Walking audit at Malleswaram aims to identify areas for safe pedestrian movement

As part of the Directorate of Urban Land Transport’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Accord (SuMA), residents of Malleswaram put the first step forward to make the city walkable again.

The first leg of the ‘Walkable Malleswaram’ project saw more than 60 people taking part in an audit of the area's footpaths. The aim of this project, spearheaded by the Malleswaram Urban Living Lab, is to reclaim the footpath spaces and conservancy lanes by designing suitable and sustainable solutions.

Over the next year, work will be taken up on an 11-km stretch from Sankey Tank to MKK Road. It also aims to provide solutions to the problems faced by pedestrians, especially senior citizens, due to traffic congestions as well as faulty footpaths and lanes.

“Around 90 people, including citizens, architects, designers and others, have already signed up for the project. They will be divided into teams and each team will audit two kms to gather information about the state of footpaths and conservancy lanes. This data would be used to prepare an interactive map, which will be made available on the project website”, Sobia of Malleswaram Urban Living Lab told DH.

As part of the project, a design workshop has also been started. Several young architects have signed up for the workshop. By the end of the project, behavioral, tactical and structural interventions would be devised for the existing problems and a report will be submitted to DULT, which will pass it on to the BBMP for implementation of recommendations.