Abstract
The historic precinct of Ahmedabad has a numbering system that was put in place by colonial rulers and got followed in the post-Independence era. The growth of the city around the historic precinct as well as increase of population has led to a number of issues regarding the existing numbering systems. The demographic explosion has resulted in an undesired development within the historic precincts across various cities in India. Such a scenario has made the existing system redundant as the density of building fabric has increased, within the areas, leading to inconsistent numbering systems. While the road hierarchy as well as the numbering system outside the historic precinct differs from that of the old city, centres have led to the difference between the naming and numbering system of the roads inside and outside the old city area. Most of the streets, except the main, have no nomenclature; also, the streets with names have no particular logic or framework behind the naming system.
The aim of this prospective study would be to understand and analyze the street addressing approaches and their benefits within the historic precincts, with a focus on the old core of Ahmedabad. The approach of the article would be to understand the various applications of street addressing, especially within historic precincts, and understand the benefits presented by the system. The article will end with the implementation of street addressing at Ahmedabad and what would be the phases of implementation. Furthermore, devising a sample coding system for a particular area of historic Ahmedabad would support this understanding.
Introduction
During the past few decades, many of our historic cities were threatened with rapid growth that has resulted in an undesirable development. This scenario has also catapulted due to the demographic explosion, thereby creating a lot of underserviced neighbourhoods in historic cores. Such a situation is further exaggerated by lack of proper system of street and building identification. This lack of identification system has led to worrisome predicament for the urban services. Within a majority of historic precincts, the naming and numbering mechanisms that were introduced by the colonial authorities are still followed. The existing set-up is increasingly becoming redundant because of undesired development and change in historic characters, leading to inconsistency in the existing numbering system.
Similar to many of the historic cities of India, the historic precinct of Ahmedabad is also faced with a similar predicament. For a city like Ahmedabad, which has dense historic urban fabric, it usually becomes extremely difficult for the urban services like ambulances and fire trucks to reach a specific location through the shortest possible route. Most of the streets, except the main, have no nomenclature; also, the streets with names have no particular logic or framework behind the naming system and are largely based on famous personalities within the region or the city. For someone new to an area, it could be extremely difficult to locate a particular neighbourhood or a building inside, within it. Makeshift solutions do exist at various places, but the delivery of infrastructural services according to these approaches is generally ineffective. This creates serious onsite issues for urban authorities, tourists and the local businesses. These issues are reflected in the issues faced for maintaining the infrastructure, provisioning the facilities and managing the built form. Such a complex scenario leads to the need of a proper street addressing system within the historic precincts across the country.
This article will, thereby try to answer the issues put forward by the lack of a systematic mechanism of the addressing system. The aim of this prospective study would be to understand and analyze an urban management approach known as ‘street addressing’. It will look into the street addressing methodologies and its benefits, with a focus on the historic city of Ahmedabad. The approach of the article would be to understand the various applications of street addressing around the world, especially within the historic precincts, and understand the benefits presented by the system. The article will largely address the point of how street addressing will enable the city officials at Ahmedabad to strengthen their urban heritage management in the priority areas as mentioned below:
Collecting urban information. Maintaining municipal facilities and infrastructure. Supporting economic development. Assisting tourism growth. Developing emergency and neighbourhood services.
The study explores the use of the concept of street addressing in the field of urban heritage management. The approach can be spread on a wider canvas involving the urban and infrastructural services. Since the system is a framework, it can also be replicated for the other parts of Ahmedabad outside the old city area. This forms an important part as it will allow the overall urban development of a historic city and not allow the precincts to be neglected that ultimately pushes towards the decay of the infrastructure and the governing mechanisms. Apart from the mentioned benefits, it will further allow the creation of urban maps that can be used by various municipal units. When carried out in a systematic way, it will help collect a significant amount of information about the city and its population. It will also help set up a database on the built environment, a rich source of urban information that is too often unavailable.
