Feet, Pedals, and Wheels in Constant Conflict

By Namrata Narendra

Emergent Conversation 23

This essay is part of the series Sustainable Urban Mobility in India, PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 23.

Introduction

inhabitants, those of us who call ourselves urban,

mirror the cities we live in, the self-organising entities that we are;

we breathe, not like the trees and plants

that give way for our bodies to grow,

but like unsuspecting creators of things beyond

our comprehension, breathing in life and

breathing out destruction and loss.

rivers run through us both,

pounding against our embankments,

flooding and feeding us.

Flooding and feeding, we expand and

contract, we grow; our fringes blurring

against the vastness of our feeders.

The city seeps into the unassuming lands beyond,

taking its time. If one were to mix grey and green,

they’d get a vague taupe, the colour of wild mushrooms on soil

losing itself to ever-increasing concrete;

soft flesh against a hard shell.

Bone and skin, steel and brick;

we’re the same within and without.

Cities were developed with the aim to sustain lives and livelihoods, and foster economic growth. While these aims have been fulfilled, cities’ relationship with the environment, much like the economy, has always been transactional (Kaika 2005). In the wake of the 1991 Indian economic reforms, which opened up the country’s economy to the world, Bengaluru witnessed a boom in Information Technology (IT). This sudden population growth was reflected in the built environment. Bengaluru’s high visibility as the capital of India’s IT sector conceived the city as a space for an unimpeded flow of commodities, people, and information (Nair 2005). Gone were the days of the garden city, which began to be tarred and concreted over by roads and flyovers. Bengaluru received as many as 11 mega-city projects which were announced in 1997, while the IT revolution was ongoing (Nair 2005). The growth of Bengaluru from a population of 4.1 million inhabitants in 1991 to more than 13.6 million in 2023 (B.PAC 2023; World Population Review 2025) shows that it has outgrown its capacity in more ways than one. An article by Manasi Kumar showed that the Outer Ring Road, which was built to ease traffic congestion in Bengaluru, had the biggest traffic jams in the city in 2015 (Kumar 2020). Highways certainly put the gleam back in the eyes of those who dreamed of corridors of speed. With their auto-centric priorities, such projects have also succeeded in keeping at bay any surprising or uncomfortable encounters with the realities of urban poverty and survival.

Within and through space, a certain social time is produced and reproduced; but real social time is forever re-emerging complete with its own characteristics and determinants: repetitions, rhythms, cycles, activities (Lefebvre et al. 1997, 339).

While the middle and upper-middle classes drew boundaries around this utopia by constructing high-rise residences, IT parks, and highways of speed, new types of service workforce arose to cater to their growing needs. These workers’ economic and physical mobility depended directly on the availability—or lack thereof—of road infrastructure between commercial and residential buildings. How is this infrastructure being imagined, and by whom? An urban imagination is often crafted by discursive narrative, and this highlights its direct and integral connection with social identity, planning, governance, and infrastructure, especially in a context as politically charged as the city.

Through rhyme and rhetoric, this mixed medium essay is composed of three parts and will interpret the myriad movements performed around the fragmented infrastructure the city provides its inhabitants, for different purposes, that create a rhythm in Bengaluru. The first part introduces the tempo through the foundation of movement, walking. I discuss issues of walkability and the rights of certain citizens to demand it. The second part expands on walking and running not just as commuting, but also examines running as a form of leisure and an elite sport. In the third part, I present the case of cycling in Bengaluru, and the class and caste-based distinctions certain cyclist groups practice as a way to direct infrastructure and policy changes that benefit them. In the concluding section, I articulate the need to be cognizant of these diverse narratives and experiences of the city,  and involve all of them in city building.

I
Where do We Walk?

Footpaths are assumed to be a default feature in cities because of the fundamental role walking plays in urban life. However, a large part of Bengaluru suffers from underdeveloped, ill-maintained, or non-existent footpaths (Holla and B.S. 2022). Footpaths are the buffer that allows access to and separates vehicular transport from built structures. In India, the most common use of footpaths, if they exist, is for parking and street vending—both of which block pedestrian, cyclist, and vehicular movement. During a study I conducted in 2021, as part of a team at Sensing Local, we discovered that while Bengaluru has the perfect weather to walk, there just isn’t adequate infrastructure to support it. Sensing Local is a city-based urban planning organization that actively works with the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) to improve walkability and bus accessibility across the city.  We studied Malleshwaram, one of the older and affluent areas in the city, to understand what makes walking a possibility for the residents. Hazards and deterrents discourage walking, which has resulted in overdependence on two-wheelers and cars, despite short commutes.

