Maulik Chauhan
Tekton
Tekton: Volume 12, Issue 1, June 2025
pp. 92 – 101
Maulik Chauhan is an architect who graduated from CEPT University and is an alumnus of NUS, Singapore, with a Master’s in Urban Design. Presently, a visiting faculty member at CEPT University, he teaches in the master’s and bachelor’s programs in the faculty of Planning. He has taught in CEPT across different programs and levels for over eight years. He is a doctoral scholar focusing on understanding the power dynamics in the production of street space.
maulik.chauhan.phd23@cept.ac.in
ABSTRACT
Streets in India consist of dynamic negotiation and contestations in the production process. The essay reflects on how the street spaces are claimed, reclaimed, and shaped through these contestations and negotiations between different actors involved in the production process. State policies, private interests, and the needs of everyday users create conflict, leading to interactions that shape the streets. This essay explores how automobile-centric planning and urban imagery, taking forward the private interests and state agendas, excludes other actors and their requirements. There has been a utilitarian simplification of the street space due to the state’s vision and the private elite’s interest. Drawing upon Henri Lefebvre’s Production of Space and employing a qualitative approach centred on empirical cases from Ahmedabad, this essay identifies the conflicts among different actors, their needs and how they contest, negotiate, claim and reclaim their space. It contributes to the debates on urban governance and the right to the city while recognising the need for street space beyond the corridor of movement for social and economic purposes.
KEY WORDS
Production, Contestations, Negotiations, Trade-off, Claim-making
