant as a society evolves. This proportion is witnessing a wonky rise in arguably every city in India. What makes the matter worse is our cultural propensity to adapt to any deteriorating situation rather than step up and do something about it. This has given rise to a lot of very challenging problems to be solved, the most obvious being transport.
Public transport is in a shambles. The most common alternative to it is a car - something that occupies much more space per individual than any public transport. It is not a sustainable solution.
I believe the future of transport is going to be multi-modal.The way Indian cities are evolving, there is little scope for a multi-modal transport and almost no hope for green and efficient means like a bicycle. Every time I see new high rises being constructed for residential purposes on the fringes of large conurbations, I wonder how this new mass of people will move about in a space that already so choked.
What can be done? Unfortunately not much can be done without the participation of government. Creation of dedicated bicycle lanes, provision of bicycles for public use, better public transport or walkable cities - private sector can't do much without involvement of public sector. And that's what freaks me out.
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