Historic Precinct of Ahmedabad
The present-day Ahmedabad is a bustling metropolitan city, with an area of 464 sq. km, and is home to 5.5 million people. The origins of the present-day historic settlement of Ahmedabad can be traced back to
The architectural heritage of Ahmedabad has steadily evolved over the past 600 years and the historic quarters are adorned by palatial havelis, houses with elaborately carved wooden facades and religious structures (Thakkar, 2004) (Figure 2). The built environment, along with the narrow streets and the chowks, form a significant part of the old precinct and give it a distinct character. Most of these structures still survive today, but face constant dilapidation due to various factors. The recent years have seen the historic settlement face unrelenting pressures from commercial activities and developments happening within it. These factors, along with the lack of proper policies and funding mechanisms, have led to an extensive loss of the built heritage.
In the recent years, the urban authorities in cooperation with local participation and non-governmental organizations have started taking measures towards the conservation of the cultural heritage and the character it provides. The measures have led to proposal of many policies for providing the conservation of the heritage and the efforts have, in turn, led the historic city of Ahmedabad to being nominated in the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Cities for 2011.
Need for Street Addressing
In the recent times, when cities are faced with a sudden demographic explosion, the current systems of identifying the roads and buildings have been unable to keep up with the pace of rapid urbanization. Because of this, a majority of the urban streets and land parcels are left unidentified and, thereby have no specific address to locate them. This lack of rational street naming or numbering is usually observed in the newer parts of the city or in the poorest slum neighbourhoods.
Such a scenario has created a lot of unwanted headaches for the municipal authorities and resulted in numerous underserviced neighbourhoods. To counter the situation, one of the urban management systems used is called ‘street addressing’. This street identification system has been used in various parts of the world, but rarely has been replicated within the Indian context. The local addressing systems have proved to be inadequate in finding a particular location and have created worrisome predicament for urban services. This situation puts forth a lot of questions like how to dispatch emergency services or the enforcement personnel quickly? How a new visitor or tourist can locate a property at the earliest with ease? How the municipal authorities can provide the services at ease and locate the infrastructural breakdowns at the earliest? To overcome these difficulties, since the 1980s ‘street addressing’ techniques have been developed.
What is Street Addressing?
Street addressing is a system of identifying the location of a building or a dwelling using a simple and cost-effective system.
Such a system would allow the municipal authorities to strengthen the urban management expertise in the following four areas—(a) collecting information on their cities and facilitating the updating of simplified urban planning documents, (b) planning investments, (c) maintaining facilities and infrastructure, and (d) mobilizing local resources more effectively. (Farvacque-Vitkovic, Godin, Leroux, Verdet, & Chavez, 2005, p. 2)
The system of numbers or names of streets and buildings are shown using maps and street signs. These set of street numbers and names are defined in relation to the street layout and follow a logical system that can be easily enlarged as and when the city grows. This system of addressing is not limited to only streets or plots, but can also be used to identify urban infrastructure like streetlights, fire hydrants, etc. But, apart from just being an identification system, the street addressing mechanism is an important tool of urban management. This is so because the tools put in place during this system serve to improve urban and municipal management. Street addressing is also seen as a support mechanism for urban management. The scope can be further widened from urban infrastructural services to fields like taxation systems and slum development.
More than just a simple street identifying operation, street addressing provides an opportunity to (a) create a map of the city that can be used by different municipal units, (b) conduct a systematic survey that collects a significant amount of information about the city and its population, and (c) set up a database on the built environment, a rich source of urban information that is too often unavailable. Information gathered is associated with an address, thus making it easily locatable. (Farvacque-Vitkovic et al., 2005, p. 3)
This helps the houses gain a distinctive marking that are easily recognizable. One of the major innovations of the street addressing initiatives is the detailed database of the urban areas. To develop this database, preliminary census of the urban settlements is necessary and the data needs to be constantly updated. This constant updating can be easily managed and visualized using a GIS-based system.
The system of street addressing is usually applied to urban settlements with partial or no addressing mechanism. To implement the street addressing mechanism in the best manner the team should have a good understanding of the urban settlement, including the streets, infrastructural facilities and other equipment.
