Swaliha K A

1540

“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.”                                                                            -William Sloane Coffin Jr. 
For the city as an organism the society becomes a major part of its metabolism. The diversity in the society makes the city grow and expand. The diversity brings in distinctive people from varied background together thus helping in creating a happy and healthy society. It brings in economic strength as diversified societies can harness the talents of different groups of people to make for a more robust and resilient economy, intercultural enrichment as living in a multicultural society often takes one out of one’s comfort zone and gives the opportunity to learn things about other people and enrich the oneself by learning about other cultures and also adds on to the beauty and character of the city. 
This diversity is the result of gathering of people with their own identities. In a healthy organism when diverse people come together it is cohesion of different identities. One’s culture, traditions and language are the foundations upon which one builds up one’s identity. Preserving and living by these identities wherever one lives adds to the integrated diversity of the place. 
 Surat-the city of migrants; tells a fable of cultural diversity where around 28,80,000 people are migrants from within Gujarat and other states(Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa, UP, Rajasthan).Majority of the people come to city for employment in the informal sector and live in squatter settlement while others come to the city for business and trade and form the creamy layer of the city. A story of diverse people coming together to work rather than to live is narrated here. Thus explaining the need to create a sense of happy co-existence amongst the people reviving –their sense of identity to make the city a place to live. This could be achieved through reviving the identity of different communities (migrants and the Suratis) based on their skills (factor to earn for living), festivals (factor that connects to people) and food (factor that helps in survival) and heritage. This amalgamation can happen in open spaces which is open to all. Thus project rekindle aims at setting programs throughout the year to identified open spaces(large scale and small scale) in the city which aims at reviving the diverse identity of the different communities of people living in the city .Eventually a network of programmed open spaces will connect the people reviving their sense of home. Thus helping in building a healthy -integrated -diverse society.