Dreamweaving: Bridging Diversity in Urban Planning
In early 2022, 70 Aurovilians took part in an unprecedented collective visioning experiment: “Dreamweaving the Auroville Crown”. With the goal of envisioning a conscious and ecological development of the Crown way, these architects, town planners, multidisciplinary experts, focus groups and randomly selected members of the Residents’ Assembly came together in order to advance Auroville’s collaborative urban design process.
The Dreamweaving process has been heralded by many experts, including the esteemed late BV Doshi, the Pritzker prize-winning architect and former Governing Board member, as an innovative way forward to co-create ecological and functional plans. Many Auroville residents had hoped that the Dreamweaving would be a positive and constructive solution during a time of conflict, a participatory process to evolve Auroville’s development.
Eleven teams with different backgrounds and orientations, in collaboration with BV Doshi’s consultancy firm Vastushilpa Sangath, participated in the process to plan the Crown way – a special use zone that includes a proposed 4.3 km circular road. A common theme that emerged was the need for integration and synthesis – particularly of the ground and bioclimatic realities – with the Galaxy vision, the city model by the chief architect Roger Anger. Another one was the need for diversity, for the Crown to provide a variety of different experiences as it passes through different zones and environments of the city, for example adapting from a road with a wide right-of-way to a pathway in densely forested zones. Finally, there was a shared emphasis upon the need for the Crown to be human-centred: for pedestrians and cyclists to be prioritised, for the provision of plazas and safe, communal spaces, as well as weather protection at all times of the year.
The final report notes that the key ‘takeaways’ from the process, according to participants’ feedback, were that “involvement and collaboration enriches the process and the outputs developed within it, that the Auroville community has an exemplary capacity to respond collectively to a challenge, and that the educational aspect of the process (including being exposed to a diversity of perspectives) is highly appreciated”. In addition, respondents emphasised the potential for this process to be a model to address further planning needs and other community topics in Auroville. A focus group member added that “There is a delight in transcending ‘ownership’, that seems to be the deeper direction called forth by the dreamweaving exercise. It holds a profound truth of Auroville.”
They also noted that in the past, there was sometimes an element of concern that the original vision of Auroville might be compromised if the community reached out to external experts or collaborated with very different perspectives. “However, if we don’t reach out for help, we may lose the very thing we are afraid of losing,” they underlined. For, ultimately, at a time when a few would split the community over the way in which the development of the Crown would happen, the positive dreamweaving experience has inspired the community towards an approach in which multiple perspectives are integrated.
Despite the Dreamweaving’s success in drawing together many stakeholders in a collective decision-making process, the outcomes were unfortunately ignored by the Office of the Secretary and the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation, and have not been implemented to date. Residents are however moving forward with plans to organise several other participatory planning processes based on the Dreamweaving model, to actively and consciously build the ‘city the earth needs’.
And now? What next?
Auroville continues to look forward, taking steps towards its future using the momentum of the Dreamweaving process of early 2022 and the community’s constantly evolving and improving self-governance.
In a General Meeting on the 1st of April 2023, the Town Development Council of the Residents’ Assembly announced that BV Doshi’s Vastushilpa Sangath architectural firm and the Dreamweaving team were committed to going ahead with the design and planning collaboration despite the recent turbulent events. The several hundred community members present expressed their hearty support for this partnership between external and internal experts, enriched through community input.
This follow-up to the Dreamweaving process will help give birth to new Detailed Development Plans for the emerging township that take into account the ground realities of the Auroville plateau and bioregion, while honouring the initial spirit and vision set forth by the founders, in order to build a truly innovative and sustainable city of the future.
Extracted from Voice of Auroville, Issue 01, April 2023
and partly adapted from Auroville Today, May 2022, Issue 394
