“What’s not taken into account is that people also walk, cross, rest, run businesses, and celebrate festivals on the street,” Dhawal Ashar, manager, Urban Transport And Road Safety, WRI India, says. Mumbai is not renowned for parks, open grounds or even green patches, hosting a paltry 1.1 square kilometre of public space per person as opposed to 30 square kilometre in Delhi. Streets, then, are the only continuous network of public space in the city. On such a street, a footpath, if it exists, “is often 1.6 metres wide, sometimes only on one end,” Ashar says.