The footpath is public terrain, and is constantly contested (Banerjee 2023). The street vendor, pedestrian, utility worker, and two-wheeler owner all claim the path as their own. Through conflicts, they display orientations to this space which are both cooperative and competitive. A woman who occasionally walked in Malleshwaram felt that everyone has a right to be on the footpath.

“We shop from the street vendors. We cannot do without them. They might feel like encroachers on the footpath because they have not been given proper space on the street to sell, but there is a mutual give and take for them to also earn their livelihoods and for us to be able to walk and shop.” (Interview, February 21, 2021); Malleshwaram, Bengaluru.

There is a sense of solidarity among the different users of the footpath, to the extent that each of them considers the other an essential part of their everyday struggle against unsafe vehicular traffic.

“The cars flow conveniently without realising how much harm they are causing the vendors walking with their wares and goods and other pedestrians.” (Interview, February 21, 2021); Malleshwaram, Bengaluru.

“Walking on the roads at night is risky because the lights are attached to the shops and it’s dark when the shops shut, which prevents me from walking when it’s late, but the stalls with their lights help me navigate my way.” (Interview, February 21, 2021); Malleshwaram, Bengaluru.

While the common adversary remains motorized vehicles, there is a hierarchy of whose voices are heard when footpaths are redeveloped or cleared. More-than-human bodies, such as trees and roadside planting, are usually the first to fall. They are cleared to make more space for pedestrians. What such moves fail to address is the loss of shade, which is critical for walking in a city growing hotter every day. Globalization and development rhetoric often results in the emergence of authoritarian policies and laws, making resistance a challenge where the environment is concerned, especially for those who don’t wield power or a voice (Swyngedouw 2000). Street vendors bear the brunt of these changes and are constantly displaced to create paths just for walkers. However, none of the laws implemented emphasize providing a space for vendors to exist as part of the street (Gautam and Waghmare 2021).  Still, people make claims, negotiating for their place on the street every day. Hidden amid the very Bengaluruean behavior of adjustment, there is a strong memory of all that these roads have borne and a burning hope that the next project will outlive the last and improve mobility, not just in a car but on foot as well.

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”? —T.S Eliot 1934, 30

II
Running Towards Elitism?

In Bengaluru, several municipal parks and playgrounds, conceived as spaces of leisure, that are rendered inaccessible spatially, socially, and economically. On the other hand, streets are common sites of social interactions and provide spaces for different practices of leisure, for people across different generations. Every year on the last Sunday of May, a popular international marathon is conducted on the streets of Bengaluru (The Times of India 2023). Every year on this day, for almost 6 hours, event organizers ensure that the roads are cleared for thousands of runners. Pedestrians stop and watch this spectacle, wondering what the motivation for the hordes of participants is to run on a forcefully cleared path, hindering the progress of others’ day. The real challenge that everyone in the city would agree on is getting anywhere with the regular obstacles:  vehicles, potholes, malfunctioning traffic lights, and misleading road signs.  At the end of the event, runners walk to their cars and motorbikes and blend right back into the traffic of a regular Sunday. The ease of running was constrained to four hours and to just within the central business district of Bengaluru. The rest of the city carries on its regular Sunday chores on regularly choked roads. The question is whether the same police approval and traffic blocking could be ensured for street vendors transporting their goods in the early hours of the morning.

This is a loophole in urban governance as the middle-class activities mobilize the discourse of public interest and citizenship to articulate civic concerns in a manner that constitutes a public that excludes the city’s poorer sections (Baviskar 2011).

