Awareness walk to know Buckingham canal significance

After the floods in 2015, a group of people started studying the inundated areas to ascertain the root cause for this phenomenon. Udhaya Rajan, an architect with Webe Design Lab, elaborated, “We identified that the Buckingham Canal played a major role in saving us from such calamities in the future. Apart from researching on the issue, we also wanted to create awareness. Today, people think that the Buckingham Canal is meant only to let out the sewage effluents from the city. But that is only recently – this canal was used for navigation and transport a hundred years ago”. 

To make people understand their relationship with the waterbodies, Webe Design Lab teamed up with Agam Sei and Veditum India Foundation, to start the Chennai City Walks. Speaking about this project, Udhaya explained, “As a part of their ‘Moving Upstream’ initiative, Veditum conducts water walks along the Ganges, concentrating on the lifestyle changes along the course of the river. We wanted to do that in Chennai, where city planning is done with scant consideration for ecology.” 

The debut session of the walk started from Kotturpuram to the Mylapore MRTS Station. Prithvi Mahadevan of Agam Sei, who conducted the walk, said the participants were given a brief history of the canal. “Then, we divided ourselves into groups – one walked along the Mylapore-Mandaveli stretch, while another, inspected the Greenways Road to Mandaveli area. For us, the possibility of the residual space was high – which needed to be cleaned. We had many observations – people had interacted with the slum dwellers. It was a moment of realisation when they found out that when people throw the trash into the canal, it remains there and doesn’t disappear. Many participants said that they had a better understanding of the garbage situation and the need to recycle,” she added. 

Next week, the walk will cover the Sholinganallur to Muttukadu stretch. Udhaya pointed out that at each of the locations, the Canal gains a different ‘character’.