Editorial: Where the streets have no name

Even in today’s smartphone dominated age, where GPS has obliterated the use of physical maps to demarcate the city, every once in a while, you’re bound to be stuck when searching for directions to an office or even the house of an acquaintance. Ask anyone who has had the misfortune of navigating one of Chennai’s interior roads – from Royapuram to Velachery. Even your friendly delivery executive from the food aggregator and e-tailer has stumbled on more than one occasion trying to make sense of where he or she has got to be. At the root of our problem lies the critical component of signages, or more specifically name boards.

A majority of name boards in residential areas in Chennai are in a state of disrepair, not just from neglect in terms of maintenance, but also as a result of vandalism, and lack of enforcement, when it comes to the preventing political parties and commercial establishments from using these name boards as canvasses to exhibit their posters. Despite crores being spent by the government, it takes just an electoral exercise or the launch of a new business to ensure that name boards in interior Chennai are all plastered over with flex posters of propaganda and miracle cures for health ailments. Citizens are also to partly blame as many of us turn a blind eye when these defacement activities are carried out in the cover of darkness.

This week, it was announced that streets and roads across Chennai are slated to get new name boards as the Greater Chennai Corporation has floated tenders to the tune of Rs 8 crore in the run-up to the announcement of urban local body elections. While such public welfare activities gather steam in the wake of any election – with milling of roads being done on a war footing, and conservancy workers insisting on source segregation of garbage in neighbourhoods – it nevertheless is a much-needed makeover for Chennai.

While tenders for these name boards were supposed to be opened on Monday, owing to the Model Code of Conduct, the process was postponed and the bids are to be finalised after the urban local body elections. This upcoming project that will be implemented under the Singara Chennai 2.0 initiative involves replacement of name boards of interior roads, streets with new digitally-printed, reflective boards for better visibility. The exercise is an example of how poor urban planning has often resulted in repetitive work.

The Corporation seems to have borrowed a leaf from the pages of the Goa Tourism campaign and installed new name boards that feature images of landmarks on a few roads in Mylapore. Heritage structures such as the Kapaleeswarar Temple, San Thome Cathedral and Light House are part of these new and improved tourism-friendly name boards. There is a functional requirement for name boards, which falls under the larger ambit of proper urban planning. The challenges are amplified in a city like Chennai, where the city hasn’t been planned according to the conventional grid-based systems that are prevalent in developed economies such as the US and the EU nations.

The conversation around name boards might just be the launch pad for more deliberations surrounding urban planning such as building stormwater drains, parks, restrooms, and other public utilities. Barely a few cities in India have incorporated a grid plan as part of urban design, and these include Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Jaipur and Amaravati.

This year, during the Budget, the Finance Minister spoke about how a high level committee of urban planners, economists and institutions will be formed to offer suggestions on urban policies, capacity building, planning, implementation and governance. Considering half of India’s population will be living in cities by 2047, the decision has not come a moment too early. Citizens must realise the longevity of such measures can be ensured only through active participation and taking up ownership of the resources in question.