Presenters
Abstract
This paper describes the framework of an investigation into the spread of contemporary, conventional, American-style real estate development in India. The project visually examines the social life of a small urban plaza in New Delhi. Ongoing fieldwork, which began in 2012 and is currently and continually in-progress, is an effort to produce meaningful engagement with this specific urban environment by utilizing an alternative method of inquiry; a visual method that consists of participatory 1) observing; 2) commenting; and 3) deliberating performed by the plaza’s user population and not only by the researchers.
Using visual methods of documentation maintains the integrity of the reality for the user population while providing a certificate of presence for the researchers not only useful, but also verifiable. When examining the design incongruities being imposed upon the users of this urban plaza, the research asks, “How do things look?” and, “What do the people who occupy this space see?” and, “What do they think about what they see?” The concept of the inquiry is to consider what is the larger context that local participants place themselves in whilst utilizing this particular urban space in order to discover the impacts on the local population’s traditional and habitual social patterns and attitudes specific to this urban area. The plan proposes to uncover and clarify – from the users perspective – how the culture is restructured by the imposition of American-style real estate development.