Naresh Narasimhan, an architect, argued for the proposal and ornithologist Krishna MB argued against it. You can watch the debate here.

Before we get to my argument, let's look at the facts.

The above graphic is missing two important things — scale and context.

Here’s Lal Bagh with context.

Lal Bagh functions as a tourist attraction more than a public park, despite being in one of the densest sections of Bangalore city. Locals don’t have the opportunity to interact with the park on a day to day basis without going out of their way.

Okay. Let’s talk about the proposal. I’ll recap the order of the arguments made in the DH debate, before getting to my perspective.

I believe we can replace the wall with something much better. Here’s why:

1. Bangalore needs better public spaces

Bangalore city lacks pedestrian infrastructure. Benches, pavements, bus shelters and toilets are far from adequate.

We lack this infrastructure because we haven’t designed our city from the perspective of a pedestrian. Where would you rather walk — along an enormous wall that stinks of urine, or along flowers and trees swaying under the summer breeze?

Most would pick the flowers and the breeze. The concern is that without the wall, the flowers, breeze and the garden itself may be at risk.

So what can we do to keep the wall, but also improve the experience of the people who live, walk, and drive past it?

Here’s a link to a few interesting takes on the simple concept of a wall.

As you can see, walls can be designed to do a lot more. Of course, in the Indian context the projects from the link above will not work if translated literally— but there are many things we can learn from other people’s interpretation of the wall.

We need to better define what we’re trying to achieve by changing the Lal Bagh wall. A lot more than just aesthetics can be influenced by introducing a new design. A wall is a symbolic, psychological, and physical entity.

There’s a number of walls in Bangalore, each with different reasons for its existence and unique opportunities for improvement. Minor variations can create better opportunities on both sides.

The simple task of putting benches along the inside and outside of the Lal Bagh wall will increase its utility. And a lot more can be done.

2. Walls attracts waste

Take a minute to scroll through the Ugly Indian Facebook page and you’ll see that most of their work features a wall against which garbage is stacked.

The space next to a wall is no man’s land. Few people can see you, and whatever is on the other side of the wall isn’t immediately affected by your actions.

In your own neighbourhood, pay attention you’ll notice that people throw waste, urinate, and undertake shady activities by the protection of a wall. A fence prevents this from happening because suddenly now you and your actions are visible.

Despite the Ugly Indian’s fantastic work, a lot of their spot fixes go back to their original conditions because of the psychology behind people’s perception of a wall.

3. Sharing for a greater good

On an average, 5000 people visit Lal Bagh everyday. I think it's fair to assume that a significant portion of these visitors are tourists from outside the city.

Removing the wall will share the greenery, the flowers, the changing of the seasons, with the thousands of people who actually live in the area.

There are hundreds of studies and one section in this excellent book about how just viewing greenery can improve our mental and physical states. Life in Bangalore is stressful, and anything we can do offshoot this stress should be considered at the very least.

We don’t need to remove the entire wall. We can identify sections that will have the most benefit from such an intervention, survey the locals before and after the modification, and then study the results.

In conclusion, we must consider this proposal not as a threat to Lal Bagh, but as an opportunity to improve our city to benefit a larger and more diverse user group.

A pilot should be undertaken after careful understanding of the context.

There are many walls in Bangalore where there shouldn’t be, and many walls that could be much more. A successful execution of this project will pave the way to create richer experiences for the pedestrians of Bangalore city.

PS — If the proposal was supported with drawings and its intentions stated more clearly, I believe a lot more people would have welcomed it.

What I see in comments section right now is a knee jerk reaction from well meaning citizens who are sceptical of the government touching anything green, a scepticism that is very well founded.

A visual aid during the debate would have significantly increased the quality of the dialogue.

A few people have asked me how I made this, so here goes.

Step 1: Get historical satellite photos using Google Earth Pro

Step 2: Import and scale into a vector software.

Step 3: Trace over the features you want to analyse, and organise them into layers.

Step 4: Calculate Area

Step 5: Do the math.

Step 6: Design, animate, and publish.

If you’d like to help me automate this process so that we can run it for more places in Bangalore, or know of a way that exists to do this faster and more precisely, hmu!