RK: If you and I are staying in the same area, and if we had to pay as tax payers, INR 50000 for renovation for that BDA complex, nobody is going to pay. Today we don’t know how much our pockets have holes because of the metro that we don’t know how many people will use…

TN: Did you know that the overall budget of Bangalore is equivalent to the overall budget of any kind of Chinese city. It is not a problem of money but it is a problem of the budget of the BDA. The budget of the BBMP is one of the biggest budgets in the city, the budget of the metro corporation is another line. The problem is that the money spent on the road and the infrastructure is incredi ble at the same time the BDA does not have any money to redo this for the social project. This is related to the problem of the governance. If we had one Greater Bangalore city authority in charge of having one budget, they could play with this.

RK: I am not suggesting that we should not invest in the public realm. I am saying that the mall that Charles Correa has done, Salt Lake city is a fantastic mall. I do not know how many of you have seen that. It is a mall, Shoppers Stop, it works very well. There has to be a constructive met od to bring back the realm of the BDA complex and at the same time be right and be responsible for its spending. That is important.

AS: The shocking thing is that we you were to go and tell somebody who lives in a neighbour- hood, who has a BDA complex, that you are going to turn that into a mall, it frightens him, b cause what are his alternatives. If it was a neighbourhood that is endowed socially, it would be an easier decision to change that into a mall because you have other support systems that make it a neighbourhood. Right now, we would look at the BDA complex as the nerve centre of the neigh- bourhod. There is may be a hopcom somewhere but nothing else.

RK: Don’t you think that it is growing into dilapidation?

SN: I think so…

AS: They are turning into these black holes

NG: That is what I mean when I say that the Government has to be entrepreneurial, it has to figure out how to make money, turn that money back for social good. It cannot assume to not make money because then it does not have money.

AS: The mall is not the right answer.

NG: That needs to be re-evaluated completely, from a programmatic to a social level.

VS: For me, it makes more sense if it is a hybrid typology, like a super market, because a BDA com- plex is a space that you buy your everyday stuff. You do not go to a complex to buy branded goods. Even if there are shops that sell clothes, you would still not go there. If it is a supermarket where you get everyday goods….

RK: In the UK they renovated all the markets, they became new marketplaces, if you have seen that episode on architecture at the cross roads, it has seven examples, that are fantastic, they are not architectural icons, but they are programmatic, super quality programmes incorporated in the building. Barcelona, for example has the space that is a huge circular skin, and they have r tained the inside hollow, and when you go inside it is scary. The terrace has a beautiful ring of