ROHIT SINHA
In early January, the Mor mugao Municipal Council in augurated a new market com plex in Vasco with much fanfare. Ministers attended, public funds were highlighted, and the prom ise was of a safer, more orderly space for everyday commerce. Within days, videos surfaced of the MMC chairperson urging street vendors to move into the complex, while warning that roadside vending would soon face enforcement in the name of cleanliness and public safety. Together, these moments cap ture a familiar civic sequence. A public space is built and cele brated, then citizens are asked to quickly adjust long-standing routines. When uptake is une ven, enforcement follows. This is not unique to Vasco, nor driven by bad intent, but it reveals how Goa often approaches public spaces. Across Goa, we are building more public infrastructure than ever before. Markets, prome nades, complexes, and civic build ings are being completed and showcased as signs of progress. Yet many of these spaces struggle in their earliest days to attract the very life they were meant to support. When this happens, we often treat it as a behavioural failure. People are blamed for not adjusting quickly enough to new systems. Informality is framed as disorder. Enforcement becomes the corrective tool. What we rarely pause to ask is a simpler question. Did we begin with the building, or with the be haviour that gives it meaning? This is where the idea of placemaking is often misunder stood in Goa. It is assumed to be about beautification, aesthetics, or expensive design. In reality, placemaking is neither a pro fession nor a project type. It is a way of seeing. It starts by ob serving how people already use space, how they negotiate over lap, how economic and social life coexist, and how trust forms through repetition rather than instruction. A place is not created on in auguration day. It emerges over time, through use, adjustment, and informal rule-making. Mar kets make this truth particularly visible. Public markets are among the most demanding civic spaces a city can host. They compress live lihoods, price sensitivity, social interaction, informality, regula tion, and time pressure into a sin gle daily rhythm. When markets work, they work because buy ers and sellers have collectively shaped them to fit real needs. When they struggle, it is often be cause design and infrastructure have been allowed to run ahead of lived reality. Across Indian cities, markets tend to fail when they lead with form. Fixed layouts, rigid stall al locations, and assumptions about ideal behaviour are introduced first. Only later do we discover that vendors cluster differently, customers follow older paths, and overflow is not a nuisance but a feature of demand. Instead of learning from this feedback, we often attempt to correct it through discipline. Healthy cities, however, do not eliminate informality. They allow a spectrum of economic partic ipation to exist, from informal vending to formal retail. This spectrum is not a flaw. It is an opportunity for upward mobility. Street vending is often the entry point into the urban economy, not a deviation from it. Markets that recognise this tend to evolve into resilient civic anchors. Those that attempt to bypass it rarely do. Placemaking, in this sense, is less about imposing order and more about understanding how order already operates. It asks public institutions to begin with questions rather than conclu sions. Where do people natural ly linger. What combinations of activity feel comfortable rather than congested. Which uses com plement each other instead of competing for control. One way to recognise a success ful place is deceptively simple. It offers many reasons to be there. Not one dominant purpose, but a layered set of small invitations. Buying vegetables, meeting a neighbour, resting briefly, watch ing others pass through. When any single function overwhelms the rest, the place becomes frag ile. When activities reinforce each other, it becomes resilient. This is often described by urban ists as the “Power of 10”, the idea that a good place offers at least ten reasons to return, none of them compulsory. Goa already understands this instinctively. Our most belov ed public spaces rarely succeed because they were perfected on paper. They succeed because they allow coexistence. Beaches where children learn to swim alongside vendors selling tea. Vil lage squares that host markets, festivals, and everyday loitering without formal programming. Town centres where commerce and social life blur rather than separate. The challenge Goa faces is not a lack of public space, but a lack of attention to how public space is governed once built. There is usually funding for capital ex penditure. Far less for manage ment, maintenance, and learning. Yet it is these invisible functions that determine whether a space adapts or ossifies. When early usage does not match expectations, enforcement is often the fastest response. It is also the most fragile. Rules can suppress behaviour temporarily, but they rarely generate belong ing. Stewardship, on the other hand, builds trust incremental ly. Small adjustments, visible responsiveness, and shared re sponsibility create momentum without division. This distinction matters be yond markets. Public spaces are not neutral backdrops. They are economic systems. They shape how people behave more relia bly than signage or income levels ever will. Much of the current friction between residents and visitors in Goa is explained not by who the visitors are, but by how places absorb them. Strong places socialise everyone into shared norms. Weak places am plify conflict. This has implications for how we think about tourism as well. For years, the assumption has been that attracting wealthier visitors would automatically improve behaviour and reduce pressure. Experience suggests otherwise. Car rentals have in creased, spending power has risen, yet friction remains. Be haviour follows place design more closely than purchasing power. When public investment prior itises local life, tourism benefits indirectly. When it prioritises promotion and extraction, public life bears the cost. Spending on local area development, on mak ing everyday places work better for residents, often produces more durable value than spend ing on marketing ever can. Vis itors tend to follow vitality, not slogans. None of this requires import ing foreign ideas or romanti cising informality. It requires recognising what already works in Goa and giving it institutional support. Placemaking, stripped of jargon, is simply the discipline of paying attention to use before form, to people before projects, and to learning before enforce ment. As Goa continues to invest in its public realm, the question is not whether these investments are well intentioned. Most are. The question is whether we are sequencing them wisely. Are we allowing places the time and flex ibility to emerge, or are we ask ing people to adapt instantly to finished visions? Goa’s strength has always been its ability to absorb difference without losing coherence. Our public spaces reflect that inher itance. The task ahead is not to replace this quality with order, but to govern it with confidence. (The author is a strategy consultant and writer living in Goa)
