Streets for People Challenge

The Streets for People Challenge is an online event organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The results of the event were announced recently. The Streets for People challenge along with the India Cycles4 challenge brought in changes to make the roads cycle friendly, walking friendly and child friendly. The streets for people challenge focuses on making the streets walking friendly.

Results

Around eleven cities have won the “Streets for People Challenge Award”. They are Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Gurugram, Kochi, Nagpur, Pimri chinchwad, Pune, Udaipur, Kohima, Ujjain, and Vijayawada. Ten cities have won the “Nurturing Neighbourhood challenge” award. They are Bengaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Indore, Jabalpur, Kakinada, Kochi, Kohima, Rourkela, Vadodara, Warangal.

Nurturing Neighbourhood challenge

The Nurturing neighbourhood challenge focuses on creating a childhood friendly neighbourhood. These cities will now enter into the next level. In the next level, the projects under taken by the cities will be scaled up. Around 60 city agencies participated in the challenge. It aims at improving physical and psychological health of the infants. It created public places such as parks, public toilets, improved the outdoor waiting spaces, amenities for caregivers, nursing cabins, play areas, gardens, etc.

Second season

While announcing the results, the ministry also launched the second season of streets for people challenge and India cycles4change. Also a book titled “Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge: Stories from the field” was launched. The book consists of case studies. In the second season, cities that are not in the top eleven winner list can participate. Cities with more than five lakh population shall alone apply.  In season 2, the cities will work and adopt parking policies, healthy streets, on-street parking management.

Smart City Mission

The challenges were anchored by the Smart City Mission. They are in line with the National Urban Transport Policy 2006. It focuses on shifting the trends of city roads from car – centric to people – centric.

What is Streets for People Challenge?

New innovative plans were created by the participating cities. The plans focused on prioritizing pedestrians. More than 1800 designers participated in the challenge. The winning cities received fifty lakh rupees. The Institute for Transportation and Development provided technical support to the participating cities.