The Community at New Friends Colony Community Center

For most of my professional life, I have believed and have been led to believe in the primacy of space. "Space is existential", I was told. Over the last couple of years, my association with Langdon Winner [my chair] and Ted Krueger [my advisor] I have begun to question the ideological bias for these beliefs. These queries were not attempts seeking ontological answers about existence [of space or otherwise] but rather an effort in seeking out the political and moral dimensions of putting space above all else.

Some of the questions that I have been asking these days include:

How am I part of the 'production' of [public] space? [I am already an urbanist with Marxist leanings, hence there has already been a shift from viewing space-as-a-product to the modes of production of space]

What are the relationships of the 'institutionalized forms of power' and this spatial production?

How does one 'design' space for a certain set of users, are users even a priority within a discipline that is obsessed with representation and simulacra?

How does one analyse and make claims that this particular space will transform lives for the better?

What kinds of spaces/ places get replaced in the bargain?

This led me to examine a recent experience that I had at the New Friends Colony Community Center in a new light. Community being the operative word. So here I was an American researcher[ wait a minute, I am an Indian with western sensibilities, but I think, I think like a non-westerner as well.... uggg ... I digress in existential angst but this is not about my 'being']. So here I was sipping on a latte at the Cafe Coffee Day in the community center when I see [What is the right terminology here?] urchins/ children who are begging/ juvenile panhandlers, through the glass store front. I could only see these kids as I was listening to music on my macbook. This may have softened the impact of what I was to experience but it was a gut wrenching sight all the same and I realized that 'the everyday' is a condition that might be more than I could bear. These kids would keep coming up to the [smoking] patrons of the Cafe who were seated outside and 'beg' for a few scraps of food or money. The waiters would then rush to shoo the children away. Once the waiter was back within the glass doors, the children would scramble back onto the patio of the Cafe. At first, I was caught-up in the sadness of the moment and the angst worsened. However a little later, I looked at the situation once again and saw that the children were in fact 'playing' a game with the waiters, in addition to looking for their daily sustenance, and they were gleeful in getting these young men out of their glassy air-conditioned confines.

I have not been able to synthesize the event and the dimensions of the encounter are endless, but as an urban designer I was forced to question what did I mean when I called this place a 'community' center. Who were the members of the community that patronized this public place? I am glad that in India, I am able to see how people of various backgrounds have found ways of coming together in a face-to-face manner and while confrontation of sorts do take place. They are not swept under the metaphorical carpet and maybe this is probably a truer existence of communities.

As I prepared myself mentally to face the heat and these community members, I heard Lucy Kaplansky sing into my ears, "I used to travel in a straight line, now I'm walking on a road that winds". I wonder where that long and windy road might lead me.