Bottom-Up Shorts: How To Capture the Rhythm of a City
Varsha Gopal is an architect from Chennai, India. She is putting Strong Towns ideas into action by starting conversations about what makes places thrive — what makes them special, sustainable and prosperous. On this episode of Bottom-Up Shorts, she joins Norm to discuss two research projects she recently conducted in her city and what they taught her about thriving cities, urban design and community engagement.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:01
Welcome to bottom up shorts. I'm Norm with strong towns. After meeting 1000s of members, I often think I've got to tell you about this person. That's what bottom up shorts is about, quick introductions to regular people doing exciting things. They're not superheroes. They once felt like you might unsure if they could make a difference. Today meet Varsha Gopal, an architect from Chennai, India. She's using strong towns ideas to spark conversations about what makes places thrive. This spring, she's going to be applying those insights to her study of the masters of Architecture at the University of Miami, Varsha studies her city with care. She listens to her neighbors and shares their stories. She asks what they love about their place and how they might make it better. You see, strong towns ideas are spreading, and her description of what she sees in Chennai helpfully illustrates how the strong towns approach matters in cities and towns of all sizes. And so let's dive in.
Varsha Gopal 1:02
I mean, so I come from, I would say, a pretty underrated city in India called Chennai, which happens to be in the south of India. And it's, I would say, it's the most conservative city culturally, India is already full of culture. So you can imagine it's, it's pretty conservative, and so I had this weird idea. So one day, I just picked up a camera, I had a mic, and I went around the city and asked them, it's a very simple question, but probably not a lot of them had thought about it. So I was like, What do you like about sharing? What do you like about your city? And weirdly, I was able to find kids who were like seven years old to like people who were 70 years old. So I would say that was a pretty big variety for me to explore into. And the kids typically, you know, you they had the best answers. They were like, I like my playground. I like my school. I like to play football here, and and, and the 70 year old was like, I like to walk around the city, which was, I would say, a little surprising for me, because the place where I was, you wouldn't believe it. It had shops, it had like these wide roads. It has pedestrian walkways. It has the train station nearby. It was, it was the perfect hub. It was a really good place for me to start with. So I believe that, you know, you get the most weirdest answers from these people. One of them liked street food. One of them liked the fact that it was safe. I believe that Chennai is one of the safest places in India than any other metropolitan city. So that was really good. They said I could walk at 2am in the night and still feel safe, which was great to hear. So I just, I think I needed that day to sort of understand my city from different perspectives, because I've always grown up here, and I would never have the perspectives that they had. So I believe that was a great start. Yeah,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 2:59
and you captured imagery of the morning, then at noon and then in the evening. Do you want to talk about that? Because I think that's such a beautiful and powerful way to capture what's going on in your community. I mean,
Varsha Gopal 3:08
we never think about it. It's such a passive thought, right? If you think about it, there's this contradiction, beautiful contradiction, between function versus time, you know, the same space. If you actually had to fix a frame and show parallels of three different timestamps, probably morning, noon and evening, you would see how the space is being utilized very differently in all of these timestamps, it's literally the same place. But then you see lesser vehicles in the morning, more people are walking, because people like to walk in the morning, and in the noon, where it's critically, probably very, very sunny, people prefer to take the bikes or their cars, and people walk a little less. And in the evening, it's just surprising that it transforms. You know, people are coming back from work, they go to the park, they take a lot more they want to have grab ice cream, probably. So it just transform into this very vibrant place that was never like that in the morning. You'd never be able to guess that it's the same place. So I wanted to draw this panel and understand that one specific junction, you know, I just chose a specific very, I would say a busy junction in my area, and I sort of documented how it would be in these, these three different timestamps. So it was great to watch it. Yeah,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 4:30
and you have a Bachelor's of architecture with a focus on sustainability studies, and in your studies and in sort of your observation of your city, what are some of the things that stand out to you in terms of the way that your city is iterating or allowing for sort of the next small step of improvement or the next sort of increment of development within your community, sure. So
Varsha Gopal 4:51
I believe that it's a very big and evident arc, because there was not a lot of priority. City with respect to city design previously, even though there were a lot of funds for it, I don't think people would prioritize planning their city. I believe that right now, with the kind of urban firms and the right kind of policies, a lot of places are changing, and that is also because my city is very populated. It's extremely populated. No area is actually without human beings. You can always see populations at different times of the day, even at 3am in the morning. So it is sort of, you know, there, there is a paradox in India, you know, there's so much population, but there are not a lot of places that would support or facilitate the right of population. So right now it's changing, because people are starting to come out. A lot of kids are hanging out. It's more common nowadays. And so I do see a lot of urban policies coming up. There are a lot of urban squares and urban centers that are turning up in the center of the city, right in the center of the city, and you would see that they have 24/7 shops, which is very uncommon for Chennai, which is very, very uncommon because people don't head out as much now, it's just there's a shift in culture. People are ready to go out, especially after COVID. It's changed a lot of things. So I believe that it's transforming. And I would say that, I would say that the exposure towards urban design is growing, especially in the architecture and urban design field, not as much in the general population, but definitely among our own fraternity of people. You know, with urban design enthusiasts and architecture enthusiasts, lot of firms are coming up, which is great. So, yeah, I think it's a slow change, but it's evident.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:43
Yeah, I'm fascinated by that, and one day, hope to visit. But before that, I would love to have you introduce yourself a little bit more to the audience. How did you come to focus on these issues and what put strong talents onto your your radar?
