Till about a few years ago, the Sassoon Docks in Mumbai used to be a picture of neglect —the nauseating stench of fish matching the crumbling infrastructure at one of the oldest fishing harbours of the country. However, in 2017, all of this changed when 30 artists from across India and abroad, under the aegis of St+art India Foundation, brought art into the lives of the local fishermen’s community. The result was the transformation of the 142-year-old historic dockyard into a vibrant street art exhibition space.
The makeover not only captures the lives of the resident communities like the Kolis, the Banjaras and the Hindu Marathas through installations, photo stories, graffiti and art exhibitions, but also shines a spotlight on ‘placemaking’, an approach to urban design and city architecture that prioritises people over infrastructure and creates public spaces for social interactions and cultural exchanges.
“Public spaces become a lab for experimentation and discovery. In this sense, it’s able to trigger an extensive dialogue with the social and urban fabric, and is accessible for all, unlike institutionalised art,” says Giulia Ambrogi, co-founder and curator of Delhi-based St+art India Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that has established art districts in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa and Coimbatore.
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Agrees Delhi-based urban designer KT Ravindran, former chairperson of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC). “Traditionally, urban placemaking in India has been associated with iconic buildings and structures, temples and mosques, and activity centres. But today the idea has changed. It is one dedicated purpose-led space open to the public. It is more secularised and maintained by the government and municipal bodies, trade associations and others,” he adds.
Some examples include women-only parks across the city envisioned by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi with an aim to provide safe public spaces. Called the ‘pink model parks’, and to be developed in the 250 municipal wards of the civic body, it would feature selfie points and graffiti, CCTV cameras, toilets, open gym equipment and security measures, along with dedicated play areas for children.
Similarly, Marine Drive in Mumbai now has pedestrian-friendly walkways with plantations to resist coastal climate; the accessible Marina Beach in Chennai has an exclusive permanent pathway for persons with disabilities, and many more.
While many cities have set a standard in development practice to create better places for residents to live, work, and play, organisations like the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a global group of cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts, commenced its India national council operations last year, to focus on decarbonisation, housing attainability, and highlight awareness of global best practices.
“Place innovation is about spaces, the people who make them, and how to programme them in such a way that they offer experiences to the people who occupy them. As it brings private actors in public space management and creates opportunities for communities to meet, the approach is to rethink how we design, manage, and utilise both public and private spaces,” says Manasvini Hariharan, director, ULI India.
An inclusive approach
Ravindran explains how cities and street designing require a revolutionary human-centric, contextual, inclusive and practical design approach. “With the increase in population every year, beautification alone will not help but the public and municipal bodies must ensure an all-inclusive approach like maintaining cleanliness and better street design for all age groups in the long run,” he adds.
“No city can be a smart city, if it’s not an art city,” shares Sanjoy Roy, MD of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 33 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals in 40 cities across the world including the iconic annual Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). Festivals like JLF make the cities not just a viable business, employment and survival plan but also put the city on the international map.
“Art has to be integrated into public development plans. There is value being built through art and culture consumption in real estate. The Diggi Palace is one example, which had a massive footfall of around 200,000 in 2013, making the heritage property accessible as a literature hub for 12 years,” adds Roy.
Many other festivals contribute to urban spaces like the Mahindra Kabira festival by the Mahindra Group, which introduced colour-coded trash cans (in blue and green) and garbage bags in 2022. The food scraps were sent to composting or biogas plants while recyclable products were transferred to nearby NGOs.
Similarly, India Art Fair has supported artists who create in public, be it muralists and urban artist like Khatra and Sadhna Prasad from the 2024 Artists in Residence and the Digital Artists in Residence, respectively, or installation artists who make art interventions in public spaces, like the winner of 2024 The Future is Born of Art Commission, led by BMW India and India Art Fair, Sashikanth Thavudoz.
“These artists, each with their unique practices, are unified in the important place of communities in their art, from conception to execution. For instance, visual artist Khatra has designed a massive 100-metre-long carpet for the art fair this year, inspired by his love of graffiti and typography. Massive art outdoor projects carry the spirit of public art, bringing works at impactful scales outside the confines of gallery walls,” says Jaya Asokan, fair director, India Art Fair.
From wall murals at Shahpur Jat, an urban village in Delhi, to German graffiti and street artist Hendrik Beikirch and Anpu Varkey making a mural of Mahatma Gandhi at the Delhi Police Headquarters; a mural of Dadasaheb Phalke on the MTNL Building in Bandra, Mumbai, along with art districts at MS Maqta in Hyderabad, the clusters of Mahim East and Dharavi in Mumbai and Panjim in Goa, St+art India has transformed bus and metro stations into sites of public art, placing daily commuters as the audience.
“In the last two to three decades there has been a paradigm shift with institutions acknowledging the value of art in various forms breathing new life in urban spaces. Street art has the transformative power to invigorate and energise societies by infusing mundane spaces with vibrancy and character. The Ayodhya airport, as conceived by us, is a perfect example of how artwork in a building reflects the city and the essence of the place,” says Harsh Varshneya, principal architect of Sthapati, a multidisciplinary architectural practice headquartered in New Delhi, who has designed the Exhibition Centre in East Kidwai Nagar, New Delhi, with a focus on both user experience and the environment.
Since 2014, St+art has spearheaded urban art projects across 20 cities by bringing together multiple voices such as regional government bodies, foreign cultural institutions and street artists under the vision of India’s Smart Cities Mission. These projects activate neglected spaces through art and cultural activities, thus enabling the citizens to reimagine how public spaces can be utilised.
