The Sub-hub_urbia:
Compacting growth through split centers…
Team members : 1. Nikhil Chaudhary ( project leader ) 2. Neha Mungekar

Planning and Design Brief:
The design-brief requires planning and design for an urban hub around a suburban railway / metro / tram-way or bus-way interchange. The hub shall have a range of shopping and commercial buildings, and some public, cultural and social institutions within a walkable distance from each other. It will also have some restaurants, cafes, food-courts and hotels. There shall be adequate parking facilities. The area shall have a range of public open spaces with landscaping to provide the citizens with a sense of identity. Pedestrian paths and sidewalks shall ensure safety for the citizens from vehicular movements.
The proposed plans and designs shall aim to evolve a more humane hub or station area through sustainable and affordable infrastructural development strategy, appropriate construction and technology, innovative planning, creative architectural and sustainable environmental design. These shall be the main criteria for evaluation of the projects.

Our approach:

Most transit schemes fail to make an impact because they focus on the lines instead of the dots they connect. The focus is on mega-highways, high speed corridors and high-tech modes. Can a ‘humane’ approach literally go off the beaten track and make connections where they matter the most? Can development be shared through centers that orient directly towards the nearest significant settlement irrespective of whether it benefits the city directly? If we take a stand that there should be no distinction as ‘urban’ and ‘rural’, and each settlement being inter-connected yet distinctly independent, the suburbs would no longer be leeched onto the city. They would form idealized independent entities in themselves forming a mosaic of a ‘region-city’. This calls for development not just along highways but across them. This also requires making efforts to identify the potential of every settlement and the need to connect them. Thus development concentrating over a single hub, would split over a multiple hubs or ‘sub-hubs’. This was the vision with which the design strategies were proposed.
These strategies included development of a string of connected nodes that integrate the suburb with the agriculture around as well as near-by villages. The proposal also envisions suburbanites to start viewing transit nodes inextricably linked with the development of other sectors (production/agriculture), rather than private transport companies running the transit system only on selected profitable routes. When various local bodies come together (the panchayats, trusts, NGO’s/co-operative bodies) and start operating transit nodes and themselves demanding what mode would suit what requirement. Only then can the smooth operation of public transit be ensured and a sub-urb can aspire to become a ‘co-urb’.