Chennai, a city in the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu, India, has grown from a colonial outpost to a metropolitan city today through a process of rapid urbanisation causing a loss of open spaces in the city and a general lack of public spaces. Chennai, geographically divided by the Cooum river into the North and South, also has characteristic differences in their living environments and their constituent demographics.

Although design of public spaces and associated theoretical concepts like placemaking, liveability and vitality are widely explored in the western context, these are not directly applicable to the Indian context. This calls for a more contextualised approach towards the design of public spaces that respond more organically to the local way of life. This project proposes to understand the local meaning of public spaces and their characteristic role in changing the identity of the forgotten parts of the city.

This project looks at two exemplary cases and the design of public places and the fabric around to respond better to the local context and eventually changing their identity. This project also proposes strategic interventions, their implementation over a timeline. Finally, it looks at the larger design impact and the level of transferability of the proposed design interventions and their role in transforming these forgotten parts of the city.

The Greater Bay Area, known as the GBA, ultimately incorporates 11 main cities (consisting of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR) as well as the municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing) into an urbanised population of over 70 million people. It represents a significant opportunity to shape the future of the Pearl River Delta region.

In the last decades, this region has experienced an unprecedented rise of urbanisation and a rapid economic growth positioning itself as the future centre of global economy. However, the uneven development has been the reason behind several environmental and socio-spatial challenges that threaten the future of this mega region. The research intends to comprehend these issues under the fragmentation perspective, by classifying and analysing the challenges within three main themes (Society, Economy and Environment) in three different scales. Furthermore, the research proposes that the integration of bio-physical infrastructures (Green and blue network) respecting the natural ecosystem and the delta conditions throughout the whole process of development and urbanisation, will help redefine the future of globalisation in the GBA. In order to achieve that, an explorative method using the ‘strips game’ was used as a method to produce a vision and urban scenarios on multiple scales providing functional and spatial distributions. This method was conducted in Hong Kong to give access to the feeling and environment in question.