Varsha Gopal 7:00
First of all, I'm just lucky. You know, it was serendipity. I probably, you know, I was just going through LinkedIn, and I felt like this is the kind of work I wanted, you know, a lot of people actually say it, but I reached out because it really meant, you know, that's how I felt. So that's, that's how I reached out. And so I have a bachelor's from architecture, which was probably the best decision I made in life, because architecture sort of gives you a perspective that no engineering or tech world can give you become master voltage. So that way, urban design was, I would say, a branch of architecture which I was introduced you during my bachelors, and I had a great set of teachers only to understand that you cannot define urban design or like planning and just one different term. It's an umbrella term, you know, it's, it's, it's a way of thinking. It's a life lifestyle change. It's, for example, a very lame example, the fact that you want to ditch your car and take the bike as a lifestyle change. So I believe that urban design or policy making is not niche. It is not a niche branch. It is extremely common because everybody goes around the city and there is a specific way that they want their city to be. So it is more common than everybody thinks of it. So my aim is to sort of be the facilitator and let everybody know that they should be a part of their decision making of the city, almost like the bottom of bottom up revolution. It is not just meant for urban design enthusiasts or policy makers or landscape architects, or whoever it is, it is more general. It needs more common people than you can actually think. So my aim is to sort of bridge the gap between the general public and strong towns, because we already have an established firm. So the more people you pull in, the more exposure they're going to have about their city, the more they're going to think about it. It's not just like a passing cloud. They're just, they're they're not just going to go from home to their office. They think a lot about what happens in the city. So I believe that strong towns is a great facilitator, and it has the strength to sort of pull in and magnetize the kind of people that would help create a better city wherever it is, be it Canada or the US or India, wherever it is. So, I mean, I'm here. It's just great that I'm lucky enough to have this platform, because I cannot do this just by myself. So clearly, strong towns is strong. It's a very strong facilitator. That's how I believe strong towns is, and I I've always wanted to be a part of it, only because of the fact that change. Everybody wants to create change. You know, you ask everybody, you know, what is your ethos? And they be like, I want to create a change. I want to create an impact. But. This is one of the most direct ways to do it, so I wanted to be a part of that. Yeah,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 10:06
I love that. That's fantastic. And as we close, can you talk like, what is it that gives you hope? I love what drives you and what your aim is? But what are you hopeful about?
Varsha Gopal 10:17
I believe that it's going to become a part of a common discussion, not just in the architecture fraternity, whoever I meet, I would like to, I would love to discuss, to them about bike lanes, or about, you know, mixed use neighborhood, neighborhoods. I believe that everybody can understand that what they want in the city, everybody knows what they want. You know. End of the day, it's all about the psychology of people, you know. So I hope that more people get involved. I hope that this is not just, I would say, a small branch. I believe that I would be able to have these conversations, and people would start taking examples from Amsterdam or Japan or wherever it is, people are starting to go around a lot. So I really hope that this exposure sort of spreads that way. It is just easier to cause change. So I believe that exposure is everything. I believe that you learn through almost anything now it's just Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever it is. Information is just flooded. It's just that you have to find the right way to spread that information. So I just hope that this exposure towards what is good for them. I believe that they will become more self aware. I believe that self awareness is everything. So once you give them that self awareness, which hopefully we are, what we are trying to do with strong towns, it's just easier to create change. It's just easier to facilitate it. So that's my only hope. I think once that comes, everything else fall falls into place. Once you get more people, it's just it's just easier to do it, I guess.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 11:58
Well, I am confident that with your energy and enthusiasm. You may be the first strong towns advocate in Chennai, but I believe there will be many more very soon as well. And with that, thank you so much for being on this bottom up short, and I look forward to continuing to hear what you accomplished, as well as for the rest of our audience, the things that you might discover in your community, if you take a snapshot of the morning, the afternoon and the evening of your place, and observe those dynamics and really take note of your place, and then seek, as Varsha said, to extend that branch, to make the branch of people that are caring about these things ever larger. And so with that, thank you so much. And have a great rest of the day and take care and take care of your places.
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