Why is Street Addressing Necessary?
Street addressing has several objectives:
For the public:
Locations search system enabling people to get around the city more easily; Assists emergency services (ambulances, fire services, police, etc.) towards quick response; and Helps locate urban services like auto stands, postal services and goods delivery. For local governments:
Facilitates municipal services for infrastructure maintenance and bill collection; Improves local taxation by developing and updating fiscal registers or inventories; Develops monitoring systems for different infrastructural networks and facilities; Maintains electoral lists and the geographic area of the different polling stations; and Disease and disaster surveillance and mitigation through regular monitoring. For the private sector:
Enables service providers, like taxis, to manage their networks more effectively.
The points mentioned above clearly establish how important a factor, the system of street addressing plays. Obviously there are other roles that the system plays.
In the last few years, the urban authorities have looked towards decentralizing various urban facilities. With the presence of street addressing in place, it becomes easier for the new urban partners to understand and manage the facilities with extreme ease. The urban authorities also understand that it is very important to have a two-pronged approach where the fiscal and urban plannings are addressed simultaneously. Street addressing helps the authorities to identify & audit the urban infrastructure and prepare the financial plans for them.
Benefits over Cadastral Addressing System
In the current scenario, we use the cadastre system to prepare maps and locate properties. A cadastre system or database is a general inventory of developed or undeveloped land parcels within the municipal boundaries. This database consists of physical composition of individual land plots with its ownership. In comparison to this, the street addressing system is a method of identifying properties, streets and urban infrastructure on the streets. It makes it possible to easily locate buildings or streets in a settlement through a systematic identification system representing all the elements using an address directory (Farvacque-Vitkovic et al., 2005) (Figure 3).
Within the cadastre system, the focus is primarily on the identification of properties, rather than the streets. All the plots are identified using a specific number for each plot shown on the cadastral map. This sometimes makes it difficult to locate the specific plot without the street names. On the other hand, street addressing system gives a specific location of the plot whereby all the streets and public landmarks are identified through a logically developed system. The urban fixtures, that are usually part of the street addressing task using a specific address for each, are not covered in the cadastre method.
Street addressing map can be distributed amongst general public as well, but not the cadastral maps as they are made up of specific information, sometimes confidential. The implementation of a cadastre system is a lengthy process taking years to implement and requires a huge cost and large number of highly qualified staff to maintain it. As per World Bank a cadastre project can cost up to US 100 million dollar. In comparison, street addressing system needs only about a year to put in place, requiring only one or two qualified professionals to maintain and update it that understandably will cost much lesser.
For cities like Ahmedabad, where we already have a cadastral system in place, we need the street addressing system as a supplement to the existing mechanism. This approach would not be a sweeping reform as the new information can be overlaid on the existing map and database. The process just needs to involve experienced surveyors who can identify the properties and proceed with the number/naming procedure for the streets, plots and urban infrastructure. Such an intervention will need actions at two levels: first is the need to integrate the new addressing database on to the cadastral data and second is to interlink all the existing data from various agencies like taxation, fiscal, water, electricity, etc. with the new addressing system.
Impact of Street Addressing in Old City Centres
Street addressing could be very useful for the revitalization and management of urban heritage. Although street addressing is in place within various old precincts, but the exercise was done during the time the cities were made. There is hardly any example, at least none in India, where the system has been incorporated as part of the urban heritage management.
The old precincts in India usually have an addressing system that was assigned during the colonial era. Such a system was carried into the post-Independence era and has been updated through the years. As the cities usually followed the cadastral system, a lot of streets still remain without name identification. Furthermore, with the historic cores being very organic in its layout, it becomes almost impossible to locate particular buildings without a particular street name.
In such a scenario, the urban authorities should look towards the systematic numbering approach of the street addressing mechanism. The system would help identify all the interesting architectural and cultural elements, and give them recognizable addresses. The authorities should look to retain the existing system and update it using the new system. In such a situation, the visitors won’t have to rely on nearby landmarks to identify a place of history.
