Storytelling the City: How CEPT Alumni Reimagine Ahmedabad
Across old pols, bustling crossroads and evolving riverfronts, a quiet movement is reshaping how people see Ahmedabad. A group of alumni from CEPT University have begun to map the city not with technical drawings and zoning charts, but with memories, narratives and lived experiences. Their work transforms the urban fabric into a rich, story-driven atlas that captures the emotional and cultural pulse of Ahmedabad.
Instead of looking at the city merely as land, infrastructure and real estate, the CEPT alumni project approaches it as a layered archive of human stories. Every lane, chowk, tea stall, courtyard and market is treated as a narrative node, revealing how people inhabit space, negotiate change and carry forward traditions in a rapidly modernising metropolis.
From Technical Drawings to Emotional Maps
The alumni collective builds on their design education but deliberately steps beyond conventional mapping tools. While they understand contours, land-use plans and elevation drawings, they focus here on what maps often miss: memories, habits, rituals and informal social interactions that give each neighbourhood its distinct character.
Through oral histories, photo walks, interviews, sketching sessions and participatory workshops, they assemble a mosaic of stories tied to specific locations. These are then layered onto maps, timelines and narratives that reveal subtle social geographies: the corner where neighbours gather at dusk, the stepwell that once anchored a community, the forgotten cinema that shaped youth culture, or the street that transforms into a festival corridor each year.
Pols, Plazas and the Power of Place
Ahmedabad’s historic pols provide a powerful canvas for this narrative mapping. Their dense clusters of homes, shared walls and narrow alleys are saturated with multigenerational stories. Alumni document everything from childhood games played on carved stone thresholds to the unwritten codes that govern shared spaces like otlas, chowks and internal courtyards.
Beyond the old city, the project also follows stories into newer districts. Shopping streets, institutional campuses, informal markets and recently developed residential enclaves all yield narratives of aspiration, migration and adaptation. The result is a city portrait that acknowledges both continuity and change, where heritage homes and glass-fronted offices coexist in a dynamic, negotiated landscape.
Methods: Listening, Walking and Co-Creating
The mapping initiative relies on slow, attentive engagement with residents and everyday users of the city. Alumni conduct walking interviews, asking people to trace their daily routes while talking about memories attached to landmarks along the way. A shopkeeper might recall how his storefront has watched the street evolve for decades; a commuter may share the micro-rituals that make her bus stop feel like a second home.
Workshops invite schoolchildren, senior citizens and local organisations to contribute drawings, anecdotes and personal photographs. These collective inputs are then organised into thematic story maps: food routes, women’s mobility paths, festival circuits, student hangouts, craft clusters and more. Each map becomes a lens through which to understand how different communities experience the same city in distinct, sometimes overlapping ways.
Why Story-Based Mapping Matters for Urban Futures
Mapping Ahmedabad through stories does more than preserve nostalgia. For the CEPT alumni, it is also a critical tool for more humane and inclusive planning. When decision-makers see how deeply a community is tied to a particular street corner, water body or public square, they can better understand the social consequences of redevelopment or infrastructure projects.
Story maps highlight places of everyday importance that rarely appear in formal plans: the small tea stall that anchors social networks, the footpath that doubles as a safe route for schoolchildren, or the vacant plot that serves as an informal playground. Recognising such use-patterns can guide more sensitive design interventions, protect fragile social ecologies and support place-making that respects existing cultural rhythms.
Ahmedabad as a Living Archive
In this alumni-led vision, Ahmedabad becomes a living archive rather than a static monument. The city’s stories are not frozen in time; they continue to accumulate with each festival, protest, celebration, loss and reinvention. Story-based maps can be updated, expanded and reinterpreted as new voices join the conversation.
The project also encourages residents to see themselves as co-authors of the city’s narrative. By acknowledging personal memories as valuable data, it democratises the production of urban knowledge. People who are usually framed only as beneficiaries or victims of planning gain a new role: that of storytellers whose insights help to shape how the city is remembered and redesigned.
Education, Research and Community Engagement
For CEPT alumni, the initiative merges the worlds of education, research and practice. Training in architecture, planning and design provides methodological rigour, while collaborations with local communities keep the work grounded and relevant. The maps can be used as teaching tools, research datasets and advocacy materials that support more nuanced debates about heritage, development and public space.
Students, in turn, gain exposure to a view of the city that goes beyond textbooks and studio models. Engaging with narrative mapping teaches them that design is not only about form and function, but also about memory, identity and belonging. This perspective can shape future professionals who approach urban challenges with greater empathy and contextual awareness.
Tourism, Everyday Experience and the Story-Rich City
Ahmedabad’s story maps offer fresh possibilities for visitors and locals alike. Themed walks based on these narratives can move beyond standard sightseeing to reveal hidden histories and contemporary micro-cultures: from traditional craft pockets and food alleys to quiet riverfront corners where communities gather at dusk. Such experiences deepen appreciation for the city as a layered, lived-in environment rather than a checklist of monuments.
At the same time, the maps can guide residents to rediscover their own city, encouraging them to step outside habitual routes and encounter unfamiliar neighbourhoods. By positioning every citizen as an explorer, the project nurtures a sense of shared stewardship over streets, public spaces and local ecologies.
A Template for Other Cities
While rooted in Ahmedabad’s specific history and form, the CEPT alumni initiative points to a broader shift in how Indian cities might be understood and planned. Narrative mapping can be adapted for towns and metros across the country, capturing diverse linguistic, cultural and ecological contexts.
As urbanisation accelerates, many places risk losing intangible heritage faster than it can be documented. Story-driven maps offer a way to archive this living knowledge while also feeding it back into design and policy. In doing so, they help create cities that are not only more legible on paper, but also more humane, memorable and responsive to those who call them home.