Socio-cultural and physical aspects of place-making in three streets of Puri, India

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The aim of this paper is to understand the impact of physical and socio-culturalaspects of streets on sense of place in the streets of Puri, a pilgrimage and a religiouscity. The three major streets of Puri leading to Jagannath temple, consist ofthe Bada Danda, Temple and Swargdwara streets. Each of these streets have theirown unique spatial quality resulting from their cultural, historical and religiousimportance, serving as both spiritual and social places for the people. Becauseof their religious and functional significance, scale and diverse activities, thesestreets have a strong sense of place. The sense of place on streets of religious cities,which is visited by number of pilgrims on daily basis, thus needs to be assessednot only for physical but also for the fact that these streets be perceptibleas a ‘place’. The research adopts a mixed method approach: visual survey and astructured questionnaire survey of both pilgrims and residents to achieve at itsobjective. The result indicates the dominance of socio-cultural aspects more thanthe physical aspects on sense of place thereby indicating that the improvements inphysical characteristics can further enhance their perception about street identityand sense of place in Indian religious cities.