Introduction to Site

Faisal ghuman shaheed road is one of the major intersecting road between Cantonment and DHA phase 1. Moving from south to north side of the road all the commercial activities can be seen and moving from north to south side of the road there are housing colonies, a main school and a huge park also. This area falls under cantonment By-laws and has street vendors on road.

SITE ANALYSIS

Land Use of Site

Originally site is a mixed used area which has small scale housing colonies and commercial market around it. The area marked in dotted circle is the housing society where I have my residence. Red marked is the commercial area on which these communities survive.   

Road Networks

Main road that is moving in red (primary road) is known as Faisal Ghuman Shaheed Road. It is a dual carriageway road (total of 50’) with a median. Single carriage way is 15’ along with a 5’ footpath and a median of 2’ between roads.

Road Network Analysis

Micro Analysis of Site

Site taken is the main commercial market of Faisal ghuman shaheed road which has two major nodes along with small housing colonies.

Elevation of Site

Catchment Area of Site

Nishat Park is one of the biggest catchment area of this site because there is no other entertainment point or activity around especially for the people living in Nishat colony. In front of the park there are many food stalls for the visitors which creates a chaos on road. Similarly there is also a small park at the southern side of the road which is used by the colony near it. Footpath along the road is used my many hawkers like (famous gol gappa stall). 

Potential-Merits Of Site Area

It is one of the important areas around the vicinity because it doesn’t comes under DHA and even Cantonment doesn’t consider this land under cantonment so it is a disputed land due to which there are small scale societies each society consists of 40 to 50 houses. Major land is occupied by the Nishat colony which has no boundaries and a haphazard growth but there is a small scale commercial market that can be utilized for everything.

Main commercial of Faisal ghuman shaheed road has everything for household utilities. Land prices has raised from past 8-10 years because of the market. There is vacant land present on site which can be used to cater all the drawbacks.     

You may also want to read about HOW DOES OFF-STREET PARKING AFFECT URBAN FORM?

Problems/Demerits Of Site Area

As discussed above the potential aspects of site there are some problems which needs to be addressed. Following are the problems discussed;

Traffic Flow

Traffic flow of the road is mainly disturbed by two nodes one is on the northern side turning to nishat colony because of its smaller radius. A lot of people needs to reverse their cars to take a U-turn from this node and also because of the encroachments and car parking around the road. Due to less width of the road when there is on-street parking it causes a lot of problem in the traffic flow.

Parking on the Road

Another major problem is parking on the road side which effects the circulation of both shoppers and traffic flow. Vehicles are parked in front of the shops especially because of the banquet hall present on this main road. As they don’t have a proper parking so when there is any wedding all the people coming park on the road.

Encroachments

Nodes are all chocked because of the encroachments on the street disturbing the movement of traffic and even making riders to come wrong way to get to them.

Lack of Pedestrianization

There are no proper footpaths for pedestrians although there are 5’ walking paths available on both sides of the road but they are occupied by the shop owners as their small display areas. The condition of footpaths is even worse that nobody can use it safely. Furthermore they have no shade that people could easily walk on it.

Safety and Security

Safety and security is primarily important perimeters in commercial areas which lack in this area. Walking along the road and crossing the road is dangerous because of traffic flow and parking. There are open drains in between the walking paths and on the road.

Infrastructure

General appealing of the road is heavily affected with the jumble of electricity wires and poles. Electricity wires are hanging at low level height at some points; which are dangerous for the users of the area. These even obstructs the shop facades.

Conclusion & Recommendations

Policy Making

• To give vendors legal status by amending, enacting, repealing and implementing appropriate laws and providing legitimate hawking zones in urban development/ zoning plans. 
• To provide facilities for appropriate use of identified space including the Creation of hawking zones in the urban development/ zoning plans
• To eschew imposing numerical limits on access to public spaces by discretionary licenses and instead moving to nominal fee-based regulation of access. Where market forces like price, quality and demand will determine the number of vendors that can be sustained. Such a demand cannot be unlimited.
• To make street vendors a special component of the urban development/ zoning plans by treating them as an integral and legitimate part of the urban distribution system.
• To promote self-compliance amongst street vendors.

Concept

The idea is to generate a space for hawkers/encroachments that are formed in every area of a city. If there is an already designed space for such programs while planning a city or a commercial area than there will be less chances of problems that are caused by these street vendors. We cannot ignore their existence in urban planning because major communities depend upon these street activities. More over the appearance of the road, skyline, traffic discipline and even landscaping can be enhanced if this one zone can be added in an area.

Below is a sketch describing the idea mentioned above. The problems that are discussed above can be addressed in a form that in cities and area where we belong always travel on cars so the first thing that needs to have is a car park. Than second comes an area for street vendors who occupies the space from vehicular way. On Fiasal Ghuman Shaheed road there is a vacant land that can be utilized for this activity.

I have taken a small piece of that vacant land on which there is parking available for 70 cars at a time which is not specifically for the people coming for street shopping but even for rest of the parking that was before on the street. There is an 8’ wide pedestrian pathway that connects to that space so that people can easily access it.

Another problem that was discussed is the node in front of the entrance of this area. The radius for car U-turn was not enough so I have designed a way that can make the vehicular movement easy for both entrain the parking lot and for making U-turn.

Case Study

Inclusive Design Street for Vendors, India

The following sketches are based on a street market in Ahmedabad, to show how unorganized trading in a service lane could be rearranged to allow for better space sharing, to reduce the conflict between vendors, vehicles and pedestrians.

Inclusive design often means making the best use of existing space through better space management or time-sharing (e.g.: for an evening or Sunday market). The sketches below show different ways in which a 4m pavement width can accommodate vending, with or without fixed structures.

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