Abids – Civil Engineering Projects

Studying Formal and Informal Activities | Urban Design

May 5, 2014 by Designer

Co relation of formal and Informal Activities | Urban Design

Studying the co-relation of formal and informal activities is very important. Abids as mentioned earlier in one of the oldest commercial neighbourhood of the city of Hyderabad. It has established formal and informal activities. They relate to each other and surprisingly there are different types of informal sellers that we call hawkers.

Types of Commodities

Books
Belts
Clothes
Cellphone Accessories such as Mobile covers, headphones etc.
Goggles
Watches
Eateries

Relationship between formal and informal shopping areas

The informal shopping areas evolved because of the influence of the existing formal shops.

Factors that influence the existence of the informal shops:

Type of formal shops
Crowd (people)

Types of formal shops

Some percentage of informal shops evolved because of a strong influence of the type of formal sector. The informal shopping development generally include the accessories of the major commodity sold in the formal shops/showrooms.

For example:

Hawkers around Hollywood

Hollywood is a footwear showroom. All the accessories related to footwear are available in the informal shopping area adjacent to Hollywood. Also, the accessories such as watched, goggles etc have been seen to exist around.

The informal sector around Hollywood is very popular.

Parking facility

The area between Hollywood ad Kamal Watch is their setback area.

Two wheeler paid parking is prevalent here. The funds collected by paid parking are distributed between the two showrooms Hollywood and Kamal Watch respectively.

Emphasis of Crowd on the informal Activities

The informal activity gets a boost in their business because of the following two reasons:

Kind of Crowd
Volume of Crowd

Kind of Crowd

People who prefer shopping on streets from the informal shop owners are in encouraging number.

Volume of Crowd

Wherever there is a huge of volume of crowd, the informal activities are larger in number.

Economic Status of the Hawkers

Types of Hawkers

As per our casestudy, the types of Hawkers can be classified into three major categories:

Senior Hawkers
Rental Hawkers
Hawkers permitted by formal shops

Senior Hawkers and their economic status

These hawkers have existed at a particular place for a minimum of 35 years. Some of these senior hawkers have been there even before the major formal showrooms came up. The formal shop owners cannot shoo them off from their place.

Rental Hawkers

Rental Hawkers are dependent on Senior Hawkers. If any newer hawker wants to establish his informal activity at a particular place where senior hawker once sold his goods; they have to pay rentals to the Senior for carrying out their sales activity.

For example

The hawker selling belts on the footpath paid 10,000/- to the senior hawker to carry out his sales activity.

The rental network does not stop here.

Rentals paid by the Hawkers:

Economically stable Hawkers

Turnover	Senior	MCH	Police	Buying New Materials	Income split into two partners
90,000/-	10,000/-	5000/-	5000/-	20,000/-	25000 each

Economically Backward Hawkers

Turnover	Senior	MCH	Police	Buying New Materials	Income
20,000/-	5,000/-	300/-	5000/- or commodities	3,000/-	6700

The amount collected by police depends on the income of the Hawker.

Hawkers permitted by Formal Shop owners

Formal shop owners use these hawkers to their advantage.

When shop owners keep their shops shut for a long time because of a certain reason, they permit these hawkers to practice their hawking activity until they open their shops again. They do this for two reasons:

Security Purpose

Prevention from dirtying of the surrounding area of the shop.

Sunday Bazaar

Evolution of Market – 35 years ago

Type of Market – Informal type of Market laid on footpaths and roads.

Commodities sold : Books and Clothes

Timing : 10am to 6pm

Peak Shopping hours : 4pm to 6pm

History of Sunday Bazaar

The informal activity in Koti has given a boost to the development of weekly informal activity which is today known as Sunday Bazaar.

Initially, market for books was a trend only in Koti which later spread to Abids.

Informal market for clothes gradually developed.

Identity of Hawkers

Basically Sunday Bazaar Hawkers are people who work in either private shops or municipal offices on week days.

To make extra money on weekends, they sell clothes or books in Sunday Bazaar.They follow a system of “FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BASIS”.

Economic Status

They are employees from private shops or government offices.

On an average, they make 2000/- on Sunday.

Relation between Formal and Informal Activity

Sunday Bazaar influenced some of the formal shop owners to keep their shops open on Sundays. But the existence of Sunday Bazaar is not influenced by the formal Sector.

