People need to see to follow

The discussions that we had in our studio and the unitech experiment, about people following each other’s actions brought into my notice a similar situation in my locality.

I live in sheikh sarai, dda flats and my block has a park about 150 x 60 sq. ft. and we also have this huge stretch of green on the other side which covers about 100 ft of length of our block. 5 years ago the block park was not at all used, covered with tall grass, whereas the green stretch about 30 ft wide had an abundance of trees, there was a walking path, couple of benches where people used to sit, I remember waiting for my bus by that stretch ( the stretch is kind of raised, ( we call it ‘the pahari’ - its abt 6-7 ft high), it gives a view of the roads opposite and it was connected to our block, the citywalk road and the college of vocational studies , easily accessible to all.

The block park was completely ignored, till this lady on the ground floor started planting small green strips right in front of her house, people followed with their individual strips in front of thier respective houses, they got the grass trimmed, installed lights, made proper pedestrian space to walk on and even bored a tubewell.

The park is occupied at all times, especially at night, there are no qualms about going out because one is not alone. It all started with individual strips being planted to a whole park being activated.
And ‘the pahari’ - over the 5 years has been ignored, when people shifted to the block park, no one now visits pahari anymore except some college couples which has also become rare. It is now becoming a garbage dump.

The reason I wrote this is because, just yesterday when I came back from the ‘draw me in’ experiment, people from my block had gathered around the pahari and from what I heard they are going to bring up its maintenance issue in the next society meeting. I am sure we will be able to use it again.

smriti

( uploding photos soon )