What kind of city do we want to build for our kids?

Approximately 1,800 Indians move from rural areas to a city every hour. And by 2050, 60% of Indians will be living in cities.

With our cities already bursting at their seams, it is difficult to imagine this. But, given that it is a reality, we must explore ways to make our cities move from grey to green and blue. We must!

The ReRoute City Project is our collaboration with the very diverse and wonderful local Design Community to create prototypes of “green-blue” alternatives for more livable, circular and sustainable cities. The purpose is to explore prototypes that are easily implementable and aspirational - culturally and socially. 

“At the heart of the city lies an opportunity, as urban density presents a greener way of living. Urban density can create the possibility for a better quality of life and a lower carbon footprint through more efficient infrastructure and improved urban planning. Therefore, cities and private actors must work together to showcase new models for decarbonized development, buildings, and services to households and businesses in hopes for their widespread uptake and adoption.”

From the Reinventing Cities document

 At Daily Dump we believe in pushing for prototypes that allow for widespread uptake and adoption. Such prototypes are often not “big interventions”, they are usually “exploratory, incomplete perhaps”. They call to be taken up and adapted and used. They are not intimidating. If these prototypes are easily implementable, aspirational culturally and socially then they will be used - in ways we cannot predict or imagine, but for the good of all. This has been our experience at Daily Dump. 

We recently received the 2018 “Swachh Entrepreneurship” Government of India award from Prime Minister Modi and the country has officially adopted our composting solutions as a way to turn waste into resource. This is what gives us the confidence to venture out to seek the teams that may be interested in working on such a project.

Our experience and learning over the years since 2006, when we pioneered India’s first home composter, has also been, that access to a lot of information and theory on climate change does not often translate to better decisions in urban resource flows or more sustainable cities. 

We feel that if we have more examples that are visible and accessible then it helps decision-makers adopt and implement these to create more livable cities. We need to have prototypes that show how we can make our natural resources work for us in cities.

How Will Re.Route City work?

• Step 1. Daily Dump formulates a 'special purpose team' to plan and run the initiative. The team members are curated to bring in all expertise required for this mind-to-market project. 
• Step 2. Team creates the seasonal challenge. It also creates the Design Brief, Curates the Research Material and works to create local stakeholder involvement. 
• Step 3. Invites and briefs the participating design teams. 
• Step 4. Provides support and inputs from experts during the design process
• Step 5. Collects and evaluates design submissions with a panel and participants.
• Step 6. Selected designs are developed/detailed for prototyping.
• Step 7. Implementation and disseminate the designs chosen.
• Step 8. Unimplemented design/ideas are documented online for reference and future use.

The Design Team

The team of designers and design houses in the first phase of ReRoute City includes, 

1. Amit Mirchandani of Lucid Design. 2. Kiran Kumaran of Enfost Design. 3. Makarand Kulkarni of Ether Design 4. Runjhun Pacholi Bharadwaj of IDIOM 5. Alka Vernakar of Studio Meraki. 6. Vinay Rao of Bang Design. 7. Nishant Wazir of IDIOM. 8. Sapna Behar of Icarus Design. 9. George Mathew of Icarus Design. 10. Abhijit Bansod of Studio ABD. 11. Michael Foley of Foley Design

What is ReRoute City?

ReRoute City is not a competition, an incubator, a scientific R&D project, a startup, a citizen action forum or a loose group of well-intentioned folks.

We are a non-bureaucratic, informal and determined group of people who have diverse and deep expertise in creating human centred solutions, who understand both the world of business and the world of behaviour, who have the discernment on where to bring in participation and where to work alone building on the intuition gathered and honed over the years.

The first challenge for ReRoute City is Leaves in the City.

Awareness and interest in adoption of leaf composting is just about setting in - so having alternative solutions that drive home the idea of circular flows of resources in addition to making a city proud of its innovations is important. So we thought this was a great place to start ReRoute City. 

Read the Design Brief for this Project