But in these stipulated areas (malls) for a 45 minutes parcels I think these are fantastic public spac- es today in their context of imagination. The whole thing of qualifying a days time to go to a park is lost to a large ways. Parks have become spaces for early morning joggers or walkers or for ro- mance. That is what is happening.
It is not very good but at the same time, I have to agree with you Vivek, that the point of depar- ture in the design of the mall is not the public realm, obviously a mall is designed for consumption. Last week when I was in Singapore there was an article on the lon mall, that is falling apart, be- cause the basement is empty as nobody wants to buy the retail space in the basement. The de- velopers have been called in to revamp the basement, to being more life to that space.

VS: There are five or six basements in that building….

RK: The basements are all blanked out currently. It is quite scary to go through that space. That space connects various pedestrian links underground. There is a fear that the space will fail if somebody does not buy and for some reason the programme does not seem to understand, to encourage people to buy and to participate in the open spaces in the areas. Instead they are changing the architecture of the space so that it does not become an irreversible kind of a story. I do not know if you have seen that movie? Bellucci’s Irreversible? it is about the subways and the events of the subway. Malls have those stretches of walks that you have to do and if you are walk- ing through a blank billboard, there is no joy and no selling.

VS: The contrary is Vivo City which is the opposite. It has a forced way of making it public.

NG: That is the private model – a forced choreographed way that is not truly public. Ravi to go back to the point that you made with the park. You said something about the lack of using the park. Is that because we have not continued to re-imagine the park in its current situation and we have given the park the programme of sport.

TN: To me this question of the public spaces in the mall, is a very complex question. In Bangalore Commercial Street is a public space with a huge public activity. I presume the turn over of Com- mercial Street is much more important than the turnover of Garuda (mall) or 1 M.G. Road. The on- ly difference is, I don’t think, the same kind of people go to commercial street and 1 M.G. Road. I think the question of social condition is very important. Today going into the mall is also showing your status. It is a very important decision in a way. Of course it is unconscious. We can afford this brand so we don’t question the fact of going into the mall. When I go into Garuda mall, I do not expect to find public spaces. To me it is nonsense. If you try to put public spaces into a commer- cial box, because a mall is a commercial box, I do not enter here to read a book on the bench, I enter here to buy some stuff.

SN: It is this idea of how do you gauge the success of a public space in our context. I think that it is a good point. Commercial street in that way is more successful because we are looking at a dif- ferent cross section of society. The social condition is so different. That is why Forum Value mall is a more successful public space because of the kind of retail that happens inside is important. It is populated by more ‘seconds’ kind of retail. So you see an empowered middle class society and