16 JUNE - JULY 2019
QUALITY CONTROLLERS
Stepping into a demanding realm of work, they have harnessed technology
to develop and reinvent urban topographies. Trupti Amritwar Vaitla,
Dipika Prasad and Trupti Doshi tell Shraddha Jahagirdar-Saxena about
their innovative planning methods for optimising the potential of Indian cities...NERVE | PEOPLETRUPTI AMRITWAR VAITLA
H
ailing from a family that prioritises
education, she grew up, one of four sisters,
in an environment where the focus was on
assertively expressing views and feelings and doing
what one believed in. Always encouraged to pursue
her dreams, Mumbai-based Trupti Amritwar Vaitla
opted to take up architecture. For, as she points out,
medicine or engineering were the only two options for
good students — which she was. But, she did not make
it into reputed government engineering colleges and
ended up pursuing architecture, despite her limited
knowledge about its scope. However, this decision
helped her find herself, and she soon understood
the creative contribution of the discipline to society.
Her subsequent master’s in urban design from CEPT
University (Ahmedabad) bolstered her desire to do
good for the community at large. “The opportunity
to touch lives motivated me to improve the urban
environment,” she states.
Amritwar wanted to work with the government
on public projects but found that there were
no openings for urban designers. So, she joined
HL Design Group, a British firm in Malaysia in
2000, which, despite giving her experience in
large-scale commercial projects, had little to do with
social issues.
On re-routing her career, she recalls, “I returned to
India in 2006 and started teaching classes on urban
issues at Mumbai’s Rachana Sansad - Institute of
Urban and Regional Planning, and I launched the urban
design cell there. I worked on many research projects
with government agencies, and this got me interested
in contributing to the actual concerns faced by thecity. During this period I met Ashok Datar, who had
founded the Mumbai Environmental Social Network
(MESN) think tank.”
Amritwar envisions her ideal city as “one that is
inclusive, equitable, affordable, walkable, safe, green
and vibrant”. As the CEO and trustee of MESN,
she is actively engaged in rectifying the problems
that threaten the existence and nature of the
urban outdoors....Receiving the Chevening Gurukul Scholarship
While working on an inventory of open spaces in
Mumbai in 2011 for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region
Development Authority (MMRDA), we visited public
spaces and created a list of the ones that needed
urgent attention. Not only do we have an extremely
low ratio of public space per capita, most of the areas
we saw were in poor condition, abused or encroached
upon. On realising that in order to save existing open
spaces we need to first develop them, I selected
one in the Govandi slums. It then had the lowest
human development living index, but we successfully
executed its development, with the help of UN-
Habitat. This project helped me earn a Chevening
Scholarship to pursue a leadership programme at
the London School of Economics in 2013, and it also
won the Best Design and Planning Award from
the Global Forum on Human Settlements (GFHS)
supported by the UN in 2017.Technology in the context of urban design
Various new technologies, their interactions with
citizens and customised applications can play a