But these urban placemaking projects are also an amalgamation of real estate investment, development, architecture, and urban planning to find innovative solutions to the pressing challenges the cities face. A project like Dhun, for instance, has changed the dry and dusty 500-acre piece of land on the outskirts of Jaipur to a verdant land, now visited by 140 species of birds including the vulnerable common pochard and southern grey shrike, and the near-threatened white-eyed pochard, besides 70 species of trees and animals.
Manvendra Singh Shekhawat, MD of The MRS Group, who conceptualised the project, says: “In the last eight years, we have transformed 500 acres of barren land into a thriving ecosphere, and now building an ecosystem of opportunities in the developing world. When we saw the Phagi district land in 2013, it was an arid piece of desert. We created an alternative ecosystem keeping the land away from the unscientific and destructive practices, and bringing water to the dry land using traditional water harvesting practices. Today, it has more than eight water bodies and has completely transformed the life and economy of the neighbouring villages.”
From restoring historic water systems, building five water bodies with a harvesting capacity of 400 million litres of rainwater, thousands of invertebrates, mammals and reptiles have made the land their home, including the vulnerable Indian flapshell turtle, adds Shekhawat.
Securing the future
Urban placemaking also creates places that promote quality of life, places where people want to live, work and visit. For instance, senior living communities in India are becoming the go-to option for seniors, who wish to live independently.
Examples of senior living communities include Antara Senior Living by Max Group in Dehradun, Noida, Gurugram and other places, Serene by Columbia Pacific Communities, Vardaan senior living and others.
“Seniors value their autonomy and wish to provide their children with their own living space, or the fact, that their children may be living in different cities or countries due to their career and ambitions. Life expectancy in India continues to grow and people are striving to live healthier lives for longer. Especially among the affluent, educated and retired cohort, the senior living concept is gradually gaining momentum and acceptance,” says Matt Powell, director, Columbia Pacific Group, adding that the senior living category has been enmeshed in long-standing stigma.
Serene by Columbia Pacific Communities, for instance, which is among the leading senior living communities in India in Chennai, Coimbatore and other places, offers independent apartments, houses, and villas powered by the international standards of the senior living community operator, Columbia Pacific Group.
“Indians have been exposed to the concept of ‘old age homes’ which create a gloomy and hopeless image of life after retirement. But senior living community operators are creating a holistic lifestyle option which is as far from ‘old age home’ as it can get. All the 10 operational communities of Columbia Pacific Communities are equipped with the finest of amenities, caregiver services and para-medical services. The communities have skilled medical staff and strategic tie-ups with leading hospitals, thus, ensuring that seniors always have access to timely and quality medical care,” adds Powell.
Apart from real estate (home for seniors), services includes 24×7 ambulance on standby, laundry, cleaning and household chores, chef-prepared meals, concierge services and curating daily activities for senior residents that caters to their physical, mental, emotional and intellectual well-being.
Real estate residential projects are also integrating vertical greens and terrace gardens, clubhouse to enrich the lifestyle of the living community.
Activities like exclusive social clubs, fitness and wellness centres, dining experiences with multicuisine restaurants family focused activities like astronomy deck, pottery, pet area, exclusive theatre and co-working spaces for ease of working are included in futuristic projects of TARC, The Anant Raj Corporation, a real estate builder in Delhi and Gurugram with projects like TARC Tripundra and Kailasa.
Amar Sarin, CEO & MD of TARC, says, “Urban spaces go beyond luxury, crafting spaces with Smart Cities Mission, and aligning with urban transformation to incorporate art, culture and sustainability.”
Many underutilised spaces such as schools, often vacant for a significant portion of the day, represent untapped potential regarding infrastructure and land use. Team3, a multi-disciplinary architectural practice that creates human-centric expressions, has worked on SMR Jaipuria School in Lucknow, to transform educational spaces into vibrant hubs for community engagement. “The prominent art wall at the school stands as a compelling symbol of urban placemaking. It is a collaborative process between artist Harshvardhan Kadam of (St+art), students and teachers of the school, four striking, large-scale illustrations animate the blank walls, creating an intriguing and welcoming gesture for the school,” shares Delhi-based architect Vijay Dahiya, Partner, Team3.
A place like district150, a lifestyle focused, hospitality-powered, multi-purpose venue for meetings and events, is conceptualised to reimagine the future role of the office building—an asset class that is repurposed globally given the change in working dynamics. It offers areas for head-down work, conferences, performances, social spaces, rooms for content creation— all integrated under one.
“Our thesis is that office buildings can also double up as social and cultural infrastructure in the evenings and weekends. This proposition can augment the value of real estate by providing a distinct differentiation,” says Vivek Narain, founder & CEO, district150, which is in close proximity to Hyderabad’s prime residential and commercial areas such as Jubilee Hills, Madhapur, and Gachibowli.
Such places are an ideal venue to host a variety of community-driven events like culinary pop-ups, wine, whiskey tastings, lifestyle experiences like, comedy shows, sports screenings, fashion shows; music performances like jazz nights, opera; book launches; art soirees; theatre; wellness workshops and much more.
“Traditional venues have often struggled to innovate and meet evolving needs for differentiated needs. The aim is to address these limitations and challenges, and provide an infrastructural solution with a fresh approach to event planning and execution—a purposefully designed, versatile space,” adds Narain.