Well here I am . . . in Chandigarh, supposedly the mecca of urban planning in India. As fate would have it I’m here to accomplish one of the most convoluted and despicable tasks. Fake drawings for approval of an obscenely opulent tempelesque golf course resort at manesar for the mammoth Indian tobacco company. I can hardly decide what part of it is more loathsome!
Well there is this architect here (Mr. Verma) an old dude who as been at it since Corbusier got his way . . . his setup is quite interesting, Joshi ji his pahari major domo is actually what I mean. His take on Corbusier is a far cry from what we are lead to believe in college . . . anyone could have cut the land into rectangles (read 'burfi to koi bhi kat sakta hai'), that’s hardly urban planning he says . . . he also systematically took apart the framing controls, lack of an expansion policy and the sheer lack of understanding of an Indian town structure.
Camp Bharat is up pretty much the same street, big American architect trying to make a Indian style hotel in India . . . go figure
There are a few things which strike me as distinctly strange about the place . . . the sheer lack of identity borne with unfettered uniformity across the city. All markets look the same, streets and crossings could be any other, the most harsh surroundings for someone new to a city. It reminds me of one argument I heard for the organic Indian urbanism, read Islamic urbanism that said the galis were narrow and winding to threaten invaders and make the city more secure. In a perverse 20th century way, le corb seems to have done exactly tat. And 50 or so years since, the place is still pretty characterless, though it has been invaded by biharis and nepalis and just about any strereotype you could see in an average Indian city, somehow nothing seems in place, its like a people undergoing continuous adjustment.
But one thing i must say corbu figured out . . . road cross sections . . . 2 lane per direction for MV traffic (including buses), segregated NMV lanes, adequate pavements and generous ROW's with double layered planting . . . low pavements with kerb cuts, round abouts at all the intersections, only one entry per face for each sector . . . service lanes at commercial areas . . . quite impressive, its not as if i'm going there for the first time, but first time after i learnt how roads work . . !
and so many trees . . . variety and abundance . . . joy!
