CONTEMPORARY CITY FOR TRADITIONAL PEOPLE
Anil Chotmarada
In recent times, Chandigarh as a city built from scratch, is one of the boldest experiment in Planning, Design and Architecture. This is especially relevant as barring Brazilia there has been no other city built on this scale in the Developing World -- a world which has always been a segment of limited resources and technical backwardness in the international arena. This is also a city which is probably the most discussed and debated by scholars belonging to all walks of life. The decision to build a new city instead of developing an existing one was by itself a bold reaction to traditionalism and fetters of the past. The final chance Inaction of the sequence of events was the deployment of a European team of architects to give form to this city. The result is a city that is by no means “Indian” (except for the fact that it is in India) but fascinatingly houses and breeds Indians who act and live as Indians and not Europeans.
There is certainly no doubt that the conceiving of a city is a complex phenomenon and the process of building a city an unpredictable task as unforeseen forces are bound to crop up in the process. It is a gigantic assignment and a monumental work of art. It is the physical translation of the guesswork format which would hopefully serve the material and spiritual needs of the denizens. It is tangibly a portion of land on which people have been given a chance to live and love, to work and trade and to pray and play, but at the invisible level it presents the aspirations of the inhabitants, a source of identity and something which provides the joy of living.
The birth and development of the abstract concept is based primarily on the attitudes, associations and background of the author. The brief may be as detailed as ever and the data on the input factors exhaustive, different forms are going to be generated by planners from different milieu.
Le Corbusier forays into trying to understand the people he was designing for, was limited to hobnobbing with the elite, visiting a few villages to pick some decorative motifs and pass them off as symbols, and meditating under the azure sky. These basic precepts were totally European, his development of ideas dependent upon CIAM deliberations and his understanding of human living based on the western way of life. The city for him seems to be a sterile generation from a formal plan form and its inhabitant’s creatures of habit who can compartmentalize their life pattern in neat areas of living, working, caring for hobby and spirit and movement. Human beings, unfortunately, cannot be made to behave in a robot-like manner by just defining spaces for different activities.
The Indian populace, specially, is not fond of the formal way of life. Informality in social relationships, adherence to traditional norms, abhorrence of change and drawing a thin dividing line between spaces for different activities have been the Indian way of life. This is quite unlike the western attitudes.
It was, therefore, not surprising that the takeoff point for the city was rather slow, among other factors the regimented straight line and every identification point being described by cold numbers must have upset the Indian psyche and made the thought of settling in such surroundings unpalatable. Chandigarh was, however, a government seat and some people were forced to come; some came because of personal compulsions and for these people there soon arose the informal sector -- the Indian component in the western city.
Thus began the Indianization of Chandigarh. This was supported and pushed along by the great capacity of Indians to adjust and adapt themselves to any situation. Capable of making a small Indian in any part of the world where a few Indian families get together is a case in example for this capability of Indians.
The city grew. Besides the establishment of the governments of the two states and a union territory other large institutions like the State University, medical and other educational institutes helped draw in the citizenry albeit reluctantly. The picture changed when the inflow of people created a demand which led to escalation of real estate values and commerce increased to the extent of making the city a regional centre for trade and commerce, for education and health. Now, living in Chandigarh was prestigious.
The physical city, however, was still growing based on the initial plan borne out of the western mind of its author. Its main streets (V3s) were inhuman corridors for mass mechanical movement through which everybody rushed. But, inside the sectors the Indianness is palpable -- at least in the sectors of the first phase which are nearly fully developed. Gossiping groups at the road junctions, the corner presswallah, cricket and hockey playing children on the macadam instead of the community green (grassless) and the laundry obscuring the ever so debatable ‘controlled’ street picture are symbolic scenes of a bubbling mohalla of an Indian city, than the representation of a planned residential ‘neighbourhood unit’. The plan of this space, nevertheless, is regimented in clean rectangular boxes, the architecture a controlled and, for some, a straight jacketed locking of frames and the Urban Design made up of the visuals of cuboid blocks of undifferentiable facades. This description would build a picture of contemporary European city street. Both these picture are of the same streetscape.
In spite of these paradoxes the city still prows.
The development of a joyous urban settlement, from the foregoing case, needs a basic geometry for initial seeding and once taken roots blossoms on the environmental factors of social considerations, economic constraints and cultural values. The initial seed has however set the genetic coding and all subsequent growth is dependent on its selection, sowing and early nurturing.
The concept of the seed can therefore not be a figment of a whim but an outcome of very serious analysis of life and human beings directed towards building a philosophy. This philosophy born out of years of pondering over issues of urbanism forms the genesis for a concept. By and large, the genius mind has always sought answers which are universally applicable. Unfortunately, the situational demands call for specific solutions where the human element in application is involved a and as is there in nature, only particular kinds of seeds taken root in specific soils.
The grid iron is a universally applicable system. The application and detailing of the grid to make it successful must be based on the need of the inhabitants to be. Jaipur, for example, has assumed an ‘Indian’ form through its bazaar streets, religious and cultural nodes and landmarks and the use of local materials and motifs. Chandigarh with its grid designed for mechanical transportation and robotic humans has failed to become ‘Indian’.
The main arteries (V2s and V3s) where some effort has been made to create a commercial street by providing continuous bland-faced blocks for trade on one side and office blocks on the other, have ended as an awful amalgam of disgruntled motorists and unhappy building users. In abstraction the concept may have been brilliant but as a physical reality the organisation has been dismally devoid of any joy or functional efficiency primarily because there was a lack of understanding of the users and their behavioural systems.
Within neighbourhood where the people were the masters of the space the over all ambience slowly turned ethnic. The generation of the urban form form the seed was still the foreign ‘cubist’ in nature but the motifs, personal touches and the ever prevailing informal sector had bought a homely touch to the street picture. The people have changed themselves to suit the designers way of thinking, but only to an extent. Beyond that they have started modifying the design to suit their needs and requirements. The covering of courtyards into rooms and gazing verandas is suggestive of this phenomenon. The original concept had envisaged that all commercial activity shall take place only on the V4 (the shopping street), but these slowly spread into the interior of the sector when and where the need arose. Residences which were supposed to house only a single dwelling unit, house, at places, over four families. This may be partly for the reason of economics but equally important is the fact that it was so difficult for an ‘Indian’ family to live in such restricted and straight jacketed boxes and it was so easy for them to informally intermingle and mix with many other families.
The conclusions from this aspect of Chandigarh are not difficult to draw. The city for its inception needs a strong philosophical and time tested basis. This thesis needs to be modified and shaped to suit the locale and the peoples for whom it is going to be used. People in need are going to settle in any space but their capacity for adaptation should not be exploited.
The real success of the fully grown city in the context of its liveability is not dependent on the plan only but the final finishing touches to the environment which are going to be provided by the people. If the people decide to use the one-way segment of a road incorrectly there is not much the plan can do.
Another conclusion that one can draw is that the city is not made up of buildings and road, streets and parks -- it is made up of the people. It is the people who are the life blood of the city and therefore their needs both physical and psychological have to be made the basic of both the concept and detail of the city plan and for its further developmental strategies.
Anil Chotmarada is a Faculty & Director in Gateway College of Architecture & Design, Sonipat-131001, India.