Missing in India: Signages, maps and key info on directions

In this era of information technology, and when India exports IT professinals in a big way, ironically what we badly miss in India is the information system itself. Our cities, campuses, public institutions, transportation system, and most ironically our communication system, are severely starved of information system. May it be maps to navigate, address system to locate the spot, street identification, signages across the movement network or a platform for exchange of information, we lack them all.

Our address system is dependent on other informal and impromptu support rather than being independent to navigate with clarity and confidence. While we may still have support of the informal systems to overcome the limitations of formal systems, supports are fading and the system (or lack of it) pre supposes range of familiarities of the context, which is fundamental contradiction to the concept of information system which in principle is meant to be for the unfamiliar.

Internet, GIS and cell phones may have certainly been instant source of information but is there an official platform or framework to validate the information floating in space.

That is why rumours travel faster and farther than facts. For example we are politically active to name streets after someone but in this race many smaller, critical to address but insignificant for political visibility, remain without address. Even if streets are named, they remain names without faces or conjectural image with no information support about the name. Where is information about place or person they are named after? Where are even the key maps in the city to be able to locate the streets through their names? Our addresses generally read “near this”, “opposite that”, “between this and that”, “on way from here to there” and so on.

Addresses tend to be as long as school essays and ironically most of the Government or corporate forms and legal documents provide for the tiniest space, impossible to fit in the written address. In Indian psyche the notion of address is visual and experiential relying on memory and associational aspects versus the ones used in the other parts of the world, which is cartographic and mathematical. We picture the mental image of the place and the route based on the experiences and retained memory of personally punctuated landmarks en route.

This works well for personal, familiar and repeat sojourns but fails to be of any help or relevance to the uninitiated, unfamiliar or first-time explorer. Also, it is a matter of scale. Till a particular threshold, mental mapping of route and destination may be possible but beyond the threshold it needs to rely on universal referential landmarks to orient, re-orient and further navigate. This is why there needs to be the signage support in cities with multiple layers of information and at multiple points.

Signages are not about just destination and directions, they are about information. Information could mean map at different yet relevant scales. For example, map of city to orient oneself vis-a-vis location and other city references; map of the immediate neighbourhood to situate where you are; map of available networks such as mass transit networks, roads etc.; map of the premises to locate what is where and even the map of building (all floors) for emergency egress and common facilities like toilets, stair and so on.

Information also needs to extend about the relevant facts (historical or functional) about the region or the premises to make the onlooker aware about the salient features of persons or the places; as also the basic who-what-when and whys of urban spaces and structures, of art and architecture, of urban accessories and amenities in the public related precincts.

Information extends even further to make public collective events, noteworthy achievements and people-centric information. Information should even exalt to imbue values and raise awareness.

In the plethora of senseless commercial hoardings and irrelevant messages, can we not find a place and system to have non-commercial yet important value-based and useful information for the larger consumption? Can basic signages not be part of the building bylaws? Can we not have every mass transit stop mandated to provide maps as well as heritage and cultural information on the immediate neighbourhood?

Can we not find popular civic nodes, may they be traffic junctions, pause points or popular open spaces to provide basic information about place and its people. Can streets, footpaths, and built edges interfacing the popular public realm not become interactive as well as informative aspect of urban living? Can we think of a usual walk within the city that can inform, indulge, inspire as well as entertain?

The author is a city-based architect