Users’ Spatial Experiences in a Public Plaza Developed Under the Bhubaneswar Smart City Project

Abstract

Urban design is the art of making useful, efficient, inclusive and attractive public spaces. The literature review on urban design suggests that safety, accessibility, comfort, esthetics and diversity are the prime factors for users in public spaces. Bhubaneswar is the capital city of Odisha state of India. Based on its infrastructure and design proposals, the Janpath stretch of the city was selected under the Smart City project in 2016. Under this project, several public plazas and street junctions were developed with modern facilities. This paper explores users’ overall experiences at one of these developed and redeveloped public spaces: Ekamrakshetra plaza. This plaza acts as a bridge between the new and the old settlements of Bhubaneswar. This research adopts techniques such as site observation, documentation (through photography and field notes), behavioral mapping and a questionnaire-based face-to-face survey of 92 users. Google reviews of this plaza are considered secondary data to understand the perceptions of users at this site. The results of the paper reveal that the majority of the respondents are satisfied with the safety, accessibility and attractiveness-related factors of the redeveloped plaza. However, facilities such as the presence of toilets, food outlets and shaded spaces are major concerns for the respondents at this plaza. Also, some discrepancies are observed between the ratings of the face-to-face survey and Google reviews. These similar trends are also applicable to the other redeveloped plazas under the Smart City project. The outcomes of this research could be used to improve the shortcomings of plazas of similar nature. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.