Sustainable Cities Challenge: Our Journey in Varanasi so far

In this blog, we share our design journey with the City of Varanasi as part of Toyota Mobility Foundation’s Sustainable Cities Challenge.

What does a city represent? Is it just an abstract collection of buildings, roads, parks, pipes, and bridges? 

A city is so much more than that; it can weave together communities and cultures to create a living, moving system that grows, changes, and thrives over time. A city can be old or new, vary in scale, and without a doubt, it supports and maintains the lifeblood of people and its traditions. 

The pathway to salvation 

Varanasi is a city layered with traditions built over thousands of years. Located in northern India, Varanasi is the country’s spiritual heartland, being one of the seven ancient and sacred cities – known as Sapta Puri – in Hinduism. Established in the 11th century BC, it is claimed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Over generations, it has been a hub for cultural, commercial, and artistic activity, but is best known for its religious significance. 

Hindu scripture relates that Lord Shiva himself built Kashi – the old city of Varanasi – by hand, which is why the city is said to be the holiest in India. It is said that by dying there, a person can achieve ‘Moksha’, meaning that the cycle of death and rebirth is broken and salvation is guaranteed. As such, ‘death tourism’ is popular here, with paid salvation homes spread throughout Kashi, which care for sick pilgrims in their final days or weeks as they await their turn for salvation. 

Miles of ghats (or embankments) along the Ganges River allow people to bathe in the holy waters to absolve their sins. At two of these ghats – Manikarnika and Harishchandra ghats – funeral pyres burn constantly, with smoke and chanting filling the air as priests and loved ones pray for the deceased souls to be set free before being scattered into the Ganges. 

This takes place against a backdrop of more than 20,000 temples across the city, presenting a spiritual tapestry that comes to life in the religious rituals and festivals that take place throughout the year. 

Overcrowding 

The vibrancy of this city and the symbolism it holds for people is unmistakable. It is not surprising, therefore, that Varanasi attracts pilgrims and tourists from around the world. In 2022, the annual floating population was estimated to be 35 times the local population – and this number is expected to grow annually. ​In July 2022, an all-time record was set for footfall in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple with more than 600,000 people visiting in a single day to offer Jalabhishek (a water offering) to Lord Shiva. 

The influx of pilgrims and tourists for events such as this compounds the daily crowding that is part and parcel of the makeup of the city. Varanasi consists of a maze of narrow lanes with bustling shops, eateries, and homes leading up to the ghats and the river, creating a densely populated network of land tributaries filled with not only people, but animals and vehicles too. Crowding quickly becomes overcrowding and in some cases, supercrowding, which can lead to an increase in the risk of stampedes and crushes. 

In Varanasi, officials spend weeks, if not months, planning for upcoming big events to try and reduce the risks that overcrowding poses. However, despite this preparation, tragedies do happen. In 2016, the city experienced the loss of 24 people – mostly women – who were killed during a stampede on Rajgahard Bridge, when more than 23 times the number of expected devotees created a supercrowding event. The challenge of anticipating, planning, and managing crowds is huge – particularly in a context where major infrastructure changes cannot be made and the numbers of people can escalate quickly. Therefore, it is essential to improve the mobility of people in situations such as these, to mitigate the risk of overcrowding and enhance crowd flow management overall.

Designing solutions for people

In February 2024, Varanasi was selected as one of the host cities for the Sustainable Cities Challenge to address the issue of overcrowding in the city. Funded by Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF), the challenge is delivered in partnership with Challenge Works and World Resources Institute (WRI). Over the past six months, our team has been working closely with city officials and WRI India to design an informed challenge that will result in the development of effective solutions for overcrowding. 

Our research and design process is in-depth and collaborative. At its core is a user-focused approach that requires insights from people on the ground to ensure the resulting challenge is relevant and contextualised.  

Working with our Sustainable Cities Challenge partners, we conducted both primary and secondary research to explore the complexities of the city. Virtual interviews with experts in crowd science, urban design, and mobility, as well as those with insights into the city, were critical in informing our initial prototypes. However, a turning point was the design workshop in Varanasi, which we delivered in March 2024. This workshop brought together the city and its stakeholders with our team, TMF, and WRI India to further the co-design activities and refine our prototypes. 

Experiencing the city firsthand

The first step in grounding our prototypes in reality was context setting – seeing Varanasi with our own eyes to better understand the city and the knowledge being gathered from local stakeholders. 

On our visit to the city, we immersed ourselves in the location, navigating the narrow lanes of Kashi, dodging the fitful movements of rickshaws and motorbikes, as well as the stationary cows and lethargic dogs lounging across the cobbles. These lanes led us to the ghat by Godowlia market, where we joined the ever-growing crowds assembling by the water for the weekly Aarti ceremony close to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. An offering of fire was being presented to Lord Shiva and the Ganges River; the smell of incense mixing with the collective recitation of prayers humbled us, allowing us to blend into the spiritual drumbeat of the city. We could see the people around us absorbed in the ritual, with priests moving methodically through the crowds, providing blessings and applying tikkas to the foreheads of devotees. 

We felt swept up in the moment, experiencing firsthand the psychological effects of being part of a crowd with a shared activity and goal. This was the moment when everything clicked for us. 

The profound value that this and countless other rituals and festivals have for Varanasi is priceless. It is what pilgrims are searching for individually and collectively – absolution…redemption. As such, it is obvious that crowds form an integral part of the religious fabric of the city, contributing to that drumbeat that is so loud and clear. And how the ancient city itself – its physical infrastructure – holds and echoes that drumbeat. Therefore, any solutions looking to address the issue of overcrowding and crowd flow management need to acknowledge and preserve the spiritual essence of the city and the role that crowds play in that. 

Taking these insights and experience back into our design workshop we consolidated our thinking. We also heard from other local stakeholders, including members of Jan Vikas Samiti (a community development organisation based in Varanasi) who shared with us how they navigate the city, take part in their cultural traditions, and crucially, the challenges they face in doing so when experiencing disability such as a visual or mobility impairment.

We transformed all of this into a working model of our challenge statement and judging criteria, ensuring that the focus was on supporting the safer access of people to Kashi. We looked at how a variety of inputs, from urban design through to technology, could be applied to develop solutions that are innovative, multidisciplinary, and contextually relevant, to ultimately provide sustainable outcomes for the city.