As a regular participant in these marathons, it is clear that the events cater to a very niche crowd that has the time to travel to the city’s parks to train for marathons. Moreover, the marathon organizers have enough capital to request the traffic police to work with them to ensure the protection of runners during the event. There is a fitness and discipline identity associated with running that has built up interest in the burgeoning middle class. Safe running guidelines suggest that unlike walking, emptier roads are preferred for running, devoid of moving crowds and vehicles (The Hindu 2015). This makes running an activity that requires travel to particular locations, especially in India,  which leads runners to demand better infrastructure for their activity of leisure. According to Dr. Salila Vanka, “The uncertainties and dangers associated with life in public space motivate neighbourhood residents to secure their open spaces through policing and regulations”(Vanka 2014). However, blanket rules and regulations often interfere with other groups’ access to parks and playgrounds for ‘safe’ recreational practices.” One of her respondents noted that “Whenever the residents don’t like (an activity), they approach the political people here and they get these parks converted to how they want it” (Vanka 2014). Walkers, especially senior citizens, find runners a hazard to their safety and this may be because walkers and runners often share the same paths, which can lead to speed conflicts (BBC 2018). Walkers may feel endangered by the speed and unpredictability of runners, while runners might see walkers as obstacles that disrupt their pace and rhythm (Delaney, Parkhurst, and Melia 2017). While walking paths would address the needs of both walking and running, how can we identify possibilities of shared freedom of motion through mutual respect?

III
Who Is a Cyclist?

Everyone is inherently multi-modal: . . . there are no cyclists or drivers [or walkers or runners] only people who at a given moment happen to be on bicycles or in cars [or walking or running].

—SLO Architecture, Urban Omnibus 2016

A project that I was a part of at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements explored the different cycling practices in Bengaluru, focusing on three distinct user groups: those cycling for livelihood, daily commute, and leisure. This research took many forms, starting with an ethnographic study, to a short film that was generously supported by a grant from the Bengaluru International Centre (BIC) in 2023.

Cycling in Bengaluru is not just a mode of transportation but a statement of identity, community, and shared aspirations (Anantharaman 2017). Bicycling which was associated with poor urban neighborhoods, has been transformed into a practice that displays one’s concern for the climate and one’s own health and wellbeing. It is an everyday example of branding an activity with a newly formed sustainability narrative. This practice highlights class distinctions hierarchized in the context of the street. Cycling demonstrates how an activity can be transformed into a practice through collective action. Elites and middle classes collectively mobilize with a certain ease and pride which create problematic distinctions between them and cyclists who use the mode for commuting and/or their livelihood. However, elite, leisure-oriented discourse fails to bring to the fore the needs of utility cyclists, who require lane widths much different from those of the leisure and sport cyclists. The stark contrast between the two positions is founded on their location in the class and caste hierarchies. Elite cycling advocacy is a classic case of bourgeoise environmentalism, a term coined by Amita Baviskar. in which the argument of “public interest” is used to pursue specific issues in the city (Baviskar 2011). This idea of public interest  ignores or even worsens the poor’s living conditions. Here, middle-class identity is maintained by elevating the bicycle to the same symbolic level as an automobile, while also attributing ethicality to it by showcasing it as an eco-friendly practice (Anantharaman 2017). In the competing policy narratives, with the leisure cyclist community on one end and everyday utility cyclists on the other, the question is whose infrastructure demands are legitimized and heard? The formation of cycling lanes along the major roads in the city largely caters to professionals who commute primarily on this road. Less gentrified areas, which are more likely used by everyday vendors on cycles, are not considered primary recipients of cycling lanes. Globalization in the 1990s gave rise to the IT industry, and since then IT’s place at the top of the hierarchy has been cemented. It isn’t uncommon in Bengaluru for the government to pay heed to the privileged middle classes that rake in money in dollars.

In Bengaluru, we tried to understand the criteria one must satisfy to be a “cyclist,” along with the diversity of intentions and motivations behind their cycling practices. When we asked our respondents if they consider themselves cyclists, we saw the baseline criteria of a cyclist to be shifting in different user groups; the term imparts obscurity and a sense that people consider being a cyclist unattainable.

The standard seemed to be scaling up on the basis of a person’s motivation and aspiration towards cycling. It ranges from—the tacit skill of riding safely on the roads, picking up a cycle just for the fun of it, investing in gears/equipment to sustain the practice all the way to committing to cycling distances as long as 100-150km and being able to go about their day with no exhaustion.

