Towards Pedestrian-Friendly Neighbourhoods: Promoting Walk Culture in the Indian Cities

Walking has always remained the most intrinsic and most prevalent of all human mobility means. The present day cities seem to have lost the pedestrian culture in the maze of rapidly escalating vehicular traffic, but the voices calling for reinventing walking are also getting vociferous. Having realized the impact that built environment can make in enhancing or obliterating the pedestrian culture, the professionals across the world are trying to modulate their built environments from pedestrian perspective. In India, awareness becomes visible in the form of relevant policies, norms and partial attempts, but this move needs to gather momentum. Walkability is mainly getting addressed either in terms of developing pedestrian infrastructure along major arterials in the cities or pedestrianizing certain important streets of the cities. The prototypes at neighbourhood level that may serve as an inspiration are grossly lacking.The present study is an attempt towards furthering and reinforcing the pedestrian spirits at neighbourhood level. Promoting and reinforcing pedestrian culture at the neighbourhood level shall be highly instrumental in injecting walking spirits into the daily lives of all the residents irrespective of their socio-economic and cultural variations. The widely acknowledged principles related to ‘pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods’ are investigated in the diverse neighbourhoods of Amritsar city that may eventually form an assertion for effectuating pedestrian related improvement initiatives in the city. The lessons learnt may be largely or wholly implementable in many metropolitan cities in India.