In November 2019, UDC was involved in the temporary recalibration of Big bazaar street in Coimbatore to make it NMT friendly. This project was launched through the collaboration between GIZ and CCMC – with UDC appointed as the design consultant. 

Big Bazaar street is a major thoroughfare and comprises multiple landmarks. The street is subjected to heavy vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The built-use around the street is varied with commercial, public and office buildings. The streets traffic and pedestrian patterns were studied along with the counts and demographics of the street users. 

Based on studies conducted, a tactical urbanism exercise was conducted on Big bazaar street for the period of 15 days. During this period, the ROW was altered creating more space for pedestrians. Temporary shading was provided along especially sunny stretches. The bus stop was reworked creating space and seating for people waiting for buses. It was identified that school students were a predominant user of the street owing to various schools being located around the neighbourhood. This created an opportunity to include placemaking elements and play into the TU Exercise. Seating and vegetation were added in small pockets and games were included along the pedestrian walkway for students to interact with the space as they walked through it. 

During and after the duration of the tactical urbanism exercise, surveys were conducted with the pedestrians, vendors, shopkeepers and other users. Feedback on the preference of these users were collected in order to utilise this data for the forthcoming permanent redesign of the street.

Project team: Vidhya Mohankumar, Srivardhan Rajalingam, Nawin Saravanan, Vidhya Venkatesan
Partner Organisations: GIZ, CCMC, GFA.