From a vision to reality: Behold the future of Burnes Road

IVS students put together a detailed plan on how to pedestrianize the city’s oldest food street

KARACHI:

Take the cars and chaos out of Burnes Road and you will find yourself in a 72-foot-wide space to enjoy delicious nihari, hang out with your friends and a walk through the myriad of flavours that mark the city’s oldest food street.

This vision for a future with a socially inclusive urban space is put forth by a group of students for an Urban Open Space Design course at Indus Valley School. They shared their detailed plans in front of a small audience at their campus on Friday afternoon.

Inspired by US-based non-profit Projects for Public Space, this project adapts their idea of ‘placemaking’ and applies it to Burnes Road. The idea is to promote and sustain public spaces to give life to a vibrant community. “The street culture is very much ours,” pointed out Farhan Anwar, the course instructor, explaining why this concept merely goes back to the roots of what social life in Karachi has always been like. “Instead of installing infrastructure, we need to develop spaces through the people and their activities based on the local culture,” he said.





For example, the presence of several mosques within the one-kilometre stretch of Burnes Road under consideration showed the students the beauty of hearing several azaans resounding in the area from dawn till night. “The sounds [of several azaans at one time] add an element of uniqueness to the area,” said one student in his presentation.

From idea to reality

This vision for a vibrant urban space is brought down to reality by a well-researched study into the kinds of chaos that exists on Burnes Road and realistic solutions to them.

Traffic is one of the main problems on the road and it is not restricted to certain times of the day — Burnes Road is as congested during the day as it is at night. The students proposed two solutions: to divert traffic from Fresco bakery towards Mohammad Bin Qasim Road at one end and to divert it from Government College for Women towards Court Road at the other end, or to build an underpass that goes the entire length of the one-km Burnes Road stretch and leaves the road above free of vehicles.

For the diversion plan, the students proposed a parking space underneath Burnes Road for the people visiting the food street. For the underpass plan, they suggested a second-level basement for parking. There are provisions for skylights throughout the pedestrianized road to make sure the underground levels have sufficient light both during the day and night.

Power of jharokas  

Unlike Gawalmandi in Lahore, the façade of the buildings on Burnes Road is not uniform, except for the jharokas [balconies] that line most of them. The students decided to modify these jharokas while keeping their design intact to create a sense of rhythm in their design.



There is a grid within the chaotic structures on both sides of Burnes Road — a rather fitting characteristic of the city it exists in. To create uniformity within this grid, the façade will undergo some renovations. Colourful stained glass will be added to the jharokas to add an element of colour. The haphazard billboards will be removed in favour of uniform signs outside the stores.



Sugar and spice

With the research, traffic and the façade taken care of, the next group of presenters took the idea to its completion — streetscape. They identified the flavours of Burnes Road — sweet, spicy and savoury — and tried to incorporate it in their design. The sweet factor was covered by the architecture and the clean façade while the spicy factor was covered by the variety of food offered by the numerous eateries. The savoury — what happens in the background and gives the site its unique undertones — is what this group focused on.

The hawkers and the street vendors are brought forth into the limelight with dedicated carts placed along the pedestrian zone, with specialised canopies that mark the kind of wares they sell and carts that are easy for vendors to pack up and take home. The lampposts are designed to not merely offer light, but also a space for the shops to advertise, plants to add greenery and bins for paan chewers and cigarette smokers. The dustbins are placed on a hinge to empty with ease and the eating spaces outside shops are demarcated with two-foot-high barriers to give customers a sense of privacy, yet offering a view of the street.

After efforts of nearly two months, the students provide a glimpse into what the future of Burnes Road can look like. It is, however, sad that the members of the audience did not comprise city planners and government officials who have the power to make this dream a reality.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2015.