What’s funny is, the more the angle of inclination, the more likely you’re identified to be a “cyclist”.

Livelihood cycling—the practice of carrying out a business from the cycle or using the cycle. This includes newspaper distributors, postmen & women, and fruit and flower vendors.

Commute cycling—the practice of cycling to commute. The motivation includes but is not limited to work trips and short errands.

Serious Leisure—a systematic pursuit of cycling, involving skill and endurance. The motivation ranges from fitness, enjoyment, and environmentalism, this requires a certain degree of commitment which differentiates it from a leisure practice.

There are parallel identities formed around cycling and it stops being just an activity. Why does a newspaper distributor not identify themselves as a cyclist? Does this understanding influence the way they relate to the city? A few reasons cited by our respondents suggest that using a cycle is associated with cost-saving benefits and in turn perceived by leisure cyclists as a practice of the deprived. We sought to understand how these identities are formed and reproduced on larger scales—in communities, resulting in the marginalization of livelihood cyclists. The identities of commute and serious leisure are largely formed by distinguishing themselves from the livelihood cyclists by attributing their practices to being eco-friendly or fitness-related discourses. This vocabulary translates into material aspects via symbols like “Go green!” on T-shirts and also with marketing strategies that cite physical well-being and social desirability in their branding.

Cycling is as much a practice of community as it is a personal experience, it provides for a collective voice against the hegemony of motorists on roads. How can intersectional identities around occupation and mobility come together to mobilize for better infrastructure? Recognizing their unique occupational needs, how can this be done without homogenizing their occupational identity? Perceptions of cyclist identities translate into access spatially and politically—whose urban imagination become policies? The pace of livelihood cyclists is determined by their occupation and the kind of goods the service entails. If a 3-foot cycle lane is designated for the cyclists—who would get a right of way? A serious leisure cyclist who’s riding on the twenty-first gear, or the scrap dealer carrying a bundle of newspaper on the carrier and bag on the handlebar?

My mind isn’t really on the road,

though my eyes are.

My cycle is moving

on the mental map, I’ve created so far

know exactly when to turn

and when to brake before a pothole,

it’s muscle memory, you learn

a passive observer, of the droll satire

a new diversion, metro construction

without thinking

I fly over and pass under

and I’m at the destination,

the route to which

my body will remember.

Concluding Thoughts: Infrastructure, Narratives and Acceptance

If we think of infrastructures as unfolding over many different moments with uneven temporalities, not as a linear progression of time and use, we get a picture in which the social and political are as important as the technical and logistical (Anand, Gupta, and Appel 2018). The emerging middle class in India is increasingly orienting itself to the practices and rhetoric of the West, engaging in discussions of climate action through sustainable consumption lifestyles, as seen with the examples of running and cycling. However, through this telling of the story with keywords such as hygiene, sustainability, self-sufficiency, and eco-friendliness, the narrative in itself marginalizes some cycling, instead of collectivizing. What is important is to unsettle these dominant narratives and bring in new narratives that are calibrated to the realities of our changing world (James and Morel 2020). In short, narrative building is a tool for governance that can drive policy processes and outcomes. Over the past year, through multiple projects, I have worked to identify the rhythms of the urban song and to move under these dizzying lights with a fluidity I can only attribute to my surroundings. Bodies moving inside buildings, on buses and bicycles. I am one amongst those bodies boogieing to this boisterous rhyme.

Namrata Narendra is an artist and urban researcher from Bangalore, India. Her work explores human-environment collaborations and contestations within our immediate natural and constructed landscapes. Employing mixed media such as ethnographic research, collective mapping, visual inquiry, and storytelling, she aims to document and study these complex interactions and create meaningful dialogue around them. She has extensively studied and worked to understand Bangalore’s social and spatial injustice caused by fragmented planning challenges. Her research spans studies on the city’s drinking water supply, conditions of urban rivers, road infrastructure, and bicycling practices. She is a runner and an avid cyclist, exploring cities by foot and pedal. She loves to draw everything she writes and draws from everything that others write.

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