ABSTRACT

Sankadi Sheri (literal meaning – a narrow street) is one of the main streets of the Walled City of Ahmedabad and opens directly on to the main market of the city, Manek Chowk. A number of residential neighbourhoods, pols, open to the street, which has historic institutions, havelis and shops supplying goods and services for day-to-day living. The street has been earmarked to be made into a model Heritage Street, to demonstrate the architecture and urban structure of the World Heritage Site of Ahmedabad. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation tied up with an organisation set up by the investors and builders of the city to promote and preserve heritage. The economic model developed by the organisation is to invest in heritage structures to make them visitation ready by converting them as bed and breakfasts, restaurants, cafés and boutique retail shops. The street at present has five heritage structures which have been restored/transformed as a part of this plan (one of which was already a restored haveli) and the next step is to change the street design for it to become a pleasant environment for tourists and visitors to experience. The plan is to scale up the model and bring in other areas of the city. The Heritage Street Project and transformations of individual structures have highlighted the built heritage of the place. The chapter studies this process with reference to equity principles as how it impacts the intangible relationships, diverse public histories, day-to-day occupation of places and access to cultural heritage. It does so by mapping complex relationships between stakeholders, how they initiate or implement changes and addressing contestations arising due to that. The contestations, or a lack of them, are considered as indicative of how various stakeholders and actors value the place and how they choose to claim accessibilities to those values.