Greater Malé Region
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Chapter 02 · Toolkit

2.8What we found

Five ideas about public life, tested on three islands with the same toolkit.

1Roads are made for movement, not staying

Malé

Holds

64% of pedestrians were commuting; no children played in the street.

Villimalé

Holds

89% of people were moving through, 11% staying.

Hulhumalé

Holds in part

26% of people stopped, and 268 children were counted in the street.

2Shade dictates movement, not distance

Malé

Holds

87% walked in shade by evening, and more people walked.

Villimalé

Holds

12 of 14 walked in shade with 30% of the street shaded. Small counts.

Hulhumalé

Holds

90% walked in shade by evening; 3.6 times as many walkers.

3Built form vs public life

Malé

Holds

Open frontage, heavy traffic: people pass through and do not stay.

Villimalé

Holds

Fewest doors, best lingering: low traffic lets people stay.

Hulhumalé

Holds

Most open edges, lowest lingering: six-lane roads push people off.

4Density is not the problem, poor design is

Malé

Holds

10 of 31 dense plots score good; all 5 that are not dense score poor.

Villimalé

Holds

91% of dense plots score poor, and 86% of the rest.

Hulhumalé

Cannot be tested

8 plots of one building type, all at one point.

5Vehicles take more open space

Malé

Holds in part

13% of street users overall, but 51.9% in Area 03.

Villimalé

Does not hold

51 pedestrians in all: shares swing on a handful of people.

Hulhumalé

Does not hold

4.3% of users; the busiest areas are the least conflicted.

SourcesSections 2.3 to 2.7. A grey dot means the island had nothing to compare.

What each masterplan has to answer

The findings, turned into tasks. Chapter 03 takes them up island by island.

Malé

Fahi-Malé

  1. Give people reasons and places to stop. The streets move them and do not hold them.
  2. Shade the streets people have to walk, not only the ones they choose.
  3. Take vehicles off the places where people on foot are outnumbered, as in Area 03.
  4. Raise housing quality by design. Lowering density would not do it.

Villimalé

Villi-Veshi

  1. Bring everyday activity to the frontage, so the streets are more than routes.
  2. Keep traffic low. That is what lets walking and staying overlap here.
  3. Lift housing quality across the area: it is low whatever the density.
  4. Give the industrial block the few active spots the rest of the island has.

Hulhumalé

Hiyaa-Vehi

  1. Bring life out from the sheltered interior to the edges, where six-lane roads now push it away.
  2. Add shade along the routes: three times as many people walk when they are shaded.
  3. Break the single building type with variety and a human scale.
  4. Keep parked vehicles at the edges, where they already do least harm.

The site diagnosis in 2.1 lists what is wrong in each area. These tasks add what the five themes showed.