Assessing Physical Setting as a Determinant of the Correlation between Pedestrian Experiences and Street Vending in the Case of Ahmedabad

Street vending is an essential part of Indian urbanity which has been deeply rooted in its culture. While contemporary Indian cities are dominated by indoor cafes, street vending spaces of diverse nature, such as vegetable markets, food markets, bazaars, cloth markets, etc., are very much part of the pedestrian experience within our cities. The city of Ahmedabad consists of a spectrum of such vending spaces within the public realm of streets, accessed by pedestrians attempting to create a walkable experience within the city. However, the quality of physical factors of the street preconceives the nature of the pedestrian experience. The effect of these physical factors on pedestrian experiences and street vending is required to be addressed and studied in order to enhance the city experience.

A pedestrian's experience is the assimilation of the physical, social, and interactional factors present in the environment. Vending spaces are often neglected as an integral part of the Indian city experience and an important aspect of design and planning. The vending spaces act as an integral part of the physical environment or setting, consisting of elements which lead to an array of pedestrian experiences. The presence or absence of certain elements can indicate the quality of the public space ultimately by demonstrating the inclination towards a scale of a positive or a negative pedestrian experience.

This research intends to find a correlation between these relationships where the physical setting of the street vending space and the street play a significant role in the experience of the pedestrians with the use of parameters arrived at from the literature as well as observations of case studies. The case studies are situated adjacent to each other on the periphery of the Law Garden area of Ahmedabad, where a variety of vending and pedestrian activities take place. The three streets identified have different physical settings in the same area, and a comparative analytical approach has been adopted to assess pedestrian experiences. The research adopts quantitative and qualitative methods of survey and documentation in order to evaluate the importance of the physical setting of the street and the vending space and how it enables the user to have a satisfactory pedestrian experience.