While crossing Survey Chowk towards Araghar, one won’t fail to notice a patch of colorful footpath having attractive shapes and designs. Check it out and you would even find Hopscotch or more commonly known as Stapu. This unique initiative has been done under the Dehradun Smart City Limited. DSCL has initiated the ‘Child-Friendly City’ project, which aims to improve mobility and ease of access for children in their daily commute to schools, recreational facilities in neighborhoods, and open spaces.
The project provides an opportunity to children and their parents to give their opinion as to how the roads and footpaths of Dehradun should be planned, how should roads, pavements, and bus stops look like, and what should be done to make commutation to school safe.
This initiative is supported by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, and the French Development Agency.
Purpose:
This project aims at providing easy and safe movement of school children from their homes to schools. It emphasizes that when the students go home from school, the footpaths should be a place for them to learn and converse. Some bus stands will also be made child-friendly by shifting them to appropriate places.
Importance:
The urban-level creation that is in pipeline will provide many students the opportunity to walk from home to school in an easy and safe environment on foot or by bicycle. Parents will also be able to safely accompany their children from home to school and back.
This project will provide a safe environment for the tourists as well as the residents of Dehradun and will help in boosting the reputation of the city at a global level.
Progress so far:
DSCL team has made contacts with all the schools and gathered basic information. Interaction with students is also being done to understand the difficulties they face while commuting between home and school.
Plan of action:
DSCL team will be doing a detailed study of the problems and challenges faced by school children in the smart city based development area of the city in the coming 6 months. Consultations with the administration of schools as well as with students have been initiated to understand the means and methods of movement of students and identify the routes which need to be improved.
Being a pilot project, the idea is being tested in a small area of the city, i.e. a 450m stretch at Survey Chowk. After some time, it will be implemented in other parts of the city as well.