It would also be a good idea to adopt an existing system and develop on it. For a city like Ahmedabad, where residents of the historic precincts identify themselves with the individual neigbourhoods, getting rid of the current naming system may offend a lot of inhabitants. Furthermore, the names of pols 1 have also become part of the cultural heritage at Ahmedabad.
Street Addressing Towards the Management of Historic Ahmedabad
As mentioned in the earlier segment, the mechanism of street addressing could be quite important for the management of historic precincts. For a historic settlement like Ahmedabad, with a huge potential of tourism and development, there is a need towards identifying and developing a detailed inventory management system for all the cultural entities. Such an approach would be a first of its kind addressing system for a historic precinct in India.
In Ahmedabad, the addressing system uses a map for identifying only the major streets and the plot survey numbers (Figure 4 2 ). These maps are very nominal in nature and the need for an efficient and functional addressing system has been felt within the historic precinct to support the rise in the development and tourism activities. The current cadastral system remains complicated to update and costly as well, and may not fit the needs of the historic settlement of Ahmedabad in a holistic manner. What we need is a system that can be easily and efficiently adapted with the existing system and fulfil our purpose of efficient addressing within the walled city. Such an efficient system will allow the government agencies, heritage managers and tourists to manage and enjoy the richness of the cultural heritage at Ahmedabad.
Need for Street Addressing System at Historic Ahmedabad
The historic city of Ahmedabad has an addressing system that follows the typical residential settlement within the area. The members of various religious and ethnic communities have inhabited the historic precinct of Ahmedabad. This aspect of multicultural communities living and working within the area has lent a distinct character to the settlement pattern that forms a part of the rich heritage of the historic old town. This old settlement is made of numerous residential districts famously known as the ‘purs’. These purs are the larger entities of the addressing nomenclature and many of these districts come together to form the historic precinct.
These districts are primarily constituted from the amalgamation of various smaller neighbourhoods and largely emerged during the reign of Sultan Mehmud Begada. The Purs were usually named after the commanders and faithful’s of the Sultan, and bore names like Sarangpur named after Malek Sarang, Dariapur after Daria Khan, Kalupur after Kalu Miyan and so on. (De, 2002, p. 80)
These purs are further comprised of smaller residential neighbourhoods, now famously known as the ‘pols of Ahmedabad’. ‘These pols form a significant part of the urban structure at historic Ahmedabad, and the names of the pols are very important to the residents, which they identify themselves to’ (Nayak, 2010, p. 59). These pols are further constituted of the traditional houses that highlight the elaborately carved wooden facades. ‘Each “Pol” is characterized by a series of courtyard houses, often ranging between 50 to 100 units, with shared longitudinal walls arranged along a narrow winding street accessed by a controlled gateway and ending in a cul-de-sac’ (Shah, 2015, p. 271). These traditional courtyard houses bear the survey numbers provided during the colonial era and are the last step of the addressing system.
Apart from this hierarchy of the residential system, the streets within the walled city can also be put into a hierarchal system to form a part of the addressing system. The primary streets are those which form the major link between the central area or the citadel of Bhadra and the city gates. These have formed the principal arteries of movement and all along these routes generalized commercial activities have highly developed and till today the situation remains the same along the primary streets. Branching off from the primary streets are the secondary and tertiary streets. While the primary streets met the generalized needs of the people, the secondary streets catered to specialized shopping needs of the people. Each street was known to specialize in separate items or commercial activity; a single street may be just devoted to jewellery, clothes, utensils, etc. To this day these special commercial zones that had been articulated still exist. From the secondary streets, smaller lanes branched off, serving only the residential areas, known as the tertiary streets. Though the streets apparently appear to be random and organic in pattern, but they form natural channels for draining rainwater. The streets are also drainage channels of the walled city. ‘The city also had seventeen “chaklas” or central squares where four roads met’ (De, 2002, p. 82).
