While volcanic ash paints the European skies grey and an oil slick spreads across the Gulf of Mexico, we in India have our own threats to deal with. Not just natural disasters but also national disasters — be they terrorism, Naxalites, mob fury, or violence committed against women, the aged and the powerless.
A fatalistic psychology traps our society in apathy. One wonders how many beeps from security portals it takes to sift out the odd gun. How many meaningless security checks outside hotels, railway stations, airports and malls it takes to find a concealed bomb. How many lethargic guards, token checkposts and inattentive policemen it takes to identify an assassin, rapist or terrorist.
In a country of a billion-plus, we are surrounded by potential flashpoints. All it takes is one zealot, one abandoned bag, one garbage bin or one isolated park bench. Every time I pass through a security portal I wonder if its meaningless and ignored beeps are emblematic of a careless society.
Yet it takes extreme situations — a 26/11 in Mumbai, a blast in Pune, bombs outside the IPL venue in Bangalore, radioactive waste from Delhi University — to fuel our passions, set the media alight with patriotic frenzy, open our eyes with shock and bring home the ephemerality of life. And then, to raise hate-filled and fearful thoughts.
The latter embed themselves in the collective consciousness of the nation, and we begin to worry about sending our children to school, climbing on a bus, going to watch a film, sitting in a park, shopping in a bazaar or even visiting a place of worship.
What can we really do about this question of security? It is impossible to monitor a billion people, to provide Z-category security and Black Cat commandos to every child that plays on the streets.
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But can cities be designed to quell this fear? According to the Economist, cities like Vancouver and Vienna top the charts for high liveability and low crime rate. Indian metropolises stand very low in the rankings: Delhi is 113th, Mumbai is 117th! Perhaps we can address safety concerns by peeling off the layers of security (or security blankets) we have wrapped ourselves up in.
Instead of building higher walls, installing more barbed wire fencing and boosting the thriving security alarm industry, let us eliminate walled enclaves, gated complexes and manned grilles. We can make it impossible to hide, difficult to deceive and easy to observe. Under the watchful scrutiny of a genuine neighbourhood it would be simple to identify suspicious activity. Better deployed, this open vigil could give us safer offices, religious shrines and railway stations.
Pedestrian access and a more active public realm can do more than change a city’s appearance. Imagine neighbourhoods sans walls, clean streets with pause points for sitting and watching, wide plazas within bazaars, lively promenades next to our rivers and forests, landscaping that relies on clarity rather than the puzzled networks we call pavements, overhead bridges instead of subways, sealed drains, focussed lighting and consistent garbage collection. All these are truly civic features. They make cities urban, and urban spaces safe.
Urban security needs to be seen as double-edged: keep the unsafe out and build in safety measures. This can be done through better design for streets and infrastructure, and better byelaws to govern construction. Basements with large light wells eliminate deep shadow zones, transport hubs with railings to manage queues can help prevent stampedes, retail activity along lonely streets and telephone booths at corners put watchful eyes on the road. None of these measures can eliminate violence, but together they can help curtail it.
(The writer is a Delhi-based architect)