Spatio-functional analysis of sports facilities : a case of Shillong

Abstract

Sport is defined as a recreation, in which when organizing sporting events would require sports infrastructure, sports facilities. Sports events play an important role in local identity building and creating a sense of ownership that encourages people‟s participation and increases social capital. The relationship between sport, sports infrastructure and cities endures as city leaders try to place the hosting of sporting events and teams within a broader discussion for quality of life, city image, branding of a city and helps other economics and intangible benefits and development. Shillong being a hilly station and the capital of Meghalaya have seen a lot of sporting events be it locally like the League divisions to co-hosting the South Asian Games in 2016. People are enthusiastic about sports, especially when it comes to football and cricket. Sports Infrastructure can be found in various localities, from indoor sports halls to football grounds. The “Khelo India-National Programme for Development of Sports” , has been introduced to revive the sports culture in India at the grass-root level by building a strong framework for all sports played in our country and establish India as a great sporting nation. One of the objectives of this scheme is “Creation of Sports Infrastructure at mofussil, Tehsil, District, State levels, etc.”. So in this manner, Shillong do have sports Infrastructure but just not enough to be able to cater major events. The main purpose of the study is to evaluate the spatio-functional impact of the sports infrastructure in Shillong in order to explore better utilization of sports infrastructure, in which I‟m going to identify the major and minor sporting events in Shillong Urban Agglomeration, then to map the formal as well as informal sports infrastructure and to appraise the utilization of these sports infrastructure and lastly to recommend optimal utilization of informal spaces and the existing formal sports infrastructure. The expected outcome is to propose a framework in which the sports infrastructure will be able to cater events from local level to international level.