All these settlement patterns and road networks have grown organically over the past 600 years and still bear the names that were given to them during the bygone eras. Such a scenario creates a need for a proper addressing system that considers the history of the existing naming system. The municipal corporation has used the cadastral data and worked on the street signage programme. This programme was started to display the names of the historical neighbourhoods along with the survey numbers of the houses (Figure 5). Although the system is useful for administrative purposes, it is less effective for identifying and locating places of interest on an urgent basis or for a newcomer. It is a very common tradition for the people within the historic core to use different kinds of landmarks, largely architectural buildings, as guiding mechanisms to describe the location of a particular address. A map of the walled city exists that indicates all the individual house survey numbers and road names within the area. However, the survey numbers are not specific to a particular area of neighbourhood and the number sequencing continues throughout the walled city. A particular survey number would be found repeating itself through all the 13 municipal wards of the old precinct. This situation does not allow the houses to have a unique and individual survey number.
This situation creates a lot of hassles for people trying to locate a particular building, as the survey numbers across a road might not be in sequence as they belong to different municipal wards. In many of the streets there are no signage to identify the streets and one usually has to rely on nearby landmarks and locals to locate oneself. The utility and service providing companies also use the cadastre data used by the municipal authorities to locate and identify a household. Moreover, as there are hardly any street names for the secondary and tertiary streets, there are no signboards to manoeuvre around the place. There are a lot of instances where a person keeps on roaming around asking the locals to locate a building. For a person to identify a particular address, he/she has to know about the walled city in its totality. Someone who is new to the walled city, whether a visitor or a service provider, usually faces a lot of difficulties locating a place as the place name does not follow any sequential numbering order.
Applications and Benefits of Street Addressing at Ahmedabad
The mechanism of street addressing has a lot of potential applications within the walled city of Ahmedabad. The primary application of the system is in its use for generating an urban information database for various components of cultural heritage. Furthermore, the technique of street addressing has few other practical applications like urban information database, support for municipal and private services, tax systems, land tenure and management, and economic development of historic neighbourhoods. This section will discuss a few of the important applications and how they will benefit the historic precinct of Ahmedabad.
Street Addressing and Urban Information
Street addressing offers an opportunity to identify, gather and share the information on various aspects of cultural heritage at Ahmedabad. This application involves a lot of baseline survey and spatial locations of the built heritage and various landmarks. It involves developing a database of the built heritage and subsequent maps using the GIS technology that makes it possible to interlink the information with different heritage management tools. Such a system, if used, would be very easy to maintain and update on a regular basis.
To make the optimum use of the database within the historic precinct, the municipal authorities should look towards the maximum use of technology. The urban machinery would work very smoothly if the database were supported by address management software, developed specifically for our context. This software would provide the ease of searching a particular building or landmark or street or area. It could further be adapted into a web- or mobile-based application and shared with the common public. This would help a lot of tourists or visitors to identify the required location. Thus, the address management software would be very effective in various applications of the street addressing system. Moreover, the software could further be coordinated with different departments or companies involved with the functioning and management of the walled city.
Such a GIS-based database would allow the users to search and retrieve data based on various aspects. One can explore the walled city in terms of the individual buildings, economic or land use, urban infrastructural facilities, etc. This will facilitate a lot of people visiting the walled city for the first time or doing research on the facets of the area for a street, neighbourhood, ward or the historic precinct itself. When used through a mobile-based system, the residents can search for important features like doctors or other emergency services. It will allow the urban authorities to keep a track of any change in the occupancy to curb the phenomenon of excessive gentrification in old areas. It will also facilitate creating and storing the historic database as archives to observe the emerging trends. Changes in the land use or building typology of the land parcel will also intimate whether historic buildings are being pulled down to erect commercial or multi-residential buildings. The system could be designed in a manner to allow easy import or export of database to/from other existing systems and print them whenever needed.
Street Addressing and Support to Municipal Services
Apart from the usual practice of identifying the streets and land parcels, the system plays a key role in the development and management of critical urban services. The mechanism transcends from being a mere address management system and can be used to facilitate and streamline the urban services like door-to-door waste collection, street signage, property and infrastructure identification, etc.
