Creating Public Realm through Urban Renewal- Learning from the City of Arts and Sciences for the Indian Urban Scenario

In a rapidly developing nation like India, the prime aspect of growth is development of private projects to cater to the need for generating revenue. Land is developed for closed housing communities, industrial and IT parks and areas for the private sector. Even though, open spaces may be provided inside and along the developments, they are used by a restricted clientele, since the spaces are not open to all tiers of the society and for public use. As a result, even with the generation of enough open spaces, there is no realization of a public realm in most of the urban zones. Since there are several conflicting demands from different participatory bodies in a development project, the resolution of this conflict is not possible, but selection of the best solution is within the human abilities of the decision-making bodies. The City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia of Spain by architect Santiago Calatrava is a good example of providing urban space from an architectural project, with infrastructural planning and integration with the environment involving public participation and creating a successful public realm through celebrating modernity of structure-oriented bio mimicry architecture applied to the project area. The paper aims to study the effect of a government-initiated urban renewal project in the development of a degraded urban space and the urban design elements applied in the conceptual stage in order to realize an attractive public realm. The integrated approach towards the planning disciplines is encouraged in a plural society like India where all development aspects are fragmented, with a special emphasis on the creation of open spaces for public use for all tiers of the society.