Urban Design: Tool for Continuity and Change in the Urban Environment (original) (raw)
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Some notes on cities and urban planning in India
1971
This thesis is concerned with the relevance of urban form in Indian cities to the needs and means of users. Ahmedabad is used as a case study and other cities are noted where relevant data is available. Users are defined as households. A model of a typical household is generated from social and economic data and from my case studies in Ahmedabad. The study questions whether or not symptoms of urban decay are not really healthy signs of urban areas undergoing positive rapid transitions in conditions of scarcity. These symptoms are presented in Chapter One. Urban land control is seen to be a major issue and imbalances between urban planning and social and economic planning are hypothesized. In Chapter Two the context of the existing city is presented. Information on demography, density, employment, circulation networks, land use and urban components is presented. From this an image of the existing city is gained. In Chapter Three land control and urban development are put in a historical perspective and major components of planning are discussed. From this discussion a legal picture of the city form is built. The characteristics, needs and means of households is presented in Chapter Four and the urban patterns which they opt for are noted. It then becomes clear that the existing form is much more respondent to user needs and means than the form proposed by planners. This fact is played out in Chapter Five with the development of a theory of urban form which balances capacities of settings against needs and means of users in situations. Environments are depicted as the interaction of settings and situations and environmental quality is said to depend on the nature of matches and mis-matches between setting and situation. Based on the above the following characteristics are seen to be positive indexes. 1. over crowding; 2. mixed use in residential areas; 3. low gross levels of sanitary services; 4. low quality of housing; 5. over urbanization; 6. fragmentation of social structure; and, 7. class polarization. But due to the critical need for highly accessible location land control is seen as the most critical problem. It is noted that in most cases the majority would have been better off had planners plans been neglected.
ARCHITECTURE IDENTITY OF INDIAN CITIES: HISTORY AND TRANSFORMATION
Each city has its remarkable and important identity, this identity is uncovered through its physical and visual structure, it is seen through the eyes of its residents and clients. The city creates after some time, and its identity advances with it. Reflecting the fast and steady changes the city is exposed to, Architecture and Arts, is the exemplification of the social, chronicled, and economical qualities of the city. This gathering was committed to the investigation of the distinctive new methodologies created in Architecture and Contemporary expressions. It has concentrated based on urban life and personalities. The Indian architect, who turns 90 this year, said that a large number of the nation's architects are excessively worried about copying the style and practices of different nations, instead of gaining from the inheritance of their forerunners. It is in the quickly growing urban territories of India that the biggest ventures and investigations in architecture are occurring. Also, it is here where the issue of identity gets most intense and challenged. Ongoing changes in the urban zones demonstrate a few kinds of new landscapes where the identity statements are articulated. Contemporary architecture is ending up more an articulated style of architecture the nation over, from the bigger, urban communities to littler, rustic zones. Through a study of ordinary points of view on the connection among architecture and identity, which base themselves upon the talks of 'symbol' and 'local', the paper presents a defense for the essential commitment with the bigger cultural landscapes to recognize a perusing of identity. The main aim of this article is to discuss the architecture identity of Indian cities through their history and transformation.
Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects, 2019
Systems, demography and life in Indian cities is facing complex transformation. Rapid urbanization has put forth the demand for a new thinking process of planned development. In recent past, small scale attempts to improve urban areas, referred a stactical urbanism, have inspired planners around the world to consider low-cost, experimental and incremental projects as a means to sustainable urban development. The momentum of tactical urbanism has been in creasing; however, the role of planners and the importance of such experiments in professional planning exercises, especially in India, remain undefined. The research investigates how tactical projects allow citizens to participate in urban change, and give planners a chance to develop inclusive, acceptable and sustainable planning policies over a period of time. Drawing satisfactory evidence on tactical approach to urban planning, findings of the research suggest that if our cities require big plans and policies, they also require small tactics, and the momentum of huge visionary policies can also be collectively attained by smaller tactical projects and schemes.
Bonfring
In a rapidly developing nation like India, the prime aspect of growth is development of private projects to cater to the need for generating revenue. Land is developed for closed housing communities, industrial and IT parks and areas for the private sector. Even though, open spaces may be provided inside and along the developments, they are used by a restricted clientele, since the spaces are not open to all tiers of the society and for public use. As a result, even with the generation of enough open spaces, there is no realization of a public realm in most of the urban zones. Since there are several conflicting demands from different participatory bodies in a development project, the resolution of this conflict is not possible, but selection of the best solution is within the human abilities of the decision-making bodies. The City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia of Spain by architect Santiago Calatrava is a good example of providing urban space from an architectural project, with infrastructural planning and integration with the environment involving public participation and creating a successful public realm through celebrating modernity of structure-oriented bio mimicry architecture applied to the project area. The paper aims to study the effect of a government-initiated urban renewal project in the development of a degraded urban space and the urban design elements applied in the conceptual stage in order to realize an attractive public realm. The integrated approach towards the planning disciplines is encouraged in a plural society like India where all development aspects are fragmented, with a special emphasis on the creation of open spaces for public use for all tiers of the society.
Development as Urban Imaginary: Post-colonial Planning and Heteroglossic Cities of India
Contemporary India's tryst with development continues to revolve around cities, and the latter remain the locus of India's development narrative. But instead of seeing the city as already constituted or as a backdrop for economic activities, the present article proposes to implicate the city as a producer and product of social relations as well as a site of resistance and conformity. While doing so, it moves away from conventional modernist paradigms of imagining the city as the highest rung of development geography or the Marxist/subaltern studies formula of reading the city as a space of unredeemable inequality leading to the insurgency of the marginalised. What is proposed here is that the idea of city is emergent which expresses itself neither through its official representations nor through the radicalism of dissent but through multiple unstructured articulations of everyday life as well as the contingency of power and resistance. This is corroborated by drawing upon the experience of Thyagaraya Nagar (T. Nagar) which provides a representative Indian urban experience and where social and political relations spill out of institutional planning templates.
The Urban Form of Indian Cities and Outline of Indian Urbanization: A Multidisciplinary Approach
Urban form is the study of human immigration and the process of their creation and revolution. The objective of the study is to figure out the economic structure and complexion of metropolitan cities of India by analyzing the arrangement pattern of its constituent parts and the progression of its development. Study begins with the analysis of substantial populace at diverse scales in addition to patterns of migration, property use, density, possession and livelihood in Indian cities. The study tries to explore the roots of divergence in urban form through assessment with socioeconomic growth indicators and ancient forms in many Indian cities. The study is expected to discover the various challenges in urban form and urbanization growth of Indian cities.
in Traditional Neighborhoods of Kolkata to Identify a New Paradigm for Urban Design
2016
This thesis through study and analyses endeavored to demonstrate how various interactions in the urban fabric of old neighborhoods of Kolkata made them more humane, inclusive and ecologically less harmful. It highlighted how these interactions of urban elements and activities of old neighborhoods have the potential to benefit new urban developments. And it calls for modem designers to study and realize the great potential of this new design paradigm which is based on increasing interactions in the urban fabric. Three different neighborhoods from Kolkata were selected, which provided a comprehensive sample of traditional urban fabric of the city. It was found that in many cases the observed conditions were in contradiction to the principles of the modem urban design. And in some cases certain aspects were observed that are completely ignored or overlooked by modem designers. After subsequent analyses it was inferred that there is one fundamental difference between old and new cites. ...