As mentioned, the street addressing system gives the local authorities information about the historic precinct in terms of its streets, urban fixtures and other utilities. Such information would highlight the existing condition and actual need within the walled city in terms of the decision-making and investment planning. The street addressing system can provide information on population, facilities and infrastructure in each of the traditional pols. This will turn out be a useful tool for implementing the services and policies within the precinct. The system will help identify the priority areas and required urban interventions. The pols within the historic precinct could be ranked according to the priority of interventions.
This system will give a complete layout of the infrastructural elements for the whole and how many of them have a heritage importance. It can further help in identifying the necessity areas and plan the intervention programme based on the exact numbers. With the help of this mechanism, it would be easier to locate and record the street information, helping the planning of capital investment and annual maintenance expenditure for the urban infrastructure within the walled city. The programme will allow the identification of important historic streets and urban assets for priority attention and regular monitoring by urban authorities and heritage experts.
The municipal authority at Ahmedabad will surely have an inventory of the urban assets within the historic precinct, but there is a lack of awareness of the extent of heritage value of the assets. Such infrastructural elements are rarely identified separately and maintained with special need. For such a situation, an initial inventory can be conducted to identify the historic street names and their respective urban fixtures. Gradually, supplementary information relevant to the assets could be added in the course of time. This will give a fair idea of the historic assets present, in terms of the urban utility assets, which are usually overlooked in terms of heritage value of the city. The value of the assets and its estimated cost of upkeep are based on this. Such audits can be worked out by the street addressing team in association with the technical departments of the municipality.
Apart from the identification of the heritage assets, the street addressing can be put in order to answer the needs of solid waste management in the walled city. The system can be used to tackle a grim and troublesome situation of garbage littered on the streets at various places in the walled city.
The system of street addressing can be further incorporated with public operations like public transportation and public parking facilities. Locating parking facilities within the historic precinct could turn out to be a nightmare and the lack of awareness of such facilities leads to further chaos and traffic congestion. The identified streets could further be supplemented with information like the road classification, vehicular load, road widths and conditions. This information would help in working out a vehicular movement and traffic pattern.
Street Addressing and Economic Development
Support to economic development within the historic precinct would be one of the primary benefits of the street addressing exercise. The database obtained during the process would help understand the economic activities within the area, both formal and informal. This will also help the urban managers and policy makers to understand and analyze the economic fabric of the city and what is the economic potential of the historic precinct. This information will generate a database that will highlight all the economy-based activities with specific locations in terms of house and street number. It will help analyze the distribution of settlements in terms of economic and non-economic built forms. This helps a lot in raising the value of the historic precinct as a large revenue generation area leading to better planning policies.
The database providing the type and location of the economic activities, with regular updates, will help understand the change in the building use. This is a very big issue as there are a lot of traditional houses on the fringes of the old core that are getting converted into commercial use like godowns and shops. A lot of houses are also pulled down to create shops or small shopping arcades. This is an important factor contributing towards the loss of cultural heritage. The usual updates to the land use plans occur after the census surveys which happen every 10 years. This is a long time to wait to keep a track of land use changes and a lot of heritage would be lost in the meanwhile. The use of street addressing system makes it easier to update and manage database in lesser time and at lower costs.
Private companies are usually interested in street address databases because they can use them to tailor their individual and joint business strategies. A database makes it easier to understand the competition and to prospect for business by dividing activities into sectors and economic categories and the potential clientele into households and companies. Mapping helps each type of business to identify its own location in the city as well as that of the competition. This leads to a better understanding of clients and potential markets and thus helps define a more effective and targeted business development strategy (Farvacque-Vitkovic et al., 2005, p. 43).
Street Addressing and Tourism Development
The 600 years old city of Ahmedabad (1411
The area being a historic precinct of importance, it invites a lot of visitors for varied purposes. In this situation, unless there is some local resident accompanying the visitor, navigation through the area becomes a tedious task. Although the area has several entry and exit points, the absence of the street addresses and signage makes it difficult to find the points of interest for a visitor. This becomes a major point of concern for the growing tourism business within the city and may deter tourists from visiting.