Stepwise approach to redesign of Abids | Urban Renewal

May 1, 2014 by Designer

Case study of Abids | Urban Renewal

Stage One

Understanding the concept of Urban Design and the reason for selecting the topic

Stage Two

Selection of a Zone in the area for detailed study and analysis (10,00000 sqm approx.)

Stage Three

Division of the major study zone into smaller zones for detailed study

Stage Four

After division of zones, study was conducted in a systematic way as follows:

Study to be done for every zone:

Identification and Classification of Buildings

Residential buildings
Commercial buildings
Amenities
Utilities
Heritage structures if any
Religious structures

Identification of land use pattern depending on the type of building
Influence of various land use activities on the commercial activities
Identification of the types of commercial activities in every zone
Identification of the type of road

Studying the history of Abids | Urban Regeneration

April 28, 2014 by Designer

Introduction to Abids – Past and the Present Conditions | Urban Regeneration

Abids is a major commercial hub of the city of Hyderabad, India. It is the oldest and famous business area which developed after the development of Old City and Secunderabad. Major number of government buildings are located in this area. For example, the state government building APSFC, and President Plaza etc.

This place has a mixture of Anglican Architecture, Persian Architecture and the modern Architectural style. This place has heritage structures which have been preserved from the past 200 years. The city of Hyderabad was not much developed. The two hotspots of the city were Secunderbad and Old City. Secunderabad is the twin city of Hyderabad. Old City and Secunderabad were the only areas where businesses were set up and gradually got overcrowded.

Evolution of the name of the Area – ABIDS | Urban Regeneration

After 1908 floods in Hyderabad, King Koti Developed. The Nizamshahis went shopping in the horse carriages to Abids. The area had a shop belonging to Albert Abid, a Jewish valet of Nizam VI of Hyderabad state, hence the area came to be known as Abid shop and the main road abutting the shop was known as Abid road. Later on, this area became popular as Abids. But this was just a small stretch which developed.

During British rule in India in the year 1844 AD, St. George’s Church was constructed. Along with it came Grammar School for boys. This gave a boost to the construction of new schools in Abids. This area has many schools and educational institutions.

The development of schools and educational institutions gave rise to the development of commercial activity related to the necessities of the School going children.

Regeneration of Central Business District, Abids | Urban Design

February 18, 2014 by Designer

Redesigning Abids, Hyderabad | Urban Design Project

Urban design is complex but fascinating. At least I find it to be exciting and challenging since urban designers get to shape the lifestyles of the people. I would like to discuss one of the urban design projects I did in Architecture college in a group. We were a group of 12 students, all of us skilled in different areas. When we began, we felt the project work was intimidating and that it was too early for us to be working on one. I am going to be writing a series of articles of how we dealt with this project, the design process that we followed and all the survey methods that we used. It was a great experience.

Aim of the Project:

Conservation of the original market character by restricting to various patterns, colours, to create a scenario that invites tourists without disturbing the old and traditional built forms to relate to the original concepts. We are aiming at Sustainability…Sustaining and improving the living standards and reviving the importance of the commercial hub in terms of commercial activity.

We listed out the target issues in terms of Sustainable Development. Listing aims of the project is the first and most important thing to do before beginning any kind of project. This gave us a clear understanding of the direction in which we should be progressing.

This is the design process we followed for redesigning the commercial hub. We had a brainstorming session with our group and came up with all the possible approaches we could take to design the project.

Stage One: Case study of 1,000,000 sq m of area in the centre of commercial hub (studied land use pattern)

Stage Two: Detailed Study and Analysis of the Critical Zone for Redesign

Selection Criteria

Abids is one of the oldest commercial hub in the Hyderabad city. Abids constitutes the dwellings of Upper middle class families. People from all over the city came to shop jewellery and textiles at Abids. With the decentralisation of the commercial markets, the crowd coming to Abids has lessened as compared to what it was earlier. The good thing about Abids is that it still has a unique shopping market which other places don’t have. This is what we identified as the unique selling point for the regeneration of Abids. To regenerate, it is essential to identify issues and come up with solutions that could enhance the functioning of the commercial hub and help restoring it to its original character.

Here are the issues that we identified:

Traffic issue
Lack of convenient Parking
Scope of redesign of facades
Organizing and redesigning streetscape
Informal activity
No recreational area

Stage Three: Major focused area selected for redesign