Urban Planning and the changing pattern of urban living in India, c. 1950s

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Urban Planning and the changing pattern of urban
living in India, c. 1950s
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What were Indian cities/towns like prior to 1947

• Most were segregated native town (where
  Indians lived), civil lines (where Europeans
  lived and civil/gov. offices were located),
  cantonment (army/police barracks)
• Different aesthetics, structures, and patterns of
  human mobility in each area

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Remnants of Imperial Delhi
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Features of Civil Areas

• Monumental architecture with large statues of
  British Kings, Queens, Viceroys
• Broad, tree-lined streets
• Large houses in a garden setting set back from
  main avenues
• Prior to 1930s, restrictions on Indian living in
  these areas (except as staff)

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Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly Viceroys House)
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Haveli or Mansion in old Delhi
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Features of native or black town

• Most date to early-modern even medieval period
• Narrow streets and lanes
• Open drains
• Greater social varietyi.e. richer and poorer
  parts of society live closer together
• Fewer civic amenities
• Denser population, community run projects for
  security and improvement

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Rural architecture

• Construction varies by region
• Thick mud walls and thatched roofs more common in
  plains
• Timber walls and wooden or slate roofs more
  common in hills
• Each village has common areas for meetings,
  particular neighborhoods, often with specific
  caste/tribe associations

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Common Architectural features prior to 1940s

• Thicker walls in plains to block out sun and heat
  (mud and chuna have insulating properties)
• Thatched/tiled roofs allow heat to escape, sloped
  eaves provide drainage from monsoons
• In building of the affluent, construction around
  a central courtyard allows for air circulation,
  but also adapted to cultural norms
• Outside façade usually not as elaborate as inside
  decoration

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Changes in the 1940s

• Patterns of segregation by race giving way to
  segregation by income
• New technologies such as air-conditioning change
  house-design for elite
• Indigenous/older construction patterns seen as
  obsolete and less desirable
• New construction using concrete and a modern
  sensibility is valorized

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Ideas of the modern in India

• Emphasis on breaking with past aesthetics and
  patterns of communal living
• New concepts of public space post-independence
• Changes in housing patterns from
  multi-generational structures to nuclear families
  (perception v. reality)
• Connected with a utilitarian mode of planning,
  stripped down decoration
• Associated with progressive thinking and new
  social structures
• Influence of American and European schools of
  urban planningcity beautiful, separation of
  manufacturing/living zones, green zones

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Chandigarh Assembly Building
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Chandigarh, rock garden
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The Vision, some Issues

• Notion of a public space and green space run
  into problems of social access
• Class issues of leisure time and transport
• Some designs not suited to the ecology of the
  regions in which they are placed
• Problems with cooling systems/resource use
• Notions of cultural comfort zones
• In green spaces, issues of irrigation, imported
  species and daily care
• Disregard for the low-tech or geographically
  adapted, but devalued forms of building