Street addressing would provide a comprehensive database of all the historic landmarks, markets and activities within the walled city with specific locations. Currently visitors taking a walk within the city have to rely on the route map to navigate themselves (Figure 6) (Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, n.d.). Even with the help of maps, it usually becomes troublesome for visitors to locate a place. Street addressing will help the visitors to walk in the precinct without the support of a local help and without any hassles of finding addresses. It would also allow proper street signage within streets facilitating tourists to navigate their ways only with the help of the street names/numbers on the travel brochures. Such visitor-friendly initiatives go a long way in promoting the tourism industry and boosting the economy of the residents, business owner and the city itself.
Street Addressing and Emergency and Neighbourhood Services
The emergency services like fire, police and ambulance are one of the basic beneficiary applications of the street applications process. The properly prepared street and house identification database, when put on map, will help reduce the response time. The streets within the walled city are complex web of narrow access ways, and one wrong turn may cause a lot of delay in the delivery of emergency services. Such a system would further help in times of natural calamities. With Ahmedabad falling in the seismic zone, this database map can prove to be a boon in minimizing the damage to the residents and heritage buildings of the walled city.
Furthermore, the street addressing application can be extended to other neighbourhood services like the transport systems, parcel deliveries and the postal services. The postal services, quite interestingly, can be served very efficiently with the help of street addressing database. With the help of the database, the postal system can get the mail distributed to each address within the walled city at the earliest. In this new scenario, it would be easier for a new delivery personnel to figure out a particular address, even in tricky maze of streets and survey numbers. This system would help the residents and taxi drives to navigate to a particular address without asking for nearby landmarks or other awkward systems.
Implementing Street Addressing Programme for Historic Ahmedabad
The implementation of the street addressing system for the walled city of Ahmedabad would be a challenging and complex task. This is so because the new system has to incorporate the existing naming system within a complex system of streets and neighbourhoods. The implementation would involve selecting an appropriate identification and coding system can be implemented uniformly across the historic precinct. This implementation and coding mechanism would be based on the layout of the historic precinct, study of the built versus open space (streets and chowks), the time constraint and the budget availability. This implementation process is broadly divided into three segments: preparation, implementation and maintenance (Figure 7) (Farvacque-Vitkovic et al., 2005).
Preparation Phase
As the name suggests, this is the preliminary stage involving the preparation for the implementation of the street addressing system. This stage is the most critical as it involves a lot of actions and several brainstorming sessions presenting several alternatives and decision-making. This phase helps define the approaches to implement the programme and set up the street addressing unit to carry out the further works. The primary task during this phase is to understand the feasibility of the study, determining the codification system for streets, houses and other elements and the implementation approach. During this phase, the main entities would be the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, consultant and the street addressing unit. The preparation phase usually lasts for about 6–9 months, depending on the scale of the settlement. The preparation stage is further subdivided into two stages: feasibility study and setting up street addressing unit.
The aim of the feasibility study is to collect, study and understand the existing data to determine how much the project is feasible to implement. It also takes into consideration, the local conditions and monetary support for the project. At the end of the study, the authorities will have the recommendations and guidelines to implement the street addressing programme. Based on the preliminary study, the team involved would define the scope of the project in detail along with the estimated costs involved. It would also propose the system for surveying and mapping, codification and numbering, and sign installation. The most import proposal would be choosing the codification system for the walled city of Ahmedabad. The various stages of the codification system would be as following:
Implementation Phase
During this phase all the proposals are implemented and the programme becomes functional. The stage involves mapping and preparation of the address map, installation of signage at the main intersections, numbering the doorways based on the new codification system and creating the online addressing directory, supplemented by all the relevant data for each identification number. The street addressing unit plays a very critical role in the implementation of the programme along with the municipal corporation and agencies like sign manufacturers and printers. As the phase involves an exhaustive work of mapping, surveying, installing numbers and street signs, it takes around 12–18 months to finish the task.
Based on initial preparations and gathered information during the preparation phase, a base map is created by the street addressing. This map will depict the streets and layout of the historic neighbourhoods along with an inventory of streets and intersections. For the door numbering surveys, detailed questionnaires are prepared once the base maps are prepared. Based on these surveys, the address directory is prepared. When the programme has been completed, all of the data are processed and distributed to the administrative bodies and departments involved. This database has all the relevant information pertaining to a particular identification number, whether for a street or a building. Simultaneously with this process, the manufacturing and installation of street signs are taken up. The numbering of the door also takes place in this phase.
Maintenance Phase
This would be the final stage usually requiring fewer resources than the earlier stages. This phase largely includes the updating of the existing data that was prepared during the preparation phase. It also includes certain physical tasks like the repainting of the door numbers that have disappeared in the course of time. The distribution of the address directory for various municipal offices and other involved parties also takes place in this phase. Updating and re-installing the damaged or disappeared street signs also takes place during this time. Once the main street addressing needs have been met, the street addressing unit should expand its role, using the knowledge gained from the street addressing programme and broaden its mandate to become a documentation centre, for example, or an urban database.
Media Campaign to Promote the System
At Ahmedabad, the two most common methods of campaigning are print media (newspapers and pamphlets) and audio-visual media (radio and local news channels). The media campaign for the street addressing for the city of Ahmedabad can be divided into two segments, benefits and outcome, which can be individually taken up by the two media sections. The audio-visual media can be used to broadcast the benefits of street addressing and who all would be the beneficiaries from the system. This part of the campaign can start with survey process and run along with the whole of the process till the final outcome. The reason for choosing the audio-visual media to promote the benefits is that it would be very difficult for people to understand the outcomes of the street addressing through verbal methods. Thus, the print media can be used to promote the outcomes of the street addressing activities.
It is always easy to convey the outcomes through printed maps, highlighting the new street names/numbers along with the major landmarks in the area. There can be separate maps for different areas, instead of a complete city map, which can be easy to read and be more informative and elaborate. There can be specifically designed pamphlets for individual zones, which can be circulated along with the newspapers or delivered door to door. Apart from this, the maps can also be put up at all the post offices, hospitals and fire brigades. Every zone has individual postal offices and fire brigades, apart from the hospitals spread over the city. This activity, apart from helping the public support agencies, will also help the public as they would know the nearest place to search in the map. Apart from this there can be special task force for street addressing campaign, which can move within the city conducting public gatherings and handing over the pamphlets containing the benefits and outcomes of the street addressing.
Conclusion
In countries like India, which has a wide array of built forms and historic centres, it is imperative to discover, analyze, revitalize and manage all of them. This understanding is not rendered complete until there is detailed inventory generated, which showcases all the buildings, streets and the activities within the historic cores. The process of street addressing forms a first, but a significant step towards creating such a catalogue and managing it to support various systems and services.
During the times when our historic precincts are faced with rapid growth and damage to historic character, we need a robust system that will put all the aspects of the settlement on to a map. In a time, where the urban settlements are trying to become smart cities, the historic precincts are still lagging in the old times. This problem is further accentuated as there is no detailed inventory of the houses, streets and activities taking place within the old core. Many of our old cores still use the naming/numbering system put in place by the colonial rulers and have never been updated in the past decades. Such a situation creates a nightmare for the urban authorities causing extreme difficulty in supplying and maintaining the urban services. This also causes a worrisome predicament for tourists and visitors who always have to rely on local support to work their way within the settlements.
Street addressing may have been a process used in various parts of the world, but it has hardly been looked upon as a tool for heritage management. The system involves gathering of data to create address directories, which are user-friendly and inexpensive in nature. This system of street addressing can be easily adapted for the identification programmes within various historic urban centres, which may be of varied nature. Thus, street addressing produces comprehensive and meticulously catalogued information of the factors concerning various aspects of the historic precincts of India and can be later integrated into the effective heritage management and problem-solving.