City For All | Projects

Organised in collaboration with:

France and India enjoy a substantive partnership at the core of which lie its people to-people relations, nurtured for decades through collaborations and exchanges. One of its manifestations is the regular rendezvous between our two countries, Bonjour India. This artistic, cultural, educational and social initiative is an Indo-French moment put together by the French cooperation network in India.

From chai stalls to parks, buses to toilets - look around and you will find that the public spaces across Indian cities, like in the rest of the world - are mostly occupied by fully grown, able-bodied, upper caste, cis-heterosexual men. Through neighborhood interactions and workshops, the 6 city project urges the public to reimagine the design and architecture of urban centres from an inclusive perspective. City for All is a collaboration between Swati Janu of Social Design Collaborative and Chris Blache of Genre et Ville (Gender & Society) seeks to generate awareness
through dialogue and art.

Bonjour India 22

City for All?

CITY FOR ALL?

27 March 2022- 8 May 2022

The project will travel across 36 neighborhoods in Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore and Delhi to map diverse communities’ relationship with their cities. The interactions will bring out local histories, narratives and patterns on how we use our public spaces based on our gender, identity, age and abilities as well as the local diversity of economic background, class and caste.

A final exhibition in each city will showcase the maps, with interactive discourses, public debates, cultural performances and curated walks to bring visibility to a much needed question: who builds our cities, and for whom?

6 CITY FESTIVAL

Press Note

MAPPING

Neighborhood Activity and Focus Group Discussions

In every neighborhood, we put up the city map in a park or a school wall or a temple/church/mosque entrance or on the street - asking passersby to vote for their favorite public space where they felt comfortable, confident and chose to go again and again, and why? What is the most important aspect of a public space for you? Is it safety, is it accessibility, is it street food, is it greenery, is it a sense of freedom, is it beauty? Watch this space for more as we share what people said and how we could make our cities more inclusive for all genders and sexualities regardless of age, ability, class, caste, religion or economic background.

Despite the recognition of the third gender by the Indian constitution in 2014, transgender people face huge stigmatisation and marginalisation in our society and hence, public spaces too. Thus, it became important for us to take these discussions to transgender persons as well as LGBQI+ individuals whose needs are largely overlooked in city design and planning.

TOOLKIT FOR MAPPING

City Map

Wall Based Discussion

Focus Group Discussion

PUBLIC EVENT

Exhibition and Cultural events

The 'City for All?' public exhibitions took place in the 6 cities of Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore and Delhi over the weekends to share the outcomes of the week long neighborhood mapping activities.

The project transformed daily public spaces in 6 cities into a public art festival by place making. From an underpass in Chandigarh to the space under a metro line in Bangalore to a chowk in the old city of Ahmedabad to a pavement in Pune to the courtyards of cultural centres in Jaipur and Delhi, the festival brought people together through cultural performances, exhibitions and interactive activities. People of all ages and backgrounds visited these exhibitions to understand and discuss how our cities could become more gender inclusive.