Reinventing Chandigarh

The idea for the meeting was first mooted two years ago by Charles Correa, the creator of New Bombay and the state Assembly building of Madhya Pradesh. The designer felt Chandigarh was a 8220;Zanana city8221; 8212; with the inward-looking sectors wearing 8220;a purdah on them allowing little interaction among residents8221; 8212; that needed to be opened up. He also felt the city was a cross between Alice in Wonderland and the erstwhile Soviet Union, a toy city caught in a cobweb of rigid control.

Correa blamed this on thecity8217;s administrators who, he said, had resisted change in Corbusier8217;s original plan citing 8220;outdated8221; bye-laws, resulting in the mushrooming of encroachments, slums and squatters.

This, in fact, has spelt death for the city whose master plan was prepared with a population of one and a lakh in mind for the first phase and three and a half lakh for the second. However, the city8217;s population is already up to around eight lakhs, with 39.6 per cent of it settled in illegal accommodations. Together with the residents of Chandigarh8217;s two satellite towns, Panchkula and Mohali, and the pockets that have come up, the population figure has reached 11 lakhs.

At the convention, E.F.N. Ribeiro, former chief planner of the Town and Country Planning Organisation TCPO of the Central Government, called for a Chandigarh regional plan that would pave the way for an urban agglomerate, well-connected with an improved rail and road system.

Others dwelt at length on the drawbacks of the Corbusier plan. Some felt he hadconcentrated only on the Capitol Complex constituting the Assembly, the Secretariat, the high court and the never-built Governor8217;s Palace. Peter Davey even charged that 8220;Corbusier was very undemocratic, for he catered to the elite only8221;.

Many of the architects called Chandigarh a 8220;spineless city8221; as its various centres have nothing to connect them. Corbusier had created the city on a human model called modular, with the Capitol Complex as the head, the city centre the heart and the roads acting as veins and arteries. But he, architects said, had not provided a spine for this frame, depriving the city of an interactive and lively ambience.

Several invitees focused on the lack of a public transport system in Chandigarh, which is the main thread of city life. Moshe Safdie of Israel who has just designed a city, Modi-in, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem said he was for streets that throb with life. 8220;Corbusier had written in 1929 that streets were dead and we must reinvent the streets. But he neverelaborated how. What is the alternative then? For street is a must, where you get a mix of commerce, culture and entertainment. It must have houses adjacent, nourished by public transportation. And the street must be climatically comfortable.8221;

Roundabouts that dot the cityscape also came in for criticism. Australian Lawrence Neild of the Canberra Parliamentary Triangle fame who is currently directing construction of the Sydney Olympics Tennis Centre noted: 8220;These roundabouts are most pedestrian-unfriendly in the rush hour traffic that exists on Chandigarh roads8230;When we have roundabouts, orientation of pedestrian traffic is just not possible.8221; To make it worse, the number of vehicles in the city has been on the rise, with the ration up to 555 vehicles for 1,000 people.

Julian Beinart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is at present designing Chung Hsin village as the provincial capital of Taiwan and also working on the West Bank in Israel, suggested a ring road from Panchkula to Mohalito ease the city8217;s traffic. Right now, all the flow of traffic into these satellite towns is through the city.

Incidentally, this was part of the curvilinear road system planned in the initial Mayer-Nowizcki design. But Albert Mayer had died in a plane crash and Jawaharlal Nehru8217;s original plan of having an American team led by him to create Chandigarh had to be shelved.

Finally, what everybody agreed on was the need to have Chandigarh reassessed. Referring to the farmer8217;s house in George Orwell8217;s Animal Farm which the ruling class led by pigs wouldn8217;t let anyone touch, Correa stressed: 8220;Chandigarh is not the farmer8217;s house which we cannot touch. It can still open the door to a different landscape for us.8221; A Chandigarh-based architect put the need for change this way: 8220;The city was given a shirt by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew the British couple who did most of the sector planning and we have been wearing it for the past 50 years. It is time to change into a